16 January 2013

The portraitist of bodies

One can look at the same object and perceive it in different ways, have countless varied sensations, connections with past situations, old emotions or maybe bad memories. The same happens when looking at an art photograph.

Can we feel something or have a strong impact at first sight?
And if not, what remains in the photo?

Art? Just another naked woman?
Perhaps the result of a click at the right moment, perfectly produced in its composition or post production, endlessly retouched with photo­shop, and a naked woman expressing with her face nothing but an empty soul in a naked body.

For sure some objectivity is necessary sometimes, but many issues also should be accompanied by some subjectivity.

In the case of contem­porary photography we must look with four eyes, so to say. The involution that photography suffered, left a new generation of those who call themselves "photographers" and try to transform a spontaneous click into an artistic photo by using some special effects by clicking a photoshop script.

My question is clear: What do you see when you look at a nude photograph? The first is the girl in question, that body that evokes sensuality, awakens your passions or your desires. Women want...
to have a similar body, and on the other hand men want to own it. But besides of that, can the general audience recognize the photographic work itself?

These are questions that surely will pop up during the career of most photographers in the field of nude photography. Sometimes it seems that all the effort taken on the side of the one who has taken the photo is in vain. The audience admires only the girl, her perfect ass, her tits or whatever calls attention depending on personal tastes. There are only few, but surely some, who look beyond an image. These are those who observe and put the focus directly on what really makes the photograph. A natural, very well used light, the right moment in which this body turns into part of the image, merged in the composition. Some are able to make a broad overview, enjoy the photograph and feel the moment in their hearts that connects them with something deep inside of their feelings.

Art nude at night in front of Santa Maria del Mar, Barcelona. By Daniel Bauer.

What should you feel when viewing art? My answer would be: Just feel something! Art is a way to convey what we have inside using photography, painting, sculpture, music and so on. And if you do not find more than a banal beauty in a nude photograph,  then maybe it is no more than that, the photographer did not mean to tell anything, just wanted to take a picture. There are so many that say what is art and what is not, assuming that we must adjust to their tastes, watching a painting and say: wow, amazing work! Without thinking for ourselves, without paying attention to the lack of sensitivity that the author had when creating his perfect, and yes, yet so empty work.

A photographer of nudes could consider himself a portraitist of bodies. In my case, with emphasis on the sexuality of the female body which by nature is a great mystery.

What do you think? Look closely!
Somehow the erotic art is committed in revealing the great enigma of each model. They are all different, in various stages of their sexuality, about to discover it, on the way to enjoy it, or perhaps on the point of the greatest culmination of their sex life.

These details can also be found in my images, where I capture women with the desire they have to show to the world how beautiful female eroticism can be.

Just staring sometimes is not enough to really feel. Seeing is also a sense that we often use to adulterate. We think before we look closely, and perhaps there lies the error. The prejudices that confront us facing the nude prevents that we can meet with art. Without complete freedom we lose what the art of the nude is able to communicate.

Nude photography is trying to portray feelings of pleasure, desire, innocence, feminine power, and maybe to send a message through pure artistic language...

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