Vanessa Omoregie’s camgirlproject examines the themes of our standards of beauty, censorship and how nudity is represented in art, while studying how a camgirl’s image is perceived on the internet. In this project, webcam girls replace classic female figures in the history of art. The women were invited to submit their photos imitating the poses of the nude women in the classical paintings of the great masters.

Vanessa decided to start this project when she noticed that one of the pictures she took resembled the renaissance painting Birth of Venus in the way she was positioned. She began to find more paintings, usually from the renaissance period, and compared them to girls’ selfies on the internet. This is how it all started.

The goal of this project was to express a curiosity about how women are represented in paintings and why they were painted this way. Vanessa wondered how someone would see themselves if they posed in these different positions.

In art these are the divine and very romantic visions of the beauty in women. Omoregie’s goal was to open a dialogue without judgement about women who choose to be in front of the camera. It is a question of trying to understand why these paintings of women don’t get the same reaction as photos of girls on the internet, she explained. Especially since these girls take the images of themselves. Under the cover of art, nudity and sex are much more accepted than voluntary exhibition on the internet.