‘Uncovered’ on New York streets

‘Uncovered’ on
New York
streets

udity, nude art, still remains controversial, even in some Western countries and communities.

And despite nude art being an extremely popular theme, not many are able to divert the beholder’s eye towards the artistic element of the artwork.

Photographer Jordan Matter is one of the talented ones who have achieved this.

After his extremely successful project ‘Among Us’, Matter has managed to convince more than 100 women to pose topless on the streets of New York City.

Matter was inspired to undertake to project, called Uncovered and compiled into a book of the same name, by the 'Nipplegate' scandal involving Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake.

During CBS's broadcast of MTV's Super Bowl halftime show in 2004, Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson's breast. The breast was covered only by a sun-shaped piece of jewelry attached to her nipple piercing. The incident sparked much outrage and controversy. The incident also coined the phrase "wardrobe malfunction", which was later added to the dictionary.

'There was so much hoopla around it and I got to thinking about our culture of covering up. In New York, it's legal for a woman to be topless in public — so I decided to document what happens when a woman bares her breasts,' he has told the Cosmopolitan magazine.

Over time, though, Matter found his project became much less political and much more about the individual women he was photographing.

'The photo subjects found the option of not covering up to be incredibly liberating,' he says, describing how women became 'euphoric' after their photoshoots.

Matter's subjects are all volunteers from different socio-economic backgrounds, of different ages and of diverse body shapes.

In order to be photographed so publicly, Matter's subjects had to confront their own feelings about their bodies - shame and inadequacy chief among them.

And many found that once they had, feelings of freedom and self-acceptance were an unexpected and life-changing result.