Three advertisements on Maarktplaats. Each one consists of a brief and dry description of the 2nd hand product for sale (state and technical specifications) and three photos of the product with a nacked or semi-nacked woman.

The products are:

Sex sells. Sex and nudity are constantly used in advertising to draw attention to a particular product in order to sell it. Advertisers hope that unconciously, some of the sex-apil or glamour from the advertisements they use, will get attached to the brand and to the image of the product in the consummer's mind.

Flesh on display. We see this adds everywhere: in tv, cinemas, huge adds boards, magazines... They also teach us about stereotypes, rolls and beauty standards. This use of sex and nudity in adds can go from extremely subtile and suggestive to highly explicit (lately even reminding us to pornography). The objectification of the body can put most of the average women/men into a lot of stress because of the high expectations in our physical aspect. This objectification also shapes our concept and image of how a perfect body should look like and this images tend to go to unrealistic photoshoped fake bodies what creates even more frustration in the impossibility of reaching that goal for any normal person.

I chosed to make this work on Marktplaats because marktplaats and ebay are from the few places where commercial companies still didn't put their hands on. One of the reasons is that originaly this webpages were made to sell second hand products. If an individual is selling an object, instead of a big company selling a product, the individual will put less effort or no effort at all in marketing and in trying to decorate the product, even less in creating an image or a lifestile for a brand. Therefore the photos of the products that we find in Marktplaats are much more honest and home made, where the seller will show the product in a completely dry and practical way in order to sell it.

If I shoot photos trying to use my flesh to sell a product but I use them to sell second hand products and do it in Marktplaats, the objectification of the body will get amplified as we took this images (add board stile) out of context. What is gonna happen? Maybe the advertisements in Marktplaats will get removed immediately, maybe the prize of the products will go really high or stay really low (as it will be a bid), maybe the photos makes that the adds will have a lot of visitors in a short period of time...