Beyond a simple au-natureaux

It mey seem you a dare advertising nude, but would you be able to detect the message before reading the full article, at least?

 

 

[VISITOR’S DISCRETION ADVISED]

 

 

    15 years ago, the bioespacio website was launched, specialized in covering topics related to environment and healthy life. It held in an organic way for five years until it was absorved by the FACTORTIERRA website, under which platform ChulucanasGym born. The launching campaign focused on the idea to be a healthy person amid a healthy environment, a concept that is not new, even part of our perspective, but that described perfectly how the website was going to be.

 

 

The planned advertisement would show an au-natureaux person living  Amid a natural environment. It seemed a simple thing but the campaign’s producers found some difficulties. A first decision they took was to divide into two work teams for covering the most checklist in the less possible time.

 

 

The first team had to cast a male model under the limitation of a low budget and under the condition that he poses nude. The second team had to look for a landscape that be the perfect background for the model – a naturally green place, a forest preferently.

 

 

Casting a male model who poses nude was not easy because the candidates felt ashamed to be featured naked and the further comments that would appear. The producers were focused in casting athletes for the advertisement’s idea to be round, but one thing is the physical achievement and another one is the cultural development, and when you educate into a society trending to repress or tag the nude as naughty before than an artistic expression, the logical is they say you – no.

 

 

    But this was not ever so. In the Ancient Olympic Games, the athletes contested without any clothes,and the winners were summoned as models for different art pieces. Even winning these Olympics was a requirement to be elected as an authority in the Classic Greece. After calling and looking for, a Lima-based bodybuilding fan ultimately responded – Franco Vásquez, who accepted to pose nude and made simple the negotiations with the producers.

 

     The dificulty of the second workteam was the opposite. They had many choices, all very beautiful, and they did not know which one to choose. After selecting three located in far points among them, inside Piura Region, Peru, they chose Monteverde Bajo Village, near Tambogrande City. The places in the final selection even today are threatened by deforestation, drought, and pollution.

 

 

As our partner Ronald Benites has written it, one of the Piura’s blessings is it owns infinity of beautiful landscapes in less than 13,900 square miles. When you can, come and visit. Precisely the site that was chosen for the landscape’s photograph  is about 22 miles to the north of Chulucanas, the city where we launch this blog, but there was a detail – the distance between the model and the landscape was, at least, 765 miles or 16 hours tripping by car (almost 2 hours by plane).

 

 

And although the distance would be easy to solve, weather conditions had to be ideal and the model had to stand up on his mark at the right moment for the photograph to be produced successfully. And just the days when the photograph was scheduled, because of the summer time, did not awake shining at all. Did we mention the production had no enough budget?

 

 

The team who casted the model looked for a location around Lima, with some similitude to Piura’s, unsuccessfully, and they either wanted to dismiss Franco. The only solution for losing no model nor landscape was making the photos independently, then join both elements on a computer.

 

 

While the first team in Piura waited for the best conditions to shoot the landscape, the second one improvised a studio in Lima for shooting the model. With the already produced photo outdoors, what was made indoors consisted in re-creating the same direction of solar rays by using a big curtain and a sunny day outside.

 

 

    The next one was standing up Franco, already naked, in the wished pose, and shooting. As the indoor’s background was monochromatic, the computer was requested to turn it into a transparency. With the model upon an empty background, the rest of the work was combining it, remaking up so the full picture seemed to be an only set. The color was altered, the scene was animated for web publishing, and that’s it.

 

 

Independently the whole difficulty and the technical work, the lesson the producers had from the experience is there is still a challenge for the persons to overcome their fears and the society to face its prejudges. The other reflection is we are remaining without enough natural spaces, and the existent ones do not receive the adequate care. Our culture is mostly urban, and when it is about knowing new places, we go so far but we don’t explore around our cities.

 

 

And bioespacio was intended to it. One of the producers remembers that while they made the photoshoot with Franco, he told in Cajamarca, where he born, there are beautiful natural spaces (what it’s true), but the people not ever give them the right value. Then, he understood his nude was not only a commercial hook but an invitation to think seriously what we do about our mind, our body, and our space around. And the reflection continues turned on right today.

 

 

If you want to see the finished original design, write at chulucanasgym@gmail.com

     

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