Gender
Photographer and artist Polina Muzyka has been shooting nude photography for nine years—capturing herself, her friends, and her environment.
In this interview, we talked about physicality and feminist resistance, the power of the photographer and the co-authorship of the model, Russian censorship, and photographic practices forced into the underground.
“What else is there to shoot? Spirit? You can’t shoot the Holy Spirit. My material is the model’s body,” she says. And, perhaps, this is one of the most sincere statements about the profession.
Body, Gaze, and Power: Nude as Language and Instrument of Resistance
— Let’s talk a bit first about the body and your perspective on the body and intimacy. What did your optics on the body become after you started shooting nude? What did you begin to notice in yourself and others?
— The main change that happens to everyone who excludes nudity from the sphere of the sexual is the breaking of the link between nudity and sexuality. A naked body does not equal a sexual one. This applies to those who shoot or are photographed in the nude genre, and those who go to nudist beaches. It’s hard for me to add anything because I’ve been photographed in the nude since I was a teenager. It’s been almost nine years, and honestly, I don’t really remember what it’s like to be “outside of nudity.”
— Do you think nude is always about the body? Or is there something more behind it?
— It seems to me that any thing is much deeper than what superficial culture repressively attributes to it.
Nudity is about different things. To be honest, I can’t formulate exactly what it is about. And I have a feeling that if I ever clearly define it for myself, something important might break.
Philosophers have a story: the scariest book for them is a dictionary of philosophical terms. Indeed, for a subject, it’s a rather anxious situation. For me, certainly. There’s a risk of freezing, of becoming calcified in some definition. And I don’t want that. I don’t know what nudity is about—and I don’t want to know. It just seems to flow and flow—and let it stay that way.
— How do you feel about the statement that the photographer is always the aggressor and the model is always vulnerable? Do you feel power when you hold a camera in your hands?
— Yes, I feel it, but not because I have a camera. I model the situation as an author, as an artist—sometimes I do self-portraits, sometimes I help friends shoot portraits. In my practice, there was an experience where you just stand with a camera and press a button, but the model controls the whole process—she is the director. So the question is who has more directorial ambitions in the process. Sometimes it can be the model herself. It’s a “who-beats-whom” situation.
This is a very serious conversation about power relations in general. Is it good or bad? “Master and Slave”—a dichotomy built into all structures of interpersonal relationships. If you have power, it’s important to realize it and manage it wisely.
Most often, I feel the vulnerability of the model because I am usually the one directing the situation. Therefore, part of my artistic work is creating conditions in which the model becomes a full co-author, and we horizontally share our common field of creativity.
Photo – Polina Muzyka
I have several series where the model and I shoot each other naked: first I hold the camera and shoot, and then I pass it to her, and she shoots me the way she wants.
It’s important that the model shoots me without worrying about my gaze. In this sense, it’s important to allow the model to become a co-author—to give another person the opportunity to capture you as they want within the photo process, without fear, even if they have no experience. This is how we fight.
Nonetheless, it is often difficult for me to give up the reins to the model because I have the intuition of my own gaze, and sharing it feels like a betrayal of myself. Therefore, in the vast majority of cases, I use the power of the director, while trying to exercise it as gently as possible.
— If there is a difference for you between physicality in photographs and in life, then what, in your opinion, can be shown in a frame vs. on the street?
— Everything I show in photographs, I can show at my home, at friends’ places, or at an exhibition as a performative act. The street is a different space, more complex, because it is public, where separation occurs and strangers meet.
For me, the absence of violence from subject to subject, from person to person, is important. I can’t say I support it, but it’s fundamental to me. Therefore, for example, it would be uncomfortable for me to cause someone aggressive inconvenience. This is probably my weakness.
On the street—no, because there is an intuitive fear of causing violence to another through a demonstration of what they are potentially not ready for.
What I show on social media is the tip of the iceberg. It’s clear that there is a lot inside. These “lower layers” are things that also need to be shown with caution in exhibition spaces.
— You don’t just shoot a beautiful body, but physicality in all its fullness and reality. What is the importance of this approach for you?
— I don’t even know how it happened. In 2016–2017, when I was doing a lot of self-portraits while being completely bald, shooting myself from different angles—that’s how this aesthetic language took shape.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s necessary to reflect on this topic too much because, again, I feel like my practice will lose some magic. The magic of what is still unknown to me—what exactly I am doing.
It’s important to note that this is not a manifesto at all. I am not building a project around it—it’s just how everything comes together on its own, how I see the world. At the same time, I’m not trying to make it ugly or nondescript, or more realistic—it’s just like that for me, for my optics. And I get pleasure observing how it all unfolds. For me, that is where the beauty lies.
Photo – Polina Muzyka
— Let’s talk about feminism and identity. Is it possible to speak about feminist resistance through nude photography and how exactly?
— Yes, and it is actively used. In the conditional West, where there is no harsh censorship on this topic, an established language has already formed.
There is an established language for demonstrating trans people, mothers, LGBTQ+ unions, women, and so on. I don’t know how to reproduce this language in words, but in principle, I can imagine a photograph in this style very well.
Why did it all turn out this way? Because in this sphere, there are serious institutions that are connected—sometimes awkwardly—with a left-liberal agenda and sharp gender issues. They demanded reflection in art. Photography became one of the forms through which these meanings and ideas could be realized.
Due to the fact that a market was formed around gender and feminist photography, a certain standard of visual and aesthetic language was strengthened. At least, that’s how it seems to me. I have such a hypothesis—I don’t know if I’m right or not, but what I observed looks exactly like that.
In Russia, there were also attempts. My friend received an award for a photo session of single mothers. Now it’s difficult to understand what’s happening there. Generally, all the indistinct art that remained in Russia has gone underground. Yes, there were also their own languages revolving around photography schools.
— What stereotypes do you encounter as a woman photographing nude women?
— A typical stereotype: if a woman works with nudes or shoots nude photography, it means she is automatically open to casual sex. I have encountered this opinion. At some point, it even became part of flirting—I could say that I shoot nudes and erotica, and it worked as a kind of seduction strategy.
Objectification and the Body
— Who is the viewer looking through the lens for you? A woman? A man? You yourself?
— This is an interesting point: at some stage, it prevented me from shooting truly radical things, although the opportunity was there. I caught myself thinking that through holding power and directing the process, and because the camera—in its essence—is a fairly violent instrument (without getting into philosophy, its task is to aggressively tear a situation out of reality by clicking the shutter), all of this mixed with the fact that I’m shooting nude subjects.
I started to worry intensely that I felt quite masculine in the role of the photographer. It felt as if I was indeed looking with a “male” gaze.
Photo – Polina Muzyka
I shot mostly women, and it seemed to me that I was looking at a woman with a male gaze, although obviously, that was not the case.
Because of this, of course, it was very scary, very uncomfortable. I was worried that I was developing some kind of male subjectivity, although clearly, I wasn’t. But I was afraid that the model might discover this—some hint of such optics, which, in fact, wasn’t there. There was only anxiety surrounding the fact that this optics exists. I just didn’t fully understand it myself—and that troubled me.
But when I shoot, I can’t even say there is my gaze. There is just a gaze.
— And how did you deal with it? How did you change your optics on naked bodies so that there was less masculinity—or at least fewer internal conflicts?
— I’m not sure if the gaze transformed at all. Sometimes it seems like my gaze doesn’t change at all. Sometimes anxiety that I’m doing something wrong is just layered over it. Otherwise, the gaze is exactly the same as it was ten years ago.
— What is objectification to you? Can it be deconstructed while staying within the visual language of art?
— I’m not sure that objectification necessarily needs to be deconstructed or gotten rid of. It seems to me it’s important to get rid not of objectification itself, but of the violence that can arise through it. I’m not sure there is a clear boundary between when you are a subject and when you are an object. And that if you suddenly find yourself in the position of an object, it’s something irreversible, necessarily leading to aggression or suppression. In my view, this shifting between subjectivity and objectivity is more pulsating, wavy, and very much alive.
I think it can happen: seeing both a subject and an object in another person simultaneously in different proportions, or in some interpenetrating way. Both in the other.
And I think that yes, a serious feminist panic was blown up around the idea of a woman being turned into an object. In the sense that this panic was justified, because men often see in a woman not so much an object as a function for themselves, for the satisfaction of various needs. But this fear of objectifying the other seemed to try to penetrate into finer layers.
And here I see a mistake, because obviously, as a photographer, I am of course objectifying the model constantly. I mean, I can’t help but do it because I’m shooting the body. I’m not shooting the body in terms of some soulless matter, but in the sense that I am shooting THE BODY. What else is there to shoot? Spirit? You can’t shoot the Holy Spirit. My material is the model’s body. Here, I think, everything is honest. Therefore, I see nothing wrong with objectification. The question is how a person uses it and whether they harm another by objectifying them.
— What is the body for you? Is it a vessel, a container for the soul? Is it a kind of canvas on which a person expresses themselves? How do you perceive the body?
— Honestly, I don’t know. I want to find out, but it’s as if finding out is impossible. It seems to us that the body is very simple. And probably, indeed, it is very simple. But I have serious suspicions that there are many nuances in this. And as if the question “what is the body” cannot be asked of the body itself, although I really want to. In principle, it’s very easy, as if the body is such “material stuff.” Roughly speaking, a material embodiment of us, a material embodiment of some idea of God regarding our spirit, which will explore the human experience, let’s call it that. In my own physicality, I’ve settled on the fact that my body ends where the boundary of my skin begins. But again, the phenomenology of the body is totally fucked up.
— Can nude photography be a way to reclaim power over the body? How does the role of the model change in such a context?
— Yes, definitely yes. Because there are quite legally established norms regulating the expression of physicality and nudity. And then there are sophisticated, complex, contradictory social rules, especially when it comes to female physicality. Nudity is a serious language. Not only aesthetic, but also political and social.
Of course, nudity can become a challenge, it can easily become a weapon, it can become anything provocative, it can be violent. Even the demonstration of one’s own nudity. We know this well from Femen actions.
And returning yourself to yourself through nudity is also possible. I think at some point I consciously came to this “nude” story. And quite early. I started photographing myself naked—on my own or with the help of similar young girlfriends. (I don’t want to name the exact age because I think it might scare many.) But for me, it was a serious way to cope with a state in which I did not belong to myself. So yes—nudity can indeed be a very powerful thing.
Photo – Polina Muzyka
Censorship, Fear, and the Underground: Art in Modern Russia
— How do you perceive censorship in Russia? Does it exist directly or work through self-editing, fear, and limited platforms?
— Now is the time for working “for the drawer.” I even spoke with ChatGPT about this: I asked what is happening now, what is the artistic situation in Russia. And it accurately reflected my own intuition. The fact that all art that is even slightly uncomfortable for the authorities is going underground, into non-institutional processes. I am more than sure that samizdat and all these things will start to actively develop. Because, again, printing something in a print shop is difficult, partly due to censorship restrictions. And, of course, God grant that someone from our wonderful circle buys a printing press, and then we’ll really live.
Yes, the censorship story is very lamentable. It’s not just things that actively or even passively hint at resistance to the agenda or a situation that are censored, but also things that do not correspond to the aesthetic order. And this aesthetic order is slowly taking shape. It’s scary, but in principle, it’s scary but fun.
Of course, currently, the most interesting things are happening at exhibitions in abandoned buildings, at friends’ houses, in closed Telegram channels, and just in Telegram channels and so on. That is, art that is not even pro-government, but rather uncomfortable for the government. There is still a place for it—it’s very little, but it exists. In principle, in Russia, everyone who stayed is keeping their spirits up more or less.
— Have your works ever been removed from exhibitions, networks, or platforms? How did you handle that?
— Yes, works were constantly removed from platforms, that’s expected. From exhibitions—no, I don’t think so. I had several situations where I became persona non grata. Or when Yandex saw my nude photos with their bag, and they made some notes in their security service. Someone who worked for them told me. After that, I wasn’t allowed into some places.
Officially, I wasn’t allowed into St. Petersburg State University because they thought I would do something wrong. In general, there were some notorious situations.
— You said that currently relevant things are happening on social networks, in “abandoned buildings”—in those kinds of locations. Are there galleries open to nude photography in Russia? Can more difficult exhibitions be held? Is anyone still working openly?
— I think yes, probably someone is. But I think they don’t particularly advertise it. I’m just not particularly developing my professional exhibition activity right now, so I’m not even aware of such sharp nuances: whether there is an exhibition space as an institution that can afford to exhibit such things. Probably yes, but with restrictions. I mean, they definitely wouldn’t be able to exhibit all of my works.
— How important is the “exhibitability” of your works to you? Or do you think of them more as an archive, a document, a trace of some history?
— Exhibitability is important to me. But it’s more important to me that my students achieve exhibitions in some way. Because it’s an important experience—to know how to work with your pieces through an exposition. It’s important simply as part of professional experience.
Currently, it’s important for me, probably, to think of my photography and even my drawing as something that can be printed in a book or a zine.
I don’t think about my work through exhibitions right now. It seems that doesn’t work for me at the moment. I’m not against it, but I don’t think about it.
Photo – Polina Muzyka
“And Art Ends Nowhere”
— In your view, where does art end and obscenity begin? Who is the arbiter of boundaries for you?
— Art ends nowhere.
— Do you ever have moments of shame regarding your work? Or an internal censor?
— Yes, if the work is bad, in my opinion. Bad in terms of being low quality, hackwork, or something like that. Otherwise, no. Even if I don’t like how I look in some self-portraits, I don’t feel shame. I’d rather just internally close it from being shown to anyone, but it’s still preserved, and someday the time for those self-portraits will come, for example.
— What would you say to your 18-year-old self, just starting the path in art and in the mechanisms of nude photography?
— I would say to keep up the good work.