Who will believe my verse in time to come
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fair numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say, "This poet lies,
Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces."
So should my papers, yellowed with their age,
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be termed a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice, in it and in my rhyme.
- Shakespeare's Sonnet XVII
Recommended by Jacques.
I recently received a message from a visitor of Graceful Nudes that required some explanation on my behalf of the philosophy of Graceful Nudes. It was a very enlightening message as it allowed me to analyze my fascination of beauty. I also realized that I haven't(or do not remember that I have) explained how nudes can be moral and how it can affect your life.
First, I need to say that photography in all its glamour and beauty is somewhat a poor medium. It is able to eternalize a single moment and to capture fine details that our busy minds ignore, but it has an inherent weakness, it cannot fully capture the personality of the model. You can see charisma, you can see attitude, and you can see beauty, but you cannot see beliefs or converse with the model. A picture is a mere collection of pixels with different color values.
Second, the world is not perfect. The motives of the models and the photographers range from purely selfish to altruistic. Therefore, I cannot claim that every model is an angel or that every photographer is a messiah.
You have probably pondered the thought of exploitation and how "the models are represented as bodies when they are in the nude", whether it's right or wrong to view those images and whether you are respecting the person or doing someone injustice through inspecting and experiencing the beauty in the images.
Does this mean that Graceful Nudes and Super Nudes are just an attempt to give you what you want to hear?
Of course not.
Why?
None of us has ever met the woman depicted in La Joconde, have never met Artemis or Aphrodite. Yet, we are fascinated by their characters. We can claim that we have met them, felt their personality, and that they are the most beautiful females that have ever roamed the Earth(or mount Olympus).
Our minds create that fascination.
Some Graceful Nudes are more than pixels, my mind connects those pixels together and creates a live image of the model, a beautiful canvas from another dimension, a temporary utopia. She becomes the most beautiful and ethical woman in the world, the true essence of perfection that somehow appeared on earth and was enigmatically captured by an obscure but a very lucky man. I let the perfect lady in the picture guide me towards the light and perfection, through the darkness, and through bad times. It did change several aspects of my life and I am glad about it.
A pile of rocks is nothing but a pile of rocks, but arrange those rocks properly and you can build a Rome.
Your mind is the engineer that puts those pieces together. However, many fail to see what those nudes have to offer due to some preconceptions that probably are implanted in their minds by pornography. Like a virus, those malicious ideas infest the inspiration and one's ability to see beyond the colors, the curves, and the bodies.
I tend not to be cynical about the models and the photographers, whatever their intentions may be. I just trust them until they betray that trust, I have never met Stefan Soell or Helena. Judging them will be extremely unfair.
Saying that tasteful nudes exploit models is like saying that we should never visit the Louvre, or that we should burn Botticelli's or Bouguereau's works. We acknowledge the fact that the model is a human being, and breathe a spirit into what she represents in a picture. It's like how you can be fascinated with the role of an actress in a movie, and falling in love with the character. This doesn't mean that you love the actress or that you negate her existence in real life. You just admit that you do not know her, you know the role she did, and it is that character that you love. Ignorance can sometimes be a bliss. You will be living a delusion if you love the person behind the character.
It's a melange of imagination, beauty, freedom, and all the beautiful meanings in the world; It is a representation of human compassion, feelings, and love, but we just need to listen, to put our hatred aside, and to become what we always wanted to be.
This gallery was in my queue, but a very respectful visitor of this website has convinced me to feature it now.
If you are a regular visitor of Graceful Nudes or any other website offering tasteful nudes then you probably are familiar with Stefan Soell, the photographer who is well-known for his ethereal works and beautiful photographs. It's his settings and the fantasy world that he creates that make him truly stand apart from all of the other photographers.
Famous for sets with very few and handpicked images he sure cares more about beauty than anything else; very few sets of his deviate from his high standards. This gallery is a perfect example of what a man who is searching for beauty can achieve.
Shooting a model next to a waterfall is an old theme, he has done it before with Corinna(it was a blue waterfall), but if you compare any other set of his with this one you will find that they are very different(except maybe for Nebelwald, but this one was shot in a cloud forest, and had more green). My favorite picture in this gallery would be the 7th one(counting the cover), in which Lia is looking up to something with shimmering lucid blue eyes, it's as if she's found enlightenment or had a revelation about how to ease the pain in this world; my guess is that it was how she is indeed helping change the world by not loathing her beauty.
It's easy to connect the dots, draw some lines, and then to see those images come to life. It takes a very skillful photographer to produce an image that is that awe-inspiring.
But then I remember that this is a Stefan Soell work, with fantastic beauty.
Keep imagining!
An umbrella, a shelter from the rain, from chaos, and from the world. One tends to think that the best thing about an umbrella is that it helps its holder in creating an isolated sphere where natural laws can be changed and manipulated. An umbrella may be a room, a closed door, or anything that gives a sense of protection. However, it always helps its holder have more control on their world.
One of the many fascinating things about umbrellas is their offering of more freedom. Freedom is one of the first attributes of nudity that one admires. This is why this gallery is all about freedom. One may wish that it was shot in an outdoor location, there the meaning of having an umbrella will be very obvious, but this studio photo session still offers a lot for a creative mind.
The gallery starts with Susann holding an umbrella and then it changes to show her putting it to her side. That is a symbol of bravery: she dares to face the chaotic world and to take control of it. Again, bravery is one of the many things that make a woman beautiful.
That's why Susann is beautiful.
The world will be a better place if one starts listening to what beauty has to say. Once one gets rid of the sexual mindset, they will learn a lot from beauty.
Listen!
Eternal beauty, that's what nude photography is all about. Showing how beauty can always survive hatred, wars, blood-shed, senseless dogmas, lies, and massacres. It's the essence of everything, the blessing that no one can rob you of. They may try calling those wonderful models name and falsely claiming that their courage is the source of misery in this world to serve their own purposes, but they can never kill beauty or its appreciation in anyone of us.
Why?, just open this gallery in a new tab and click on any image. It will tell you all the things that I can't describe, it will give you the key to happiness and tell you the secrets of life. It will teach all the things that no educational system being employed in any country can teach. I by no means have the ability to teach you what a single image of those can, not even in a century.
Never be too afraid to learn!
We often search for miracles in the wrong places; looking for them in the sky or in trivial everyday coincidences, but we rarely inspect the beauty around us to learn that this beauty is the best miracle of all, not that it's rare, but that it's a true gift of nature, not to its bearer only, but to those surrounding him/her.
Looking at this amazing gallery of Corinna you can't help but notice her beauty and charisma that permeate every image. She has got what it takes to be a beautiful woman: self-confidence, a radiant smile, and the willingness to share that smile with the rest of the world, that's true divinity.
No matter what happens, we should always be glad to have women who are as beautiful as Corinna in this world.
I hope that you will enjoy this gallery by Stefan Soell.
The more galleries I see, the more I appreciate the outstanding works of Stefan Soell. Indeed, if it wasn't for him FEMJOY wouldn't be what it is today. I don't intend to mean that the other photographers whose works are featured at FEMJOY don't have his talent, but most of them simply don't pay as much attention to their locations and their works as Stefan Soell does.
This gallery of Sylvie, one of his works, simply shows how he can beautifully capture the beauty of his models in the exotic locations at which he shoots those amazing galleries. The colors, the smoothness, the tranquility just make his galleries not just beautiful but artistic as well.
His models simply adorn the pages of FEMJOY with their majestic presence and elegance. They are featured in the most beautiful and inspiring videos on FEMJOY, take for example Corinna in Touching the Sun, one of the most inspiring videos that I have ever seen(it stands next to Body In Mind's "Amazon" featuring Nikkala Stott). If it wasn't for Stefan Soell, we probably would never have had the chance to see her heavenly beauty captured on video.
Apart from his models, locations, and photography know-how, you can still appreciate his deliberate image choice process. His galleries often contain few images, but those few images are often more inspiring than the galleries that can be found on most of the other websites.
Back to this gallery. I chose to feature this gallery because of it's beauty and the sense of tranquility that permeate it. The pristine nature simply embraces Sylvie's body as she lies there on nature's green carpet in peace. It's not just appealing to the eyes, it has the ability of improving one's mood and engraving a picture of beauty that will last for a long time.
I just find it very hard to imagine FEMJOY without Stefan Soell, or even imagine being deprived from such beauty.
Anyway, I hope that you will enjoy this Sylvie FEMJOY gallery by Stefan Soell.
There's no story without a beautiful woman playing a central role in it. Beauty makes any story more inspiring and more exciting, there are even old mythological stories about women who affected the Gods with their beauty and charm.
There's no novel, story, movie, or tale without a beautiful woman adorning its plot. Patience Heatherstone in Children of The New Forest, Louisa Gradgrind in Hard Times, Helen in the war on troy myth...just to name a few. Every author throughout history was aware of the effect that a woman can have on a plot; a novel that's devoid of a woman's beauty is just transformed into a boisterous and course one: beauty has a soothing effect on human beings and female beauty is the ultimate beauty.
We may be more fortunate than the older generations in that we can inspect beauty in its full glory, the telecommunication revolution made it easier for us to enjoy art from multiple sources. You don't have to go to Paris or visit a German museum to enjoy artistic masterpieces. It also has its disadvantages in that most of us don't take the time to inspect that art, it's like living in Paris and never going to the Eiffel tower. It's there and will always be there, we start to take art for granted without taking the time to appreciate it. It also gave some misguided people to underrepresent female beauty in disgraceful ways.
There are a few websites where artistic or inspiring beauty can be found. FEMJOY definitely is one of those website, they may have a lot of erotica but they have a lot of masterpieces by Stefan Soell - my favorite artist till this day. This set is one of his many masterpieces that I greatly enjoy and hope that you will love as well.
Feel Beauty!
"This is coy!", this was the reply of a friend of mine as I showed her the Golden River set of Kinga. It really puzzled me to see beauty being described as "coy". There are some elements in the gallery that led her to believe that it was devoid of the model's personality and that it Kinga was trying to look shy or passive. Is she right?, Are tasteful nudes really about models who are trying to pretend to look innocent or is this innocence something that comes naturally in such beautiful settings?
According to Cambridge's Online Dictionary the definition of the adjective coy is:
(especially of women) being or pretending to be shy, modest, childish or lacking in confidence.
I will start with the issue of her supposedly "lacking in confidence"; How can a brave nude woman who dares to share the beauty of her body even though she may have to suffer due to the actions of the beauty-haters be considered "lacking in confidence"?. On the contrary, self-confidence is one of the main things that a nude model must have. For this confidence is one of the attributes that make a model that brave and, most of all, beautiful.
Shyness is normal, a model may feel shy in her first photo shoot because she may not be accustomed to nudity or the presence of a photographer, but this shyness is short-lived and is rarely captured on camera. One of the photographer's tasks is to make the model comfortable, but this clearly isn't a problem for the photographers working with Kinga; She is as charming and as comfortable being nude as in the very early set of her by Matthias Barth(Body In Mind, Domai), I have never felt that she was shy or pretending to be shy in any of her sets. Therefore I don't think that the element of shyness is present in this gallery, and if the element is absent then how can she be "pretending to be shy"?
I don't see why this gallery can be called childish, the only thing that's related to the early years of life in any of Kinga's galleries is her innocence and carefree beautiful smile. These can't be considered a negative thing. Innocence is defined by Dwayne Bell as:
"Innocence does not mean a lack of sexual experience, and it is not a synonym for morality. Innocence means knowledge of ones own guilelessness. Properly, innocence means "shamelessness"....."shamelessness" means the brazen flaunting of ones own lack of guilt." - Dwayne Bell (Founder of Body In Mind)
Shamelessness here means having nothing to be ashamed of, why should you be ashamed of showing your beauty and purity to the world in a self-confident manner?. Does it make make the world afraid that some women do have the determination, courage, and self-confidence to be free?. If innocence is that important then why should it be taken against Kinga or Stefan Soell?. Those are questions that probably can't be addressed without tracing the roots of the current beliefs regarding nudity and sexuality in general. If innocence is about being open with ones actions and being open-minded enough to realize that there's nothing to be ashamed of about ones body then how can it be a negative thing?
Tasteful nudes are anything but coy, they mainly promote the natural beauty of women without adding any extra provocative poses or anything that a woman won't normally do in a non-sexual environment that's tolerant of nudity. It's the natural beauty of a woman that makes a gallery beautiful, and not those strange superfluous sexual elements. If a model is timid in real life then why should we try to forge her real personality?, this is the kind of deceit promoted by pornography. The sites which feature tasteful nudes aren't pornographic in nature. Tasteful nudes can't be considered pornographic or erotic because they simply aren't trying to sexually excite the viewer.
It's not the sexuality that I am trying to feature, it's the genuine beauty that's becoming very hard to find. It may be described in negative manners by those who don't quite understand the message of tasteful nudes. This shouldn't stop those of us who are comfortable viewing those respectable nudes from enjoying them, we may even have a chance of convincing those who have misunderstood the true essence of beauty that those images aren't about nudity per se, they're about the beauty of the nude human form. This simple understanding of the spirit of tasteful nudes will enable us to be inspired by them and to feel their true power while shedding our illogical prejudice about nudity.
I conclude this short collection of paragraphs by saying that my friend has probably misunderstood the true nature of tasteful nudes, it's not a good strategy to judge a complete philosophy by just viewing few pictures and relating them to the prevalent ideas about nudity without reevaluating the values that are hidden within us, this statement was probably made in haste and therefore is somewhat unfair.
I hope that you will enjoy this beautiful set of Kinga from FEMJOY.
This gallery represents everything that I love. It's a Domai gallery by Stefan Soell, and as most of you know, Domai is my favorite website and Stefan Soell is one of my favorite photographers(I don't like some of his works that are found on FEMJOY, but the majority of his works are inspiring).
Domai is my favorite website, and it's easy to guess why. They have pure images of beautiful carefree models who are enjoying the freedom of nudity and are positive about it. I consider Domai as the connection between the world of nude photography and the world of social nudism. It combines the freedom of non-sexual nudity with beautiful locations and simple photography techniques to produce all of those wonderful galleries.
They may not have pictures whose resolution is big enough that you can cover a building with the picture if you print it, as this marketing philosophy is used by the websites promoting cheap erotica as it gives the users the ability to concentrate on certain body parts as an arousal device. The fact that those high resolution images are available means that the goal of those websites isn't to enable the user to enjoy the beauty of the images as a whole. This is, in my humble opinion, sexual objectification of women.
On the other hand, when you read Domai's philosophy and actually understand why their images are different from the tasteless images that are found on the other websites you will understand why there's not a lot of emphasis on the size of the images. It all really is about the positive feelings associated with nudity and fulfilling the aesthetical desire that each one of us has, rather than to fulfill the sexual fantasies of the viewer or to depict the models in a sexual way in order to make some profit.
I am the kind of person who loves what he respects, and that's why Domai has quickly become my favorite website. The atmosphere of hypocrisy that's found at some other websites simply isn't there and they give what they promise they will give, and that's pure nonsexual images of the human female form that has a remarkable ability to inspire the viewer. It may be a third genre of nude photography(as opposed to fine art nudes and erotica), but it's indeed capable of producing wonderful masterpieces. Those are nudes that will last a lifetime in your memory.
I hope that you will enjoy this graceful gallery of Sabrina from Domai by Stefan Soell.
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