UN]VEILED (Mathilde)

Meeting new people is the greatest part of being a working photographer in New York. I’m fortunate to work with clients and talented creatives across industries, but by far the most enjoyable projects are purely artistic collaborations with other artists. Mathilde is not only professional and an outstanding figure model, but an artist with an artist’s soul.

Mathilde is an Artist, professional model, Agency Founder, and the mind behind SOLA, an upcoming photo exhibition in Paris. She’s written extensively about her philosophy of Female Beauty and Empowering Women on the Exhibit’s Project Page.

It goes without saying that figure model and art-nude are misunderstood and often hijacked art forms. There is a dance around, and sometimes with, explicitly erotic concepts, and that dance requires clarity and intention. Modeling nude is ultimate reclamation of power and bodily autonomy, and as Mathilde frames it to me “Doing this removes the ability for people who have seen my body or have taken pictures of me without my consent to have any power over me.” That kind of mindset takes bravery.

For this shoot, I set out to create something natural, statuesque, and ethereal. In preparation for this shoot, I started by channeling references from some of my all-time favorite figure photographers and iconic art prints of the past 70 years. Highlights from the resulting set and images are shared here, and were taken with a mix of my perennial favorite X-Ray and IR film stocks, instant film, and high sensitivity digital cameras.

VEILD

Images that fall in and out of focus. Thin fabrics and a mixture of harsh & diffuse lights.

NOIR

High-contrast images with predominantly dark lighting. Shadows are embraced instead of eliminated.

UNVEILED

Art-Nude on multiple cameras and formats

FIGURE

Portraits utilizing X-Ray film, which has a tendency to make skin feel like porcelain and marble. Highly noticeable grain

BODYSCAPE

Viewing the body as terrain.