“Interdiction de Nudité " (Ban on Nudity)
“Interdiction de Nudité” follows a short sequence. A body dares to undress in an architectural, patrimonial and cultural space in Barcelona, with people still nearby. At first there is hesitation. The possibility of being discovered is present from the beginning. Nudity here will not be understood and could even be penalised. Ironically, only a few kilometres away, a life-size sculpture displays a naked body in almost exactly the same pose, fully accepted within the cultural landscape.
Ban on Nudity 1
Analogue photograph · WHASI F film
Silver gelatin print on Ilford baryta paper, 2026
50 cm × 60 cm
2026 (Presented at BRILLOS – Espace COSMOPOLIS – Nantes, 2026)
Once the decision is made, the body gives in to the place. It lets itself be surrounded by the architecture, by the city, by the territory. The model arrived in Barcelona as a migrant only a few years ago, and this gesture becomes a way of physically entering a city he loves. His body begins to merge with it, not symbolically but through posture, scale, surface and contact.
The paradox lies in a society that still reacts radically to frontal male nudity, turning the exposed body into something that can be censored, sanctioned or removed from view. Yet the film itself introduces an unexpected contradiction. The photographs were made with Washi F, whose limited rendering of mid-tones almost erases the model’s sex in many of the images. This was not intentional. The material itself ends up partially concealing what the situation had made most vulnerable: the frontal naked body.
Ban on Nudity 2
Analogue photograph
WHASI F film
2026
Ban on Nudity 3
Analogue photograph
WHASI F film
2026
Ban on Nudity 4
Analogue photograph
WHASI F film
2026
The photographs were made in less than five minutes. Everything happens quickly. There is no control over who might appear or how the situation might be read. This creates a particular state between the model, the photographer and the place: adrenaline, risk, fear and pleasure are present at the same time.
Then the intensity ends. The body dresses again, the possibility of discovery disappears, and the space returns to normal. What remains is the calm after the act and the photographic trace of those few minutes in which the body occupied Barcelona differently.
Ban on Nudity 5
Analogue photograph
WHASI F film
2026
Ban on Nudity 6
Analogue photograph
WHASI F film
2026
