Business professional and business casual are terms you're familiar with if you’ve ever been to an info session, interview, internship or job anything—basically if you're past freshman year at Penn. The second word of each phrase is the indentifier, dictating whether a tie and/or blazer are necessary. The first mandates, more often than not, a loss of childhood.
In 2013, Sarah Meyohas added a new dress code for aspiring professionals: business nude.
On her last day of classes, the then–Huntsman student released her series of photographs of classmate Danielle posing nude in Huntsman Hall. The photographs, taken for a class project, became available for purchase as postcards via her website. Within 24 hours the site had more than 6,300 visitors, and that number rose to more 15,000 in just a few days. While she expected people to look at the Business Nude photographs, the scale took her by surprise—“it was more powerful than pictures on the wall.” To work on a digital platform necessitates a relinquishment of control, the images are subject to the unquantifiable power of the internet and its users.
The photographs discuss the exchange of the human body. Through the powerful images, that currency is feminized. For Penn students the work presents a familiar space that's loaded with connotations. Meanwhile, outside of Penn, the setting is simply a random corporate space. The model is sexualized, exposed and commodified. When talking about the series, Meyohas said, “There is push and pull between feminism and not.”
While she used to say her work wasn’t autobiographical, that's not longer the case. As a female artist interested in finance, the work is unavoidably personal. Many of her other series are similarly centered on economies. For example, in "Gold Glitched," she explores the symbolic economy of gold.
Similarly, her venture BitchCoin turns her art into investment. Mirroring the model of Bit-Coin, BitchCoin allows investors to purchase 25 square inches of photographic print for one BitchCoin. The idea is that, as the value of Sarah's work increases, so will the value of the BitchCoin.
Surprisingly, the photographs received little resistance—both in production and distribution. They were shot for a project for Gabriel Martinez’s Body and Photography class during Meyohas’ junior spring semester. The first shots were taken at 5am due to apprehension. The artist and model simply walked in past the security guards (the model wearing only a trench coat). The artist set up the lights in the forum. The model disrobed. The artist snapped. Easy.
The simplicity of it all encouraged them to take more photographs over the course of two days, including shooting on the 8th floor at 2pm. It was then that someone did walk in. But after being told it was for a photography project they left without issue.
Meyohas said her favorite reactions to the project were that both Inge Herman, Executive Director of the Huntsman Program, and Janice Bellace, professor of legal studies and management, loved it. Furthermore, to this day, a group of guys from the Huntsman Program have the postcards on their refrigerator.
Meyohas began to focus more on her artwork; she cites declining an OCR internship to focus on her art as a turning point. After leaving Penn, Meyohas joined the MFA program at Yale, a decision greatly influenced by her mentor Terry Adkins. Adkins was a well–loved professor and renowned artist and musician who passed away in February of 2014.
She took a risk—a concept that's all too rare at Penn—and it paid off. Perhaps more Penn students should consider forgoing business formal and business casual in favor of business nude.
