Tomas Rucker : Nudes on the Rocks

I've posted works by Tomas Rucker in the past and his photographs of nudes are balanced finely on the line between erotic photos and fine art photography. He has an excellent web site of black and white photos and handmade Knives he designs himself. I'll let the viewer decide....

Barbara Cole: Finale (White Noise Series) 2006

Barbara Cole: Counterpoint (White Noise Series) 2006

"While I have been creating photographic artwork since 1983, it has only been since 2002 that I have been intrigued by the possibilities of photographing people under water. Water, for me, becomes a natural lens that refocuses and reinterprets the painterly aesthetic. Water allows me to move the human figure in unconventional ways. Photography affords me the ability to play with notions of time and place. Seeing through water, rather than through air, makes me re-envision the nature of my relationship to my surroundings. I have become absorbed by the way water heightens and mythologizes human action and experience. White NOise is a collection of 10 Still images and 10 Lenticular images, all approximately 30 x 40 inches, which have been taken underwater. Here, the immersion experiences required in my earlier works (Underworld) are now combined with an attempt to extrapolate from the watery matrix in which they begin, a physical expression of the experience of selfhood. The White NOise works attempt to show us simultaneously the inside and the outside of the human act and its possible meanings." 
                                     - Barbara Cole

Barbara Cole: Melody (White Noise Series) 2006

Mucking Around

Miru Kim is an artist, photographer and illustrator who has explored, documented, and photographed urban settings such as abandoned subway stations, tunnels, the Croton aqueduct, Paris catacombs, factories, hospitals, and shipyards. Kim's Naked City Spleen series of photographs include images of herself nude in these settings.

For her new series, called The Pig That Therefore I Am, she has visited industrial piggeries and immersed herself amongst the pigs. the images are startling and unsettling for a number of reasons. 

A collection of photographs that explores the transferring qualities of skin and the separation between humans and animals plays with René Descartes' supposition, 'I think therefore I am'. The collection of provocative images are guaranteed to get you thinking as well.
Burn brightly, Pete.

Edward Weston: Nude (1925)

Howard Schatz: Liquid Light (2010)

A recent image from one of my favourite photogarphers, Howard Schatz from his recent Liquid Light series of last year. It seemed appropriate to put him up alongside Weston that I've been running this week on the blog. Schatz plays with colour in his work over the last 20 years but is comparable to Weston's B&W work as the viewer has to reassemble the Nude over the abstracted image the photographer leaves us to view:

Edward Weston: Nude (1934)

Edward Weston: 2 forms - Nude (1925) Pepper (1930)

Fernando Botero: The Dream (1976)

Fernando Botero: The Letter (1976)

Fernando Botero: Ballerina Asquadra (2007)

Fernando Botero: Los Amantes (1968)

Fernando Botero: Rapto de Europa

Thomas Rucker - Nudes & The Landscape

Intimacy

Adam & Eve - Albrecht Durer

I've been thinking lately about what intimacy is and how I define it - and I've come down to the basic idea of intimacy = nakedness. My buddy Chris Hobart once did a one-man show called "Naked" where he did an emotional strip on stage, revealing all the hidden parts of himself, ending up "nude" on stage as he disrobed before the audience.

If the first three chapters of the Torah tell us anything, its about our response to being found out, revealing things about ourselves we want hidden from others or our God(s). When we're naked with someone, there's a level of intimacy and familiarity that goes hand in hand with trust... and that can also mean there are things that we don't want seen.

Reclining Nude - Lucien Freud

As a painter, I've spent hours of my life with nude models of all shapes and sizes and ages ("like meat to a butcher"), but with all of them there has to be a level of trust to enable the degree of intimacy where you scrutinize someone's nakedness for a prolonged period.

Painter Lucien Freud's nudes are often cited as being too revealing - exposing too much on canvas. Certainly the poses are provocative and genitals are evident/ emphasised. But Freud's work is also about nakedness on another level - intimacy and the trust between model and painter as we the viewers are shifted into that unique intimate space of trust. When you look at a Freud painting, often the models are sleeping - so complete is their trust and sense of security that they feel they can be totally relaxed under the painter's gaze.

I had a friend who modeled nude for the art college I attended in the 80s and we both knew it would happen one day where we would end up in an unusual situation seeing each other in a way we never expected to. When it happened, the awkwardness we expected wasn't there - we had a level of trust between each other that existed over a period of years and allowed us to continue on past what potentially could have been embarrassing.

Recently I wrote about haircuts and the intimacy of that experience and a friend said she knew what I was talking about. Perhaps we're all a little surprised when we expose ourself a little more to a stranger - hoping we won't be laughed at or criticised or judged and rejected. When we're naked with a lover or friends, we're most vulnerable and revealing all with great risks involved. We shouldn't be surprised at awkwardness or hesitancy. So if revelations here are too revealing and I show you too much, I make no apology.  I just want a little bit of intimacy... don't we all?

Burn brightly, Pete

Reframe

"Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked..."

Back to the framers today with 2 very different works of my own again - these are a little risque, a little religious. I'm planning on matting these two works and framing them in metallic silver frames before passing them on as gifts.There was a third in the series which was an apple and snakeskin boots but I've removed it from the equation and gone with just the snakes and nudes. The snake feels a little rough and underdone and possibly I've over-oiled the nude. I've never really used watercolours in the traditional method and these two works include some gouache to cover some of the blemishes on the white.

I have been thinking of doing some life classes out at Samford with a mate, Ross Clark, as the cost of hiring a model is prohibitive and finding someone to pose these days is not an easy task. Ross has been in my ear for a while to attend the sessions with him and they have both male and female models at good rates. 


I'm hopeful that this year I can shift my inner view to an outward one and make my energies productive in the various artforms I try to engage in. This Term is my "painting term" at school for Year 9s & 10s so it makes good sense to try and push myself  a little harder and develop my own painting skills a little more (though probably not with nudes).


Burn brightly, Pete