Direct full frontal nudity is so common on the web and in art that it has become cliche´and easy to dismiss as crude, titillating or exploitive. This is one reason I utilize obscuring or distorted reflective surfaces in depicting the nude. The human body in art is striking and controversial; I want my work to carry all of the power of the nude human body, but that power should drive conversations about the struggle and exertion of being, rather than dominating the discussion by its presence alone. By taking out the expected, either through abstraction, distortion or simply avoiding a direct full on gaze, we gain a chance to examine and reconsider the body without all of the baggage that comes with explicit nudity.
For a long time I have shied away from working with multiple models in a single shoot, especially couples, because it is often a vehicle for introducing sexual overtones into art nudes and that was simply not where I wanted my work to go. That changed recently when I started working with a wonderful pair of dancers. I had worked singly with each of them (posted here) and the images were quite interesting, but I did not expect just how powerful the results of their interaction would be. Another person provided a force for the model to interact with and became a surface for them to work off of. This is just the first of several images from that session, but the results were really stunning! There is so much dynamic motion and flow, it feels as if her body is being propelled in a whirlwind of supernatural spirits driven aloft by some unseen current.