Clothing is one of the ways we code ourselves socially and sexually. Senses of power, confidence, vulnerability, control and other emotions are worn on the outside and become real in the mind. Mankinds effort to fulfill the need for protection from the elements has evolved into a complex language of personal information designed to communicate information about ourselves, often with sexual intent. This image explores relationships between clothed and unclothed individuals and reveals the role clothing plays in our psychological sense of self. What suppositions do you make about each person based on their relationship to the others in this image?

We get our sense of masculine and feminine from physical cues such as body shape, size and the subtlties of how we stand and other body language. For example, a wide stance is characteristic of power and domination more commonly associated with men. When these characteristic are mismatched their true power to communicate affects our psychological perception of feminine and masculine is revealed. What effect does the juxtaposition of size and stature have on your perception of male and female? Does the perception of identifiable male or female traits such as breasts or genitalia trump these other factors in providing indication of gender?

These first images from the project are at low resolution in order to focus attention on the physical presence of the body and minimize the powerful effects of the face in building our perception of others. Multimedia exhibits utilizing the entire Human Body Project dataset are planned for later in 2005.