From today, a new naturist zone will be open in the Bois de Vincennes, in Paris. It will remain open until mid-October as an ‘experiment’.

Ella

Edited to add : Here’s a report, in French, about this new zone (with a few photos)

A video from Reuters is here.

Burning Man is currently ongoing.

Lots of photos such as the above will emerge in the coming days. It also reminds me that the SL version of Burning Man, called Burn2 will be on, in SL, in October. Last year we were lucky enough to get press passes to the event and blogged from there over several days and ‘happenings’. I hope we’ll be able to repeat this again this year.

THE TEN PRINCIPLES OF BURNING MAN 

We live in a divided world. The values of Burning Man, and similar events, can help to heal our fractured earth.

Ella

Imaginative topography

Harry takes a break from being the photographer, to being the subject

Sometimes, I’ve written about this before, SL just doesn’t ‘grab’ me. I flick around the clothes blogs and think ‘these items don’t cut the mustard even for a naturist wardrobe’. A slight feeling of boredom hits me, then ‘bam!’ something new comes up and off I go, my SL reinvigorated.

Often, as I don’t feel a need for a huge lot of clothes buying, it’ll be a pose that reinvigorates my SL. Or a place.

North is an exceptionally photogenic sim with many, many, cute poses in its various corners. Ideal for photography, nude or textile. I particularly liked the cliffside geography of the place, as opposed to beach after beach after beach.

I liked, too, completely new poses to me, such as skateboarding and throwing a few baskets.

It’s not naturist, but hey! I’m reaching the conclusion that all of SL is fair game for naked activity -just as the real world is. It’s just a case of exercising discretion.

If you like your SL photography, I thoroughly recommend this delightful sim.

Ella

Not too many posts this weekend, but Harry’s little gallery, ‘the vintage gypsy’ was a little clue to what’s going to be happening in the weeks ahead.

It has been a quiet summer for me naturist wise, and busier than ever with the demands of the children. Things now settle a little as the school term begins.

One of the things I’ve been exploring is the manner in which nudity plays a prominent role in aspects of Second Life away from the naturist sims. Bellydancers, Gor, cosplay, witchcraft…there’s many different corners of SL where avatars who wouldn’t dream of identifying with naturism nevertheless embrace the nude state. Granted, these are often with a sexual theme, but others aren’t.

I’ve been examining, and begun several abandoned blog posts on this theme within SL, but I’ve finally managed to drag them together, I hope, into some sort of unified whole, and these will be presented as a series of articles across the autumn.

Donald Trump, I learn, changed his mind about Afghanistan after being shown a photograph of how Kabul used to be (see the photo above).

It’s another thing that has intrigued me over the summer.

Just how the diversity of Second Life has been squeezed to the point where Islam pretty much doesn’t exist within it any more. However, many Muslims do play SL. I’ve been speaking to some about how they they reconcile what can be a very sexual world with their religion’s modesty -another months-old blog post that I’ve revisited and think it’s worth examining. After all, the Middle East used to be a place of mystique and allure, in terms of how it presented women to the world (or how the world presented its women).

Iranian fashion before the Ayatollahs

Saudi Arabia has a huge market for quite racy lingerie, apparently, yet another blog post that didn’t previously make the cut but whose time has now come.

A theme is developing here, I think, in that the world used to be a more tolerant place and we need to get back there. That we have our perceptions about other cultures, that can be readily dismantled. That people, in the right circumstances, will readily adopt a clothes-free life in Second Life in order to fulfil aspects of a ‘bucket list’ (and yes, on a more mainstream naturist theme I’ve got articles lined up on skinny dipping as one of people’s secret ‘to do’ things.

In between times, we’ll be posting on naturist sims in SL, beginning next week with Lupe’s Magic Forest (which we’ve covered before but is worth checking out again -as many of the naturist sims are- to find out what’s new).

Naturism is an exceptionally tolerant, accepting lifestyle, and maybe the time is for naturism to step up and take a lead in this, in and out of SL, to demonstrate that, naked, we all come together under an umbrella of humanity, opposed to hate, division and judgement. Many of the articles I’ve lined up for the autumn will reinforce these simple, naturist truths.

Ella

I spotted these ‘gypsy’ styled modelling poses online and took one of our models out to grab a few shots in a similar style.

They’re not ‘naturist’, but I liked the idea of doing them in yet another chapter of our ongoing ‘SL can imitate RL’ theme.

Harry

Fab Free blogs about a bunch of poses at the Frimon Store.

It includes the following pose…

…which naturists have, at least once, done in real life.

There’s a bunch of other poses set out as well. I’m not proposing to blog them all, but here’s one I like.

Eva

I didn’t realise it was as recently as 38 years that Britain’s first naturist beach, at Brighton, was opened.

The UK’s Daily Star reported the anniversary. What’s interesting about the article is that they published a photograph in which pubic hair -effectively full frontal nudity- appears. First time ever for a UK newspaper? I’m not sure if the photo made the print edition, but it certainly makes it to their digital version.

Four decades on, nudity is commonplace in Brighton, including the end of their World Naked Bike Ride

Ella

Ella adds : apologies for no ‘in world’ postings from Spain. The signal we have in the apartment is exceptionally poor right now (Spanish internet isn’t the best in the world) and not strong enough to allow SL to load. I’ve been reduced to re-heating media stories about naturism, but there have been some interesting RL naturist ‘postcards’ that will emerge when I get home on Monday.

The Guardian is currently running a photo essay called The joy of naked bathing.

Apologies for the lack of posts from here in Spain. There has been an issue with wifi in our apartment this time out, and I’m just getting this typed up in a restaurant while awaiting dinner.

Ella

Harry would be the first to tell you that he’s a ‘snapper’, not an artistic photographer, and the imagery on our pages are for illustrative purposes rather than be any sort of ‘art’ photography. SLN’s purpose isn’t, primarily, to produce fantastic photography.

There are, however, some absolutely fantastic nude photographers working in Second Life.

I’d suggest that John Pearl’s work on Flickr is well worth investigating, as is Isle Biedermann’s work.

I’ll add a third name to that list of photographers whose work really grabs me: Fabio Lazuli, whom I’ve known for quite some time in SL, as well as admiring his work.

Fabio can often be found at Commune Utopia, a place I’ve not visited for quite some time now, due to the external pressures of pregnancy, childbirth, childcare, work and, latterly, school holidays, but it’s somewhere I intend to revisit when my life takes up a more normal shape in a month’s time.

As the work of the photographers is their own copyright, I won’t illustrate this post with their work -click the links! – but instead illustrate it with one of our own more ‘arty’ shots.

Ella

I hope the screen grab above passes muster in terms of ‘fair use’, as I’m reproducing the introduction to Amelia Allen’s ‘Naked Britain’ book for the purposes of information only. Should this contravene any copyright issues with the author or publisher I will take it down immediately.

Follow the link to see photos that document naturism in Britain in 2017, and photos from the book will be displayed at the Herrick Gallery, Mayfair, from 4th-8th of November this year. Amelia can also be found on Facebook.

And Twitter.

It already looks like something to put on the list of gifts from Santa!

Ella