untitled underwear project

I first saw an image from The Untitled Underwear Project on Instagram and fell instantly in love with what Josh Soskin was up to. I am still just as taken today in seeing the final product. I immediately hunted him down and insisted he let me be involved. Months later back in LA in the middle of summer I got to run around Venice in my underwear with a group of the most smiley people I’ve ever met, laughing, and drinking Tecate in the back of a pick-up. And you can see it on our faces, the relief, the joy, the sweet unencumberedness of our afternoon. Josh has spent the past few years capturing a variety of us humans in our underwear, to put it simply. It may seem like this is nothing out of the ordinary on your instagram feed, girls with knobby knees taking off their clothes for anyone with a camera now. But this is different. This is as the title suggests, a project, a project in the fullest sense of the word in that it has evolved and mutated over the years and reaches far beyond what I believe his original conception could have possibly been– it aptly bears the perfect subtitle, Portraits of an Unencumbered Life. Below is the final video, shot (I believe entirely) on 8mm film and then his wonderful thoughts on this project. Enjoy xoxo.  https://vimeo.com/123098875 Portraits of an Unencumbered Life “The Untitled Underwear Project is a photographic and cinematic exploration of the lives we lead in our underwear. It began simply, with the goal of capturing people in their more unguarded states in a way that felt real and intimate; moments normally reserved for your best friends, your lovers, your family.  I wanted the photos to be beautiful but also to eschew strictly traditional concepts of beauty, to find subjects spanning diverse ranges of age, race and gender.   I thought it would take a few months. It turned into a few years. As time went on it evolved and grew and what I hope it’s become is a celebration of humanity. Everything that being half-naked implies — the liberating, the banal, the romantic, the solitary, the sexy, the domestic, the moments we live for and the details in between. “ -Josh Soskin