Photographer explores emoji censorship and the artistic nude

((Photo: Steph Wilson/Dazed))

Keen not to alienate their hip, young customer base with anachronistic, Crimewatch-esque pixelation and black rectangles, many brands and publications have taken to censoring nudes with emoji lately.

It’s an annoying and immature trend and played on the mind of photographer Steph Wilson earlier in the year, leading her to produce a photo series on it for Dazed.

“I’d been irritated - one too many times - by emojis dismantling the seriousness of an artistic nude,” she told The Independent. “It automatically made the image a farce, and detracted from it's aesthetic - and for what? Not to mentally scar the multitude of 12-year-old boys on 12-rated apps?

“It made me feel like real tits were forbidden, but women's bodies used for marketing purposes (which to me are much more damaging, creating a perception of an immaculate, unattainable body) were acceptable.”

To highlight the absurdity of the images, Wilson depicted the most commonly-used emoji IRL.

“I wanted to do a shoot that turned the emoji's use on it's head by embedding them (or their real-life representatives) physically into the original shoot, making a bit of a mockery of it all. I chose the emoji's that seemed to be used as censorship methods the most frequently, such as the infamous aubergine.”

This resulted in some weird juxtapositions, highlighting how detached from reality some people’s relationship with the naked human form is.

Wilson was also interested in whether emoji bring more erotic attention to what might otherwise be a non-sexualised image, and hopes the series will reach people who regularly see the emojified pictures in their feeds.

“I like to carry a political message in my shoots that I art direct myself,” she said, “I find the notion of reaching a non-fine-art audience - one that may not have otherwise come across a shoot of this nature - by infiltrating a fashion shoot kind of fun.”

Styling by Tara Greville. Makeup by Holly Silius. Hair by Yusuke Morioka. You can see more of Steph Wilson’s work here and follow her on Instagram here.