Clothed
Unclothed
Not all naked women
are night ladies
indulged in self-admiration
feigning porn starlets
Body exposed
Body encased
Body paraded
Body judged
Dress the lady
with emperor's new clothes
undress her body
with flowery language
August 21, 2019
An Afterthought
Years ago, we found this battered old book in the Aberfoyle antique market, which is less than an hour's drive from Toronto. From the contents, which compiled of 51 portraits of sex workers (with corresponding writings about each character), we figure it could have been published between 1910 to 1930. The interesting question is, was the writer (or writers) a journalist, a frequenter, or both?
We bought the Taschen publication 1000 Nudes Uwe Scheid Collection around 1995. We even had our library stamp inside the title page. We do not realize its full value until a few days ago, when I attempted to flip the 750 pages through. It really makes me aware of some fundamental differences between East and West: body/soul, clarity/ambiguity, tangible/nonphysical, seen/unseen, freedom/restraint, definite/abstract.
