Collected Visions on the Web, World Wide Web project
sponsored by the NYU Center for Advanced Technol-
ogy, http://cvisions.cat.nyu.edu, 1996
Connecticut Visions, World Wide Web project sponsored by
the Connecticut Historical Society, URL: cvisions.org,
1998
Collected Visions, Computer-based installation with music
by Elizabeth Brown, software by Jonathan Meyer,
sound design by Clilly Castiglia, stories edited by Eliza-
beth Brown, Lorie Novak, and Neta Lozovsky, 2000
Voyages Per(Formed), (artists’ book), 2000
Further Reading
Bloom, John. ‘‘Interiors: Color Photographs by Lorie Novak,
1978–1985.’’ Reprinted inPhotography at Bay.Albuquer-
que, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1993.
Esders, Viviane, ed.Our Mothers. New York: Stewart,
Tabori, & Chang, 1996.
Galassi, Peter.Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort.
New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1991.
Hirsch, Marianne. ‘‘Surviving Images: Holocaust Photo-
graphs and the Work of Postmemory.’’The Yale Journal
of Criticism14.1 (Spring 2001): 5–37.
Hirsch, Marianne.FAMILY FRAMES Photography, Nar-
rative, and Postmemory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1997.
Hirsch, Marianne. ‘‘Projected Memory: Holocaust Photo-
graphs in Personal and Public Fantasy.’’ InActs of
Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Edited by
Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer. Hanover,
NHM: University Press of New England, 1999.
Lahs-Gonzales, Olivia, and Lucy Lippard.Defining Eye:
Women Photographers of the Twentieth Century. Saint
Louis, MO: St. Louis Art Museum, 1997.
Novak, Lorie. ‘‘Collected Visions.’’ InThe Familial Gaze.
Marianne Hirsch, ed. Hanover, NH: University Press of
New England, 1999.
Rosenblum, Naomi.A History of Women Photographers.
New York: Abbeville Press, 1994.
Smith, Joshua.The Photography of Invention. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1989.
Willis, Deborah.Imagining Families: Images and Voices.
Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution, 1994NUDE PHOTOGRAPHY
The first photographs of the nude appeared roughly
simultaneously with the first cameras. It is a truism
that every new communication medium is rapidly
turned to the production of pornography, and it is
this very problem that has plagued photographers
who wished to depict the nude human figure. Dis-
tinctions between the nude as art, the nude as ero-
tica, and the nude as pornography/obscenity can be
imprecise, subjective, and culturally dependent.
The earliest manifestations of the photographic
nude in the twentieth century involved the production
of the infamous ‘‘French postcards,’’ which were for
sale in the streets of Paris from about 1905 to 1925.
The development of the picture postcard meant that
images could be mass produced cheaply instead of
being printed from a negative one at a time. The
trade flourished in Paris because of the city’s notor-
iously relaxed attitude toward sexuality, as well as the
availability of a large pool of talent on both ends of
the camera—many artists resided in the City of Light,
along with a substantial number of women of easy
virtue, who were willing to commit the (then) scanda-
lous act of posing nude for photographs.
It is perhaps not coincidental that professionally-
taken nude photos in the United States began in a
similar milieu. Around 1912, E. J. Bellocq, about
whom little is known, took a series of photographs
featuring the prostitutes of New Orleans famed
‘‘Storyville’’ district. Although not all of Bellocq’s
photos involve nudes (some are quite touching in
their innocent domesticity), many of them do.
In the early years of the twentieth century, those
who wished to take and/or publish photographs of
the nude figure had to contend with the fundamen-
tal assumption on the part of many that photo-
graphy is not really art, since it involves both
mechanical and chemical processes in its creation.
More traditional forms, it was argued, such as
painting and sculpture, depended entirely on the
artist’s skill and vision and thus represented
‘‘pure’’ art. In contrast, photography seemed more
technical than artistic. This prejudice plagued all
early photographers, regardless of their subjects,
but it was felt particularly acutely by those photo-
graphing the nude. For if the nude figure was not
considered art, then it would, by default, be con-NUDE PHOTOGRAPHY