Inside the erotic world of David Lynch’s book of nudes
“I like to photograph naked women. The infinite variety of the human body is fascinating: it is amazing and magic to see how different women are.”― David Lynch.
Years after the exhibition The Air Is on Fire, which unveiled David Lynch’s photographic and painting work, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain published a book featuring more than a hundred black-and-white and colour images of feminine nudes realised by David Lynch.
The erotically-charged photographs merge with the abstract and offer kaleidoscopic visions of the woman. They attest to David Lynch’s fascination with the infinite variety of the human body while being in line with his cinematographic work. “I like to photograph naked women… It is amazing and magic to see how different [they] are,” Lynch previously said in a quote accompanying the book’s launch.
The director added: “The infinite variety of the human body is fascinating: it is amazing and magic to see how different women are.”
“Featuring more than one hundred black-and-white and colour images, many of them published for the first time, of feminine nudes captured by the iconic artist, these erotically charged photographs are close to abstraction, offering kaleidoscopic visions of the woman and attesting to David Lynch’s fascination with the infinite variety of the human body while also reminiscent of his cinematographic work. 125 photographs in black-and-white and colour,” the book synopsis reads.
The 240-page book offers a glimpse into Lynch’s perspective on the female body, a master class in mystery and eroticism.
“It’s a subtle and sensitive approach,” Dr. Matthias Harder, curator of the Helmut Newton Foundation, told Another Man. “Lynch gets very close to the figure with his camera and creates extreme close-ups. Thus, the motifs get a tactile physicality. As a museum’s visitor, you think you might be able to touch parts of the bodies. In his nude photography, he works very sensitively, almost shyly, surrounding the female body and the spirit with his camera as if he would touch the women just with his eye, tenderly. Eventually, in our perception, there is a connection between what we can see and what we can’t.”
“Lynch combines night scenes with the uncanny of our soul. The photographs were taken independently of his cinematic work but they are as enigmatic as his films,” Dr. Harder added. “We can think of these kinds of sexual allusions like Kubrick’s film Eyes Wide Shut. The models are nameless, mostly in undefined rooms. You don’t know exactly what happened or what will happen – it’s all about your own associations and imaginations. It’s up to you how to define it and how you feel about it.”
David Lynch, Nudes is out now, published by Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris.
