Jasper Johal
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Story behind the name: THE BODY AS TEMPLE
🕑 Added 2021-03-24 13:02:19 +0000 UTCWhen I first started shooting nudes of my yogi and dancer friends I was very clear that I wanted to create images that inspire, not titillate.
But when talking to people who were not familiar with my work it became apparent that most people when they of hear of “nude photography”, the first thing that springs to their mind is salacious images from "men's magazines", or soft fuzzy pictures commonly referred to as "glamour" or "boudoir". (Not that I think such photography is bad, or wrong; but it's not the kind of photography I do.)
To clearly differentiate and describe the kind of images I make, I decided to use a title that would convey the philosophy behind my work. This philosophy stems from the "origin story" from ancient India.
ORIGIN STORY: Every early human culture has an "origin story". In ancient India the origin story went something like this: before our universe existed there was just a timeless, formless energy, endowed with consciousness. Indians call this original consciousness Brahma, the highest tier of Hindu divinity.
To while away eternity Brahma decided to dream up the universe. As he dreamed, his universal consciousness fractured and exploded into countless trillions of individual souls, such as the consciousness residing within each of us. It is this fragment of the original soul, called aatma, that animates us; makes us alive.
But this individual consciousness continues to be an inseparable part of Brahma. Our soul, our aatma, is still a part of the Parmaatma, the eternal soul, and is therefore just as divine. Our body is simply providing an abode for this divine spirit, until it gets reincarnated into another body.
Based on this worldview a philosophy was born: being spiritual did not mean disregarding the physical. Instead, it views our body as literally being a temple for our soul. We are obliged to keep our body clean and take good care of it, as we would with any other house of worship.
The practise of Yoga arose from this philosophy. Yogis respect their bodies, and strive to live in the most beautiful temples possible.
So now you know where the title, "The Body as Temple" comes from. It's about seeing the body as a temple. Respecting it. Celebrating it.
