Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Nathaniel Ward's After the Women of Paradise Road

Nathaniel Ward recently updated his website with some new work. Of particular interest was After the Women of Paradise Road, a series which:

"examines commodified women in order to better understand the larger spectacle of mass-marketed, socially conditioned, and narrowly defined sexuality. Taken from the covers of adult periodicals distributed in magazine vending boxes that line Paradise Road in Las Vegas, the photographs reveal tropes of marketable desire that include the necessary anonymity of the sexual object, the disposability of desire, a set of clichéd sexual poses, expressions and gestures, and the sectioning of the human body into marketable parts. The weathering, sun bleaching, and amplified layers of separation between the viewer and the women who actually posed for the original photographs speaks to a desensitization to the beauty and value of the women, leading to greater psychological separation between attraction, sex, sexuality, and emotional intimacy."


From "After the Women of Paradise Road
© Nathaniel Ward



From "After the Women of Paradise Road
© Nathaniel Ward



From "After the Women of Paradise Road
© Nathaniel Ward



From "After the Women of Paradise Road
© Nathaniel Ward



From "After the Women of Paradise Road
© Nathaniel Ward