THE MALE NUDE has been a staple of photography since shortly after the invention of cameras and film over a century and a half ago, although for much of that time it was an underground staple owing to various conservative, sexophobic and homophobic cultural forces unwilling to view it as anything but pornography. It has a long history as a form of high art, however, running at least from the work of German photographer Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden in Sicily and American artist Thomas Eakins at the turn of the last century to the likes of photographers Bruce Weber and John Dugdale today. To this list should be added the work of New York City-based photographer and sculptor Robert Irwin, whose photographic studies, mostly but not exclusively of men, are spectacular contributions to the art of the male nude. As one commentator put it when reviewing a 1999 show of Irwin’s photography in Costa Rica, his “style places his images in a surreal atmosphere that rejects the borders of realism, which until now have been a limitation of the typical male nude image, by proposing a creative new twist.”
That “twist” involves Irwin’s use of time-lapse photography and manipulation of the photographic emulsion in the development of the film to produce portraits that intersect with several artistic genres: most obviously physique photography, but also sculpture, choreography, mime, impressionist painting, and even in a way cubism. They introduce movement and three dimensions into what most people would consider a static, two-dimensional framework. And they record some elemental emotions that one might think are altogether outside the range of what is essentially studio photography.
The beautiful physiques are reminiscent of the work of photographer George Platt Lynes, the dynamic images of Italian Futurist Umberto Boccioni’s sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space. The graceful movements of the models bring to mind Rudolf Nureyev’s dancing at the peak of his career, and they speak through an eloquent silence that connects them to the mime artistry of Marcel Marceau or Jean-Louis Barrault. The dreamy atmosphere in many of Irwin’s works is redolent of Monet’s landscapes, while the representation of a single figure simultaneously from several points of view echoes the cubist art of Picasso or Braque. Irwin may be using a camera to produce these images, but the results burst the usual boundaries of photography. And while his portraits may remind us of other artists’ work, they provide their own unique vision of the world. Irwin is a mature artist who has fully digested his influences.
Given the boundary-transgressing nature of Irwin’s photographic images, it will come as no surprise that he arrived at them via a different medium. “I started the photography as a documentary form of archiving my sculpture,” he told me in an interview for an article several years ago. “Then I became interested in photographing live models. Originally I thought of them as sculpture, placed the men on pedestals, and played with the lighting to enhance the three-dimensionality of the images. Later I decided there was a certain kind of three-dimensional movement I wasn’t capturing in these still photos, and I started using time lapse photography.”
In his sculpture Irwin likes to work with stones “that in their rough form have some kind of energy or movement I respond to.” In his portraits, he looks for a starting point or idea. “We all give off nonverbal messages to the world just by the way we move,” he observed. “That’s what I’m looking for in each of my models—a gesture that captures the essence of the person. It’s like a signature, unique.”
Sometimes he choreographs the image: “I might tell the model something like ‘Start here, do this for two seconds, then move there and hold for two seconds, twist down in that direction, then hold for two more seconds.’” Other times his models speak—nonverbally—well enough themselves to require no prompting.
What the ultimate result will be is not always clear to Irwin at the start of this process. But what is clear when he’s done is that the printed images pulsate with energy and movement—and with a sense of meaning captured through the gestures of the models. Ecstasy, joy, pain, wonder, resignation: you name the emotion, and more than likely you can find it in at least one of Robert Irwin’s portraits.
In my interview with him, I asked Irwin to define his aims as a photographer. His reply: “My work is life-affirming. It celebrates the beauty and sensuality of the naked human body as an art form. Eroticism, sensuality, beauty—when they come together in my work, I find it very, very exciting. I see the physique of the model as a backdrop. What is the physique doing? What do the gestures mean? Part of the sensuality and eroticism for me comes from the movements and gestures of the person I’m photographing.”
Beauty, gestures, meaning. In our contemporary culture, where shock artists like Damien Hirst and his dead tiger sharks floating in tanks of preservative liquid often seem to be the standard of success, using terms like this may seem naïve, even quaint. Yet in this postmodern world we inhabit, where, culturally speaking, just about anything goes and virtually nothing remains of the old certainties in defining what is art, one has to wonder. Art is one of the touchstones by which we discover what it means to be human. Dead sharks no doubt have their own æsthetic appeal. But it is more likely life-affirming art like that by Robert Irwin to which we will turn when we wish to explore and reaffirm our humanity.
Lester Strong writes on literature, history, and art for a number of publications.
