It was against this background that many legal difficulties vis a vis the nudist press were interposed. It would be absurd for an official nudist publication to proclaim the wholesome character of the nude form only to air-brush the genital organs merely to placate Victorian prudes. To retouch pictorial renditions of the body, then, would constitute a grave breach of professed nudist doctrine. Now, a photograph purports to be nothing more or less than a representation of the subject if the subject is clean and wholesome, its pictorial representation must of necessity be equally clean and wholesome.
Nor is any portion of the anatomy in of itself obscene. Is basic to nudist philosophy that the nude human body is not indecent per se.
The nudists’ right to illustrate their journal with unretouched photographs posed a very sticky ethical dilemma.
