As we reported earlier in the year, Ciara made headlines by posing nude for Vibe Magazine.
Now, the singer is out to clarify that she was not actually nude, as
the photographs would suggest. Instead, she is now saying that the
photographs are misleading.
“I think, at this point, I’d rather just be quiet about things
such as that but I definitely want to make it clear that I was going in
to do something artistic, and I was upset that when I saw the photos,
everything was gone,” she told MTV. “It’s very, very upsetting and somewhat misleading.”
She added that her initial idea was not simply show off her body, but that it was meant as an “artistic expression.”
“I walked into the Vibe photo shoot very excited about making
an artistic expression, and when I saw the photos, I was a little
bothered because the photos appear as if I was nude, and I wasn’t nude.
I reached out to [Editor-in-Chief Danyel Smith] — I sent her a letter — and I was a little
upset, too, in the fact that she didn’t respond to me, and that
happened prior to me reading her quote on the Internet. That definitely
bothered me, just because of the fact that I wasn’t nude. I walked into
the photo shoot to do an artistic photo shoot, so I was excited about
that. I just didn’t like the fact that I saw the picture and now, stuff
is gone.”
Danyel Smith, Editor In Chief of Vibe Magazine
claims this is untrue and has fired back by saying she wanted to post
the untouched version of the photographs to prove the point.
“I’m actually really sad,” Smith told New York’s KISS FM. “Almost any photo you see on the cover of Vibe
or any magazine is airbrushed [to some degree]. What I was thinking of
doing, actually, was releasing the untouched photos [on Vibe‘s] Web
site, so people can see what the hullabaloo is all about. I have so
much respect for Ciara, and Ciara
was so happy when she pitched this idea to us, and the photos are
actually striking and beautiful. It was pitched to me in a way that it
was time [for her] to grow up and be beautiful and be free and be all
the things she wanted to be.”
This did not deter Ciara from insisting that she was not fully nude for the shoot.
“I know what was there, I know what was taken, and I know what
was done. And then to look at the book and go, ‘It’s gone’ — it was
just very upsetting to me.”
