Fully Exposed

A tall, slender woman leans forward and firmly grasps the metal attachment on the canister of a vacuum cleaner with both hands. She places the attachment underneath a small, rectangular table, sucking up whatever dust remains on the gleaming tile floor.\nThis description could conjure up images of a Dirt Devil advertisement if it were not for one element: Besides a pair of high heels and a garter belt to hold up her sheer stockings, the woman is entirely nude. \nThe image is instead a photograph titled "Bustduster," shot by Washington, D.C.-based photographer Joseph Virgilio. It is one of 119 contemporary prints currently on display in the exhibition "Expressive Bodies: Contemporary Art Photography from The Kinsey Institute" at the SoFA Gallery until Jan. 27. \nClaude Cookman, associate professor in the School of Journalism and co-curator of the exhibition, said visitors can look for photographs emphasizing the aesthetic beauty of the human body, along with those containing political messages and humor.\n"Many of the images have political messages to them about gender, about sexual orientation, about stereotypes," Cookman said. "I hope that it will cause everybody who goes to reexamine some of their ideas about sexuality, to perhaps see their own sexuality through a different set of eyes." \nThe exhibition displays images from many different photographers, ranging from IU graduate student Jordan Tate to the late fashion and celebrity portrait artist Herb Ritts.\n"It's quite a range of work in terms of artists' experience," said Catherine Johnson-Roehr, curator of arts, artifacts and photographs at the Kinsey Institute and co-curator of Expressive Bodies. "You can be looking at a work by an artist that's just starting out next to one by a famous professional."\nDeciding to display the exhibition served as a way to expand the photography collection at the institute, which does not purchase its artwork but relies on donations.\n"We use the exhibition as an opportunity to write to a lot of art photographers and ask them to contribute images to the collection that would also go in the exhibition," Cookman said. \nThe exhibition is being held at the SoFA Gallery due to the number of photographs on display. While the institute regularly exhibits artwork, Expressive Bodies needed a larger venue to show all the images in the exhibition.\n"I knew they were trying to build their collection," said Betsy Stirratt, director of the SoFA Gallery. "We were happy to work with them on it."\nCookman will present a lecture on the exhibition called "Expressive Bodies: Photographic Artists Exploring Human Sexuality" before Expressive Bodies' opening reception on Friday.\n"I'm going to talk about some of the images in the collection and the way that I see them as a historian of photography, but also as someone who has been fortunate to get paid to look at photographs for over 35 years," Cookman said.\nTate will hold a signing for his new book "The Dictionary of Sexual Euphemisms" during the reception. For more information on the exhibition, contact the SoFA Gallery at (812) 855-8490.