Meet the artists photographing 1,001 women's bums from around the world to promote body positivity

'The goal was to desexualise the female body and just show its authenticity outside of a sexual aspect'

Mercier and Marseille, the duo behind the project

We are living in the age of the bum.

With fitness instagrammers posting pictures of their #bumgains, peach emojis all over the shop and a certain reality TV star’s derrière reportedly having “broken the internet,” we can’t escape bums.

But the only ones we tend to see are pert, round ones, which isn’t the case for many women and just gives them another body part of which to feel self-conscious.

Two Canadian artists, however, are trying to change this.

Their photography project, 1001 Fesses (fesses is French for bum), sees them travelling the world taking photos of 1,001 women’s bums, highlighting that we come in all different shapes and sizes. And all bums are beautiful.

It’s “an ode... expressing the beauty of ALL our bums,” Emilie Mercier and Frédérique Marseille, the two best friends from Montreal, Canada who are behind the project, explained to the Huff Post.

They believe women shouldn’t hate their bums but should love them for their softness, sensuality and beauty.

“Also, photographing butts helps the concept of anonymous bodies since they are always pictured from the back, which brings poetic aesthetic and mystery,” Mercier and Marseille say.

“And butts are funny! It’s not as aggressive as a full frontal picture or other female parts that are obviously sexual, the goal was to desexualise the female body and just show it’s authenticity outside of a sexual aspect.”

They started crowdfunding for their project in 2015 and now find most of their volunteers through their Facebook page.

None of the photos feature faces and no one is ever identified.

While they’ve been criticised for featuring largely young, white women, Mercier and Marseille say it isn’t deliberate and they can only shoot women who volunteer.

“The goal was to desexualise the female body and just show its authenticity outside of a sexual aspect,” they told Stylist.

However the pair say that Facebook and Instagram have repeatedly censored and deleted their images, which is precisely the cultural problem Mercier and Marseille are trying to challenge.

“It’s hard to build the online community with nude images. It’s always considered to be obscene content and pornographic images,” they said.

Even though most of the women in the photos are surprised by the images, Mercier and Marseille say they learn to love them.

“Sadly, most of the models have a first impression that they are ugly,” they said. “But they love the pictures anyway... and slowly, most of them start seeing their beauty.

“We receive a lot of emails and calls from the models after a while, saying it helped them feel good about themselves.”

Because all bums are beautiful.