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...

Making love with models

Provocative title, isn't it? And yes, it's true: I do make love with my models! Although I stay dressed, keep physical distance and don't touch.

If this sounds like a contradiction to you, you have simply mistaken love for sex. But today I am not talking about sex, even though I've chosen the title deliberately, of course, to mislead you a little bit and to gain your attention.

handcuffed on the carpet - by Daniel Bauer

My models, clients and colleagues may forgive me for using the example of a cookbook to better explain to what I am referring. As you know for sure, most of the photos in cookbooks do not at all arouse appetite. Others make your mouth waters.

Why? Well, the producer of the former simply took photos of meat, vegetable, fruit, sauces... while the artist of the latter was ravished by his presentation. He virtually ate the menu with his camera. He scented the odor with his flashes, tasted the savor with his lenses. The image that is so appetizing was taken with love. Love for his profession. Love for the object of his work.

studio nude by Daniel Bauer

Translated into nude photography, the former photographs bodies and faces, maybe even very beautiful ones, maybe even with professional lighting, correct angles and in focus, but his images will show nothing but flesh. This is what I call pOrn, regardless of hidden or explicitly shown nipples or pussies.

The latter loves his model with his camera, he caresses her with the light, he kisses her with the angles he chooses and adores her, when he releases the shutter.

As with any artist, my profession is my passion and my images are the the fruit of my love for what I do and what I see.

With my photographic art I want to portray the full joy of female sensuality and sexuality. I use eroticism in its original form, without censorship, open, you may say horny, but I don't encourage women to imitate a state of sexual arousal or to force themselves into excitement without reason. I try to create a relaxed atmosphere where she can simply be herself, feel save and appreciated for what and how she is. I want her to feel beautiful, feminine, tempting and attractive, because she is as she is, and I want her to feel that she is perfect, without any need to follow stereotypical ideals of beauty.

Just like an enamored lover looks at her thru rose-colored glasses, I look at her thru my view-finder and see her personal, own beauty, the special and unique in her. Via my lens I try to get in contact with her, to feel her, and to capture the vibrations and emotions in an image. Every woman who gets naked in front of my camera can be assured that she'll receive my full attention, love and understanding. With every click of my camera I ennoble, glamorize and let her feel touched without bodily contact, experiencing the moment and being part of an act of love.

sensual view, by Daniel Bauer

With my artistic photography I try to transform eroticism and sensuality into something pure and holy, worthy to be appreciated. In the composition of my photos you can see genuine moments, a woman in a state of pleasure without having to pretend or exaggerate anything. Although many of my photos show "everything" I believe that they distinguish expressly from the vulgar and describe a woman as a natural, adorable human being, pure in all her parts, including the origin of the world.

To search the particular in every model, feel and appreciate what we have, is the concept of my artistic nude photography. Because for me there is only one way to do things, you believe it or not, but it's all about showing the truth.
With love.

(This text was strongly inspired by an article my ex-love Yana once wrote about my work but regrettably never published. It was called "El Amante Perfecto" and some of the phrases used here I have impudently stolen from her draft.)

Visual language

I am Swiss. I speak German, a little bit french, just enough to seduce a woman, and the kind of minimal English, limited, as you are just about to read it.

streets of Barcelona,
seen by Daniel Bauer

When I first arrived to Barcelona I couldn't even say if somebody was talking Italian or Spanish. I had taken an intensive Spanish course but in the end I didn't know much more than the common necessary words like "hello", "thanks" and "please get naked".

Spanish is a very beautiful language, especially if you don't understand what people are talking, but just hear the Latin melody. Although from the same linguistic roots like french, many words are very different. More than once I asked a model to please turn her tits to the other side. Not because I wanted her to perform an anatomic feat but simply because I used the french word "tête" for head, which in Spanish sounds like "teta" - tit.

The language really offers a lot to laugh. Imagine that the only difference between chicken-meat and a dick is that the chicken ends with an "o" (pollo) while the dick ends with an "a" (polla). I never ordered a "dick sandwich" (bocadillo de polla), not because I am so very original that I never use old, fucked-up jokes, but rather because during more than 20 years I have been a strict vegetarian and so simply didn't have the chance to apply this gag of Spanish greenhorns. However, during a long time reading "pollo" on an restaurants menu made me think about my "polla" and gave me the opportunity to turn the conversation to the respective topic...

As mentioned before, I am Swiss. Always on time like my Omega watch. And loving precision. Although misunderstandings can be fun and sometimes, under optimal circumstances, even lead directly to where communication happens on a more unconscious, harmonious base where nobody cares about the difference between "ah"s and "oh"s, in most parts of my life I like communication to be precise, clear without ambiguity, direct, unmistakable. I don't like blabla and small talk.

woman enjoying herself on the carpet of Daniel Bauer's studio in Barcelona

The same applies to visual language. There is a flood of vacuous images, copies of copies of a once maybe original idea, old jokes (dick-sandwiches), photoshopped to death, like a text of beautiful words saying precisely: nothing.

An image says more than a thousand words, they say. But what if those thousand words are completely meaningless?

Just the same as in literature where there are great writers whose texts are so strong that they affect you just as if you actually would live the described situation, there are photographers whose work already on first sight, even more after lingering over it for a moment, transmit a message and let you be immersed in the other world the artist opens for you.

I've got something to say!
Yana by Daniel Bauer

But because images talk to the beholder just like words to the reader, the given information might be as precise as possible, but of course there will always be many, if not the majority, who don't understand or misunderstand the message. And just like the jovial guy whose empty hahaha-hihihi-jokes attracts much more in a party than the person who has to say something profound, original and therefore always controversial, the easy to understand image, already seen in countless versions, will have much more likes on facebook than a true piece of art. In a visual world, where choosing the right instagram app is considered as being creative, the crowd will only "like" it after that some "important" people have repeated many times that this is important artwork. They "like" it not because they really like or even understand it, but because they don't have their own criteria and so simply like what everybody likes.

Don't get me wrong: I love my work, but I don't want to put my skills not even into proximity of the mastery of the great photographers of the past and the present. But my goal is to create art images with a clear, direct and unambiguous expression. As an artist I am on a constant search for perfection, thus breaking rules and less and less considering what generally is seen as good, correct, appropriate.

May you like it or not: it's what I have to say.

Reflect what I want, not what I am

What do you see in the mirror?

For girls the mirror is our best and worst enemy. There are those glorious days where it isn't possible that something goes wrong, and every little reflection we find in the street is like a ray of light that highlights the very best of our figure. The bum seems rounder, the tits, though not very large, are shaped so harmoniously that it is inevitable to feel pride, and the silky hair is finely molded by the wind. Everything is perfect. Overflowing with sensuality and self-assuredness gained from what we have seen in the mirror before leaving home, in those days, we are joyous goddesses, delighted to have the body that nature gave us.

But that does not perpetuate. The days are short and the nights sometimes get a bit long. The next day we return with the same enthusiasm to what yesterday was our best friend, but it has lost interest. What it showed to us as something beautiful yesterday, today turns into a visual attrition of contradictory expressions. The skin blemishes are so very present that you even can't see the face just as it really is, but as a set of black dots, some pimples and a pair of dark circles around the eyes. The bum fallen down, the boobs flabby, and you could even say with some extra kilos. Entirely shabby. How can one be plagued by such a betrayal of an object of which we believe it was objective when it showed us something pretty, but then again it also turns to be a sicko that shows us other realities?

Each nude photograph bears a date of packing. The day of the session. When this woman had one of her most beautiful moments she let a photographer freeze it. An image that might travel the world and many people can admire it as a place of discovery of incomparable beauty. In 20 years this same girl, now more women, with other shapes and with a different beauty than in her youth, she'll say proudly that once she had the luck to be a nude model and to see herself like she never saw herself in front of her friend/enemy, the mirror.

Nude photography as we see it on guapamania.com does not transform women into something more beautiful than what they already are. But with light, the angles and poses it shows the particular wonder of each of them. Without changing them, drawing them, color them or exaggerate them. With the same sense of simplicity that shows itself in the morning when waking up, with her personal gestures and movements. To leave her intact just as she is in the view of everybody.

What do you think?

Are you beautiful?

This is a beautiful world, isn't it? Many of us search natural landscapes on our travels or in our leisure time and, back home, proudly present the photographs of these intact miracles of nature where man not yet has applied its corrections: wild woods, rivers in their natural beds, unmaintained lonely beaches... We love nature as is and sometimes get melancholic, sitting in our well uncluttered offices behind clean double glazed windows, looking at perfectly straight streets and thinking about the fresh air out there in the wild, the roughness we felt on our feet when walking barefooted, the liberating vibrations that made us feel complete and happy because we left the perfectly organized and optimized technical world for a while. It's beautiful.

artistic nude of real people
by Andreu Revilla

But when it comes to photography of people, where is our love for the beauty of nature? Have you recently seen a nude woman, a naked men, that was not „optimized“ by photoshop, that hasn't shaved all the body hair, was made up and styled for hours, who posed in a natural way without taking very artificial postures? And, if you look into the mirror – honestly: don't you want, at least a little bit, to be like those „perfect ideals“ you see all the time on magazine covers, in TV, commercials?

In these times of factitiousness it takes quite some courage to be a photographer who takes photos or human beings simply and just as they are. Andreu Revilla is one of them. Looking at his artistic nude photographs of normal people, detecting their personal, original beauty, is like a walk thru an unordered valley in the mountains. It could make you discover that women and men indeed are beautiful beings.

Maybe next time you look in the mirror you'll think: yes, I am beautiful, too! Give it a try.

Free entrance to Hell

nude dancer on the terrace

Here you'll find available all the forbidden fruits that take you straight to hell. Implicit temptations in artistic nude photography. We do not advertise girls nor do we exhibit their bodies as a showcase. We focus on photography of naked bodies and they participate as main element. But like just a few others, this space will be your personal journey to your most hidden and devilish instincts. We realize your visual dreams. Each photograph and history that accompanies it, will serve as a ladder to climb more and more up to your deepest desires.

We give you a ticket that ensures your entry to hell. Want to get on this train with us?

Then go ahead!

(photo taken from nude dancer on the terrace on guapamania.com)