Beautiful Terrain: An Original Take on the Nude Portrait by Carl Warner

As an alternative to the kind of portraits with which we are perhaps more familiar—highlighting the face—photographer Carl Warner offers us Bodyscapes, a series of images comprised of landscapes made of limbs, flesh, and other obscured body parts, inspired in part by Antonioni’s film Zabriskie Point. Our eyes never really settle, as the landscapes take us around the frame in an endless search for the familiar; for a finite place to stop. No such luck.

How many bodies are involved in a single landscape? From the photos, I’d imagine that you’ve got different people huddled and twisted together.
“Each image in the series uses only one person’s body, shot from different angles. I know people would love these to be made with many different bodies, but doing this will mean having different skin tones which will lose the sense of continuity within the landscape. I also like the fact that it is all made from one individual as it offers an aspect of alternative portraiture and becomes a more intimate connection with the subject. I also want to avoid the images looking too sexual and I think that mixing bodies at the shooting stage may cause the images to lean this way. I am more interested in the form and structure that brings a sense of place to the body as the space in which we dwell.”

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