Photographer Jordan Matter has managed to convince more than 100 women to pose topless on the streets of New York City.
Matter was inspired to undertake to project, called Uncovered and compiled into a book of the same name, by the 'Nipplegate' scandal of 2009 involving Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake.
'There was so much hoopla around it and I got to thinking about our culture of covering up. In New York, it's legal for a woman to be topless in public — so I decided to document what happens when a woman bares her breasts,' he told Cosmopolitan.
Over time, though, Matter found his project became much less political and much more about the individual women he was photographing.
'The photo subjects found the option of not covering up to be incredibly liberating,' he says, describing how women became 'euphoric' after their photoshoots.
Matter's subjects are all volunteers from different socio-economic backgrounds, of different ages and of diverse body shapes.
In order to be photographed so publicly, Matter's subjects had to confront their own feelings about their bodies - shame and inadequecy chief among them.
And many found that once they had, feelings of freedom and self-acceptance were an unexpected and life-changing result.
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