Surreal Nude Photographs Force Viewers to Explore Emotions of the Subject

What do you see?

by wesley bonner

From a gallery of images in the finest museum to the pages of a favorite gossip magazine, photography is a huge part of our modern society. We take in hundreds of images daily and, unfortunately, have to use our subconscious' context clues to mindlessly evaluate each image for aesthetics and beauty. Photographer Maciek Jasik was inspired to create a series inspired by 19th century paintings, which pulled from the freedom to blur the lines of literal details and emotional reality place on the art by the viewer. In 'Bypassing the Rational,' he places focus on only part of his nude figures and forces the audience to dig into the emotion and feelings towards the individual versus placing an immediate judgment on the body.

The mysterious photos were shot by Maciek completely in-camera, involving no colored smoke. "In the beginning, I was often asked, are these shot underwater? I hadn't thought of that at all; I had just been inspired by the paintings of Odd Nerdrum, who often depicted floating figures in his strange world," he tells Hooksexup. "But this underwater perspective informed my work greatly and became my new starting point."

Here's a look at the thought-proving series, 'Bypassing the Rational.'