In Praise of the Butt: A New Photography Book Celebrates 50 Women (and Their Best Assets)

What is it that magnetizes the camera to certain subjects again and again for a unified body of work? Sometimes it’s the body itself. In her new book, 100 Cheeks, the New York photographer Kava Gorna trains her lens on a single, sculptural aspect of the female form: namely, the butt. The concept is a simple one. All fifty women—including Jemima Kirke, Pamela Love, and others in her wide circle of friends, collaborators, and downtown acquaintances—wear a treasured pair of Levi’s, and the crop is tight: The course of study here, as writer (and subject) Thessaly La Force playfully explains in the introduction, is “epic booties.”

“There’s no one standard of what the perfect proportion is,” Gorna says over iced tea at a Soho café, her ripped-up Ksubi jeans inviting in the early-summer breeze. While body diversity wasn’t the expressed goal of her five-year project, the resulting portfolio is nuanced and individualistic, with silhouette, pose, and denim wear-and-tear creating loosely sketched portraits. (Images of the other 100 cheeks—the subjects’ faces—accompany intimate, atmospheric descriptions at the back of the book.) “I wanted to photograph women that I knew and was inspired by, in the hopes of inspiring people to be self-confident with themselves,” Gorna muses.

Love can second that. “I’ve always felt like my butt is too big for the rest of my body,” the jewelry designer confesses with a laugh, “so it was interesting to be in a situation where you had to be proud of it.” During her portrait session, the two women climbed to the roof of Love’s studio for an iconic Manhattan shot with the Empire State Building—only to discover that a new high-rise had suddenly intervened. In the end, Love supplied the scenery, reclining like a modern odalisque in Levi’s she retrofitted with the denim company Re/Done.

Gorna’s eye for shape and volume isn’t lost on Joana Avillez, whose illustrations grace The New Yorker and Apartamento, and whose rear view sets orange-tab jeans against white flat file cabinets—an unconventional portrait of the artist. “She sees women’s bodies and the way she wants you to pose,” Avillez says of the photographer’s ability to capture light and stoke a sense of daring.

While the gaze is unmistakably female (at least on Gorna’s part; forthcoming copies at Karma, Saturdays, and Urban Outfitters will catch the eyes of both genders), the project is hardly restrained in sensuality. Between some sartorial choices—Edward Scissorhanded jeans; high-waisted, high-cuffed shorts—and a few provocative up-tipped angles, this is a bold celebration of the derriere. “I think we need more women telling other women that it’s sexy,” says Kirke, who embraced unvarnished nudity—“no flattering lighting, no flattering poses”—as Jessa on Girls this season. When she was growing up in the ’90s, “the message was that you shouldn’t have a fat butt, and now that’s completely changed, which is awesome,” Kirke adds, explaining that she’s surveying her curves in the mirror in her underwear as we speak. Now, “the world is very butt-centric.”

Indeed it is, between Beyoncé’s thigh-baring bodysuits, a coalition of Instagrammers with a certain selfie specialty, and a spate of glutes-minded workouts. Gorna gets it. “There are, like, five types of leg lifts that I do—they kick your butt so hard,” she says of her at-home routine, which is augmented by a fifth-floor walk-up. Also partial to an old-school leg lift: Daphne Javitch, another 100 Cheeks subject, who, as the founder of Ten Undies and now an integrative nutritionist, has given a lot of thought to body positivity. “When you go to a beach in Brazil”—where her husband is from—“old, young, tall, short, fat, thin women are all wearing the smallest bathing suits,” she says. “It’s empowering to see that when we look at each other, we’re not as critical as we are when we look at ourselves.”

Gorna is bringing that same spirit of openness to her assignments for the revamped Playboy. “I think it’s an interesting challenge, now that the nudity is presented in a totally different way. And I love that they are not obsessed with retouching,” she says, noting that her own photos, shot on her Contax G2, are largely presented as is, save for stray shadows and such. “It’s really exciting to have the body be the body.” We’ll toast—bottoms up—to that.

100 Cheeks, by Kava Gorna, $35; kavagorna.com

 

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