Nude Photography in Black & White (online only)
Christophe Guye Galerie invites you on an intimate journey of discovery through the richness of contemporary nude photography. The exhibition, which can only be viewed online, is presented in two rooms, one showing nude photography from the male perspective and the other from the female perspective.
Nude photography has been a genre of fine art photography since the inception of the medium in the middle of the nineteenth century; depicting the nude human body with an emphasis on form, composition, and the emotional qualities evoked by such.
The naked human body holds bewildering cultural gravity. This visceral and vulnerable shell, of which there are no exact copies, simultaneously carries beauty, ugliness, desire, eroticism, purity, reverie, politics, taboos, myriad identities and endless contradictions.
The selected works range from nude photography in the classical style to new contemporary feminist works. The works by Emma Summerton are self-portraits. Instead of writing love letters, she decided to take photos of herself with an old Polaroid camera and send them to her boyfriend who lived on the other side of the world. ‘Le Baiser’ by Marianne Maric is a good example of how she deconstructs stereotypes to better re-use them, has fun playing with symbols to give them another twist. Brigitte Lustenberger's body of work 'A Gaze of One’s Own', titled in reference to Virginia Woolf’s essay 'A Room of One’s Own', is her first project explicitly grounded in her own experience and in which she is, as an artist, turning her gaze on her own intimacy and body. This project takes on issues linked to the artistic and cultural representations of the female body and to the reclaiming of the gaze, against the background of her own aging and changing body. René Groebli is a Swiss post-war photographer known for his ability to capture emotive moments through his intimate photographs and portraits. Groebli did not want to document: he wanted to inspire associations. Nobuyoshi Araki on the other hand defies the strict censorship laws in his native country rather than compromise his vision. Through striking color‚ emotive gazes and a delicate balance of beauty and violence‚ Araki seduces his viewers’ eyes in order to betray their morals.
Artists on view: Miles Aldridge, Nobuyoshi Araki, René Groebli, Brigitte Lustenberger, Marianne Marić, Lina Scheynius, Emma Summerton, Kazuna Taguchi, Albert Watson and Daisuke Yokota.
Although this is a virtual exhibition, most of the works can be viewed at the gallery. Please contact us in advance to make an appointment to view the works.
