NUDES
In the early 1960’s, British photographer Bill Brandt created the classic, surrealistic photograph “Nude woman offering her hand,” which depicts a woman, sitting at a table, with an outstretched arm. She wears no clothes. She has just spoken. What did she say? It seems to matter more than the fact of her nudity. Half a century later, struck by this image, Lena Herzog became intrigued by the possibility of a psychological portrait of a nude, and created a series of nudes in the same vein. Black and white, unanchored in time, without clothing, costume, or mask, Herzog’s portraits of women in New Orleans and Morocco, lost in private thought or absorbed in whispered conversation, leave interests piqued and hearts stirred, but questions forever unresolved.
