Ive already told the story how I became a nude self portrait artist. Here’s what happend not long thereafter. Since I had discovered a new interest, I went out into the world to see what other people were doing. Looking how other artist approached self portraiture, looking for inspiration and guidance. One very popular account around that time (so 2021) and easy to find was Nude Yoga Girl. The name pretty much contains all the info needed: A fit model appearing nude in yoga poses, quite often in stunning locations. It’s very stylistic, very aesthetically pleasing I would say?
Yet there was something more about the account than nice pictures: there was outspoken activism towards „theme of self-acceptance, body positivity, freedom and anti-censorship.“ (taken from the self description) And one way this manifested was releasing a little online-magazine called „Nudamag“. It had a bunch of NYG photos (both of her as model and as photographer) but people could also submit their own work. There was a wide variety of different people, all kinds of body types, all kinds of humans. So I submitted some images myself. And they were released in one of the issues. I had gone from somebody discovering self portraiture to somebody whose work got published within like 3 months. And I really liked the images too…
But the funniest thing about this was, when the main account NYG posted one of my photos. Like straight up me. Not the cover of the latest Nudamag issue, just my hairy ass. On an account with over a million followers. My phone blew up. As I’m typing this – 5 years later – the post has 21.800 likes! There were my 15 minutes of fame. The comments were entertaining. Some of the male followers were voicing their disgust with puke emojis. Many woman were super supportive and happy to see something represented other than the male gaze. Even today you can scroll through the site and obviously its all her, and then there’s me. I find that weird and funny. And to almost everyone I can confidently claim: My nudes get more likes online than yours!
Here’s a scroll through the NYG account and the original pages of Nudamag.
Sadly Nudamag is no more. The Nude Yoga Girl account disappeared for a while (probably not at least due to censorship), came back later. I have no insight what went on there. I don’t think its fully genuine anymore. All its posting is links to buy prints of the artwork. Is the original artist still in there – I don’t know.
