I am going to avoid the argument of what is and isn't art, its definitely not for me to decide, but I should point out the problems with nudity on publicly accessible websites based in Hong Kong.... There was a well publicized case where a blogger/activist was charged with violating Hong Kong law by posting a nude photo on an HK website. More info here: http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2007/07/hong-kong-obsce.html This is something we should also keep in mind -- opinions on art aside, there are some legal regulations we all must be aware of... especially on a site without age verification.

Thank you dear...I know there are people who understand this....I only hope we can slowly change the world and educate people to really understand art and being tolerant about differences in art.

Etchy, I appreciate your comments and info about the political climate in HK regarding art and controversial art. As an artist, I feel the issue has been under debate for such a long time. I recently encountered a problem at my university here where the librarian decided that the books the department had ordered of nan goldin, kathy grennan, and friedlander are inapproproate for university students. So my question is should we be deterred by those rules and people who try to suppress art? Or we should voice our opinion to make them understand that art and nudity has been around for centuries like pokedpenguin19 suggested. Why, instead of trying to understand and appreciate art, whether of not it suits our tastes, should we ban and suppress it? Where is the freedom of expression? Without it, how we artists survive? I am not here to instigate any problem. I simply want to share my view points to the small, yet effective community like AND.

Sunnyfluffy, Both of us are from the states, and we know all too well teenagers there in our country are not naive by any means. Do you really think 13 yrs old girl and 15 yrs old boys have never seen real penis in their life before??? If your answer is NO, then I have nothing else to say. And if you really want to make a case for them young people to not see offensive materials, ie. naked body, then please do not send them to public school, cause that is the first thing they see when they enter bathrooms that have no doors. Now how would you call that? You don't go make a case against the school and have them put doors up.... and I think those are the invasion of privacy... do they want to see naked body of their peers poopingI guess not. Yet they see it everyday......Or the locker rooms with no certains....How would you make of that? Its all okay right?... Not to say that the statsitics show that kids start having sex at the age as young as 9. And do you think for them for see an image of penis on line is too much??? I beg the differences. There is a good thing to be cautioned about what kids are exposed to... I agree with you on that... Thats why you exercise your parental skills and advise them when they see movies and go online.. But to bluntly say all things that show penis/vagina are disgusting and not art are unacceptable...

Hi Sunnyfluffy and Starkiss, and others.. I think when it comes down to it, there are two issues here we are discussing...Wheter my images are art or not. Along with that, art that contains senstitive materials should be cautioned for young, sentive veiwers or not. I strongly disagree with your opinion in that my images are not art. And I agree with you that sensitive materials should be viewed with caution. But unless you start accepting art as it is and that art in itself has many aspects and sometimes is challenging and is uneasy to digest, then we have nothing to discuss here. You start by attacking my art that it is not art, and for that reason alone, I cannot accept. Whether children, with or without parental approval, go to museums and see the sculpture of Michael Angelo or not, the bottom line is this--it contains penis. So to debate with Starkiss, it just does not matter here at all. If you think a form of penis anywhere is not art, then why sending them to the museum to start with?Just because it has a stamp of approval from notable scholars worldwide that it is art, thus make it more acceptable for children to go see?? And what are the differences between seeing penis at the museum or seeing it online? If art is art is art, then it should not matter where they see it right?. And as I said, we all have choices here. To view my work or not to view. But if you choose to view, you must view it with an open mind. Suppression of art and freedom of speech should be out the question in the ever progressing world we live in. And trust me, disclaimer will only attract them to come more... People are too curious nowadays. I think the best way to handle it is to confront the issue with a bit of open mind, intellect, and understanding........

art is what u create... i love the images u created. ... i see the colour, composition and the beauty of the image you created! What's the big deal about showing some skin? my question to sunnyfluffy.... whats so disgusting about a penis or an ass? the statue of David by Michelangelo is nude... is that not art? is that disgusting? lets not lie to ourselves and act all virginal....snap out of your dreams and do a reality check.

Concerned parents can use parental controls to block their children from viewing AliveNotDead, or any other site they do not want their children to see when they are at home. This is also an opportunity for parents to talk to their children (teenagers, here) about the parent reaction to the pictures. The reaction of your children may surprise you if you talk to them. Kids are very media savvy today. They can read images much more skillfully than their parents' generation. There are many parts of the world where attitudes to the nude/naked body are different from our own. There are clothing optional beaches worldwide. Get off any cruise ship in the Caribbean and you may be standing on one (as happened to my boss, who was quite tickled to see all those naked bodies worshiping the sun and sea). There are still cultures around the world where little that we would define as clothing is worn. These people are routinely featured in documentaries on international satellite broadcasts from channels like Discovery and National Geographic. What do your children think of the tribesmen from Papua New Guinea who wear decorative gourds as penis sheaths? The pictures that Ohm posted showed men in various states of undress in an intimate setting. The models all have beautiful, well-developed bodies and are presented to the viewer as a thing of beauty. These are not overtly sexual images, though some may find them arousing simply because they represent images of the male nude in an intimate setting. Reactions to the nude body, especially the full-frontal male nude, has been problematic in our culture. (and in this case, apparently still is) While the female nude has been acceptable in the West since the Renaissance, the male nude was banned. The male nude in photography has an even more controversial history and was slow to gain acceptance for a whole host of non-artistic reasons. Only in the past 2 decades has the male nude been fully embraced by the art community as a worthy subject of serious art (I kid you not). The subject has been taken up with equal gusto by male photographers (hetero and homosexual) and female photographers (many of them feminists with specific socio-political agendas in their art). Just because it is such a charged subject at the forefront of the art world's debate, I think it is important to have it represented on AliveNotDead. I leave it to the supportive and open-minded owners of this web-site to determine, based on local laws and regulations, the best manner in which to present this important debate.

To all memebers, I apprecaited the growing discussion on this topic, as I think it deserves attention in the art community we are a part of. Mind you, I don't create art to please anyone, but to simply share my world and the way I see.... be it landscape, male nude, or black and white... I am glad that we all have an opportunity to discuss about art and I particularly enjoy reading all viewpoints. Thank you to all the supports and opinions-loveleslie, sean k, tom, and charlynlim89, and others. Especially thank you to sunnyfluffy for sharing your opinion as well. Debate like this will strengthen our community. It will allow us to see, hear, and share differences. I only hope your children can read the debate and be educated by these wonderful remarks about art.

Ok, before this goes too far... I want to clarify something. i never deleted any posts by anyone of my page. I am fair that way..I am up for any comments and discussions regarding art here. Everone is entitled to their opinion, be it sunnyfluufy or starkiss. I do not intend to change your viewpoints. I only stand by my own. And from the look of it, I have a good amount of support from people who share the same viewpoints. The admin, in order to prevent further damage, has decided to take out some comments posted by sunnyfluffy as you can read from the copy below. Again, I appreciate your constructive discussions and sharing your views on this.. And as the last blog suggested, it is only another review found online.. And I just wanted to put it up and share what they wrote. I do not care if its for commercial, as it is not my concern. Anyhow, i thoroughly enjoy reading this.. I think it is an effective tool for artist to debate.. And thank you to AND admin people who understand and continue to embrace artists and their effort in producing art.

here is the copy from AND admin Ohm, This is Stephen from alivenotdead. I just wanted to make you aware of some of the responses that we've been getting from certain users on the site and our response to their queries. First, we want to continue to express our support and gratitude for your activity and posts on the site. It's our sincere desire to support a diverse range of artiss and our mission continues to help artists as much as possible. As previously mentioned, there might be some issues, primarily legal, in regard to the nude photographs specifically because of the nudity in the post. As a safeguard measure, I've changed the post to "Friends and fans only" so that it's still publicly available but only to people who have voluntarily chosen to view all of your content. In regards to further measures like possibly "mosaic"-ing out the photos, I'd prefer not to take such rash measures, but in any case I want to wait until we have a couple of other alivenotdead teammates here in the office so we can discuss further what's the best steps to take and provide you with an appropriate response/suggestions. In the meanwhile, here's a reply PM that I provided to SunnyFluffy. To be sure, she's been a long time regular user of the site in the past, supportive of artists, and generally helpful in promoting our community. It's not my belief that she intended to cause offense, and I suspect that the language barrier and the miscommunication that frequently occurs when communicating online is the cause of the disagreement. In any case, let me know if you have any questions or comments. -- Stephen ==== To: SunnyFluffy A couple of things to clarify: - As mentioned in our About Page, our web site is meant to support a diverse range of artists so when taking action to change or remove content, we take especially delicate care when it concerns an official artist on our site. - Ohm did not delete your first comment to his blog post. I removed it because I believed the language used within the comment to exceed the appropriate tone for our web site. Perhaps it's a language barrier, but the particular language that you used came across as potentially more aggresive than you intended. I understand hat you have been supportive of our artists' efforts in the past, so hopefully you would also understand that it's a very grave and serious charge when you label another artists work as "disgusting" and "not art". In many ways to an artist, it's more serious than if you used profanity to curse them because you are attacking both their professionalism and their personal work. It's like calling a medical doctor a quack or a fraud. - I believe that Ohm's response to your comment was measured and appropriate and not in any way a personal attack against you, but an argument against your accusation that his work was "disgusting" and "not art". He stated that he believed that you accusation was not accepting of his artwork and "narrowminded" and asked other users for his opinions on the matter. By opening up the debate to other users, he's asking for other viewpoints on the matter which I find to be a very appropriate response. - Again, potentially because of the langauge barrier, please note that the nature of some of your responses to a native English reader can seem insulting, especially to an artist. To label one's artwork as "pornography" is to demean their level of professionalism -- it's a very hurtful and insulting remark. I'm sure you didn't intend to cause hurt, so I wanted to hopefully make you aware as to the gravity of the words that you used. - As I mentioned before, before we go in and change or remove content to an artist's post, we take careful consideration and discuss the matter within our company and with the artist. We've already marked the post "friends and fans only" so that the content is only available to people who have opted to view Ohm's posts. Any further action will happen only after careful consideration and won't happen in a rash or immediate manner.

ive been working with ohm for a year now and i must say most of all my pictures in my book are taken by him, and i aswell have been featured in his books and work. and to call the art work porn is even a insult to me. he is a pro at what he does and has acomplished many things in his life time of work. and the admin is right if some one were to call this porn would be an insult, because porn is somthing completley different from art photography" and dont get me started with porn... hahahaha YOU MY FRIEDS HAVE OPENED A CAN OF WORMS IF YOU DONT KNOW OHM! =D

Again, thank you everyone for voicing your opinions. constructive criticism is much needed in the art world. thanks again

tin, thanks for breaking down the difference ! =]

well, the broadly defined pornography is material that is sexually explicit which is intended to sexually arouse viewers in a bad way. there is no certain way to judge what is pornography, so the court uses standard applied in that particular community to measure whether it is pornography or not. one supreme court judge wrote that he could not define what it is, but he knows when he sees it. art, in the contrary, intends to provoke viewers to engage in emotionally.. nude in art can be disturbing, provocative, and controversial, and sometimes can be as explicit as intercourse, but as long as it has artistic values and can be measured and understood by normal people (most of the times scholars and notable artists and curators, etc) and has its intrisic value and merits, then its not considered pornography. this is a really fine line...and again subjective. for one to define, s/he must have certain knowledge and great understanding in art history and how it should interpreted.

Sometimes art can make us feel extremely uncomfortable, but it is still art. Sometimes concerns are raised with unintentional ramifications, but they are still concerns. The manner in which we all conduct ourselves is what's important.