Henry Butz

Art is the conveyance of intangible ideas and emotions through a tangible medium. The Nude has been a theme for art and photography ever since a caveman scribbled a doodle on the wall of a cave twenty-seven thousand years ago in the Vilhonneur grotto near Angoulême.

The Nude is a perfect vehicle for delivering an emotional response since few of us fail to react to a nude image. The challenge for the photographer is to sway the observer away from the pornographic to embrace the human form as art and a celebration of life, humanity, and sexuality.

My work explores the abstraction of the human form free from an environmental element. The curvilinear qualities of the body in direct contrast to the rectilinear flat, emptiness of black space provide tension between ground and foreground weaving form and cosmos together. Combined, they journey through contemplation, melting and resurfacing like the atmosphere in which they reside.

My aesthetic practice is a combination of minimalism with the philosophy of how the body 'thinks' through unmediated perception, rather than through reason and language. This approach of 'being' and 'nothingness' captivates the viewer through a primeval manifestation of their senses.

Influenced by the aesthetics of photographers such as Connie Imboden and Robert Mapplethorpe, my photography continues to be a process of deep introspection, clarifying and making visual the reality of my life and concerns at that particular moment in time and space whenever I press my shutter.

No digital post-process manipulation or distortion is performed. The images captured are identical to what is seen through my lense and what I desire to share with the viewer.

h.butz

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