BRILL
GALLERY

Studio 109, Eclipse Mill, 243 Union St., North Adams, MA 01247-0786, 800.294.2811 p/f, 845.661.3593 cell, email: info@brillgallery109.com

NOW SHOWING | BOTANICAL MIND GALLERY | ARTIST'S STATEMENT

PREVIOUS EXHIBITS: | LEONARD FREED: THE ITALIANS | KAITLYN 5x5
THE MILL CHILDREN | REFLECTIONS ON MELVILLE
POWDER RIDGE - NADINE'S COUPLES - SUSANNAH'S PICKS
MIXED MEDIA | CULTURAL ICONS | ARTISTS WITHOUT BORDERS | NUDE & NAKED
ARTS OF WWII | JON ISHERWOOD | EVE SONNEMAN | LEONARD FREED

SPECIAL PROJECTS: HOOSAC RIVER LIGHTS

CONTACT | DIRECTIONS | MAILING LIST


NUDE & NAKED ARTISTS
July - October 2008

LUCIEN CLERGUE

Lucien Clergue was born in Arles, France and in 2007 that city celebrated his creativity with a retrospective encompassing 360 of his most famous photographs dating from 1953. As a young man Clergue showed his photographs to Pablo Picasso and they eventually became close life long friends. Clergue took many photographs of Picasso and he benefited by Picasso’s comments. At one point Picasso called Clergue “the Monet of the camera.” It was Edward Weston, however, who inspired Clergue to explore Nudes with his camera. Clergue went on to photograph Female Nudes in nature. Even though he took many photographs of Gypsies, matadors and lush landscapes he became best known for his Nudes and still gives workshops on his techniques. Most of Clergue’s Nude are faceless which allow for their intimate torsos to communicate for themselves. In 2006 The Academy of Fine Arts of the Institute of France awarded its first seat devoted to a photographer to Lucien Clergue. Over his long career he has made more than 20 films and 75 books. His photographs are in important museums and collections around the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Centre George Pompidou, Center for Creative Photography, etc. In 2007 he also received the Lucie Award.


GREG MILLER

Greg Miller is a self taught photographer who is getting broad attention for his Nudes and also his magnificent Hudson Valley Landscapes. His book The Hudson River: A Great American Treasure is being published by Rizzoli. Miller has made a series of color Nudes that represent for him natural human emotions against a natural backdrop. He uses an Arca-Swiss 4x5 large format view camera system and Nikon DSLR systems. Miller’s photographs have appeared in many invitational and juried exhibitions. Most recently he was selected to appear in the Center for Fine Art Photography’s Artful Nude Exhibit in Colorado and at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Washington, DC.


CARL AUSTIN HYATT

Carl Austin Hyatt’s evocative black and white photographs are printed with a rare platinum process which requires countless hours in the darkroom in his quest to get the female form surfaces and tones just right. Hyatt’s Nudes transcend humanness and move into sculptural landscapes. Besides Nudes, Hyatt shoots landscapes and he spends part of the year in Peru documenting the Qero people. Hyatt has had his photographs exhibited at AIPAD, The Smithsonian, Currier Museum, Fogg Art Museum and he is represented in international collections including the Manfred Heitz Collection in Amsterdam, the Addison Gallery and in the private collections of Marco Pfeifer and Steven Spielberg. In 1997 he was named a MacDowell Colony Fellow. His works have been published in several books.


TIMOTHY NAZZARO

Timothy Nazzaro moved to New York City in 1996 when he was 18 and began his professional life assisting commercial photographers concentrating in the fashion industry. He worked for Ellen von Unwerth, Mikael Jansson, Tim Walker and others. In 2005 Nazzaro began to take on his own commercial clients which included W Magazine, Paper, Jane, Wallpaper and Rodeo. In 2007 Nazzaro spent time in Stockholm where several Nudes were shot including those exhibited in NUDE & NAKED. Nazzaro is now concentrating on his passion of shooting and printing black and white 35mm film based photography and he is also editing his first book.


MICHEL COMTE

Michel Comte was born in Switzerland where he trained to become an art restorer. He also had an interest in photography and after moving to Paris in 1979 he quickly became sought after by Vogue, Stern, and Vanity Fair to take the portraits of some of the world’s most beautiful women. Former editor-in-chief of the New Yorker Tina Brown states “Regardless of whether Michel’s photographing a star or a third-world orphan, he does it with the same sincerity and devotion.” His Nudes are well known including the 1993 Nude of Carla Bruni Sarkozy which sold at Christie’s in April 2008 for $91,000. He has shot many celebrity portraits including those of Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Jennifer Lopez, Sting and Julian Schnabel. In recent years Comte has collaborated with the International Committee of Red Cross by traveling to such troubled areas as Afghanistan, Tibet and Iraq and documenting the sufferings. Comte’s photographs are in major collections around the world and have been exhibited in the Guggenheim Museum in Venice, Centro Internazionale di Fotografia in Verona and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.


ROY VOLKMANN

Roy Volkmann began his photographic career in the 1970s in Europe working for beauty and fashion editorial clients. In the 1980s Volkmann was working in Paris, Milan, London and New York primarily for such European magazines such as Italian Conde Naste, Anna, Italian Bazaar, Stern and Grazia. Volkmann was also trained as a dancer and his knowledge of movement and how the human body works are evident in his photographs. He has for several years collaborated with The Alvin Ailey Company, Dance Theater of Harlem, David Parsons, Feld Ballet, Philobolus, and The Monte/Brown Dance Company taking photographs of their performances and of individual dancers. The Monte/Brown Dance Company was so inspired by his photographs that they named a dance “The Volkmann Suite” to honor him. Volkmann has shot many celebrity portraits including those of Michael Douglas, Melanie Griffith, Judith Jamisen, Arthur Mitchell, Jennifer Capriati and Kristy Yamaguchi. His photographs of dancers and Nudes are in collections around the world. Volkmann teaches seminars to other photographers in “Body in Motion” and “The Nude” at the International Center of Photography in New York City.


LEONARD NIMOY

Leonard Nimoy has been making photographs since his teenage years in Boston. In 1971 he took professional courses at U.C.L.A. and became a serious photographer years before he was hired to be on the original Star Trek cast or as a spy in Mission Impossible. Nimoy has been doing Nudes for many years and published various themes including The Skekhina Project, The Borghese Series and The Full Body Project. The Shekhina Project in 2002 was controversial in that sensual Nudes were shown with male religious Jewish gear. Nimoy comes from Russian Jewish parents and he speaks Yiddish. The Full Body Project shows very full bodied women posed to simulate various classical poses such as Matisse’s “Dance.” Nimoy was the director of such successful feature films as Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Three Men and a Baby. Nimoy has written several books and released five music albums. His photographs are in several private and museum collections including Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts.


EVE SONNEMAN

Eve Sonneman’s career as a photographer was launched in 1971 when she was selected by the Museum of Modern Art to participate in the Young Photographer’s Exhibition. Sonneman has gone on to secure a unique position for herself in the worlds of photography and painting. She has participated in the 1977 Documenta and in the biennales of Venice, Paris, Strasbourg and Australia. She has published five books and has been in about eighty international solo exhibitions. Sonneman’s photographs are represented in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Art Institute of Chicago and over thirty other museums around the world. Earlier in her career Sonneman was represented by the Leo Castelli and Sidney Janis Galleries in New York City. Sonneman makes silver prints and is also known for her large Polaroid Sonnegrams.


LEONARD FREED

Leonard Freed died in 2006 but before getting ill he completed a series of Nudes - some of which are being exhibited to the public for the first time in the NUDE & NAKED Exhibition. In the early 1950s Freed thought that he wanted to become a painter so he studied with Alexei Brodovitch. Eventually Freed was intrigued by photography and how it could tell stories and explore life. Edward Steichen, then Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art learned of Freed’s work and told him that he was one of the three best young photographers he had seen. Steichen advised Freed to remain an amateur and bought three of Freed’s photographs for the Museum. In 1972 Freed joined the highly regarded group of Magnum Photographers. Besides having worked on major international assignments for Life, Look, Paris Match, Der Spiegel, etc. he also published several important books including Black in White America, Police Work and Danse des Fideles. Freed’s photographs are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian, Stedeliijk Museum, Getty Museum, Jewish Museum, High Museum, etc. Two major books about Freed’s works were published after his death and in July 2008 the PO Museum in Berlin is exhibiting a major retrospective of 270 of Freed’s photographs.


KATE

Kate met Magnum Photographer Leonard Freed in Garrison, New York in 2001. Kate, who has been studying yoga since she was 15, believes that people communicate with the world through their bodies. Her body became a source of inspiration for Freed and other photographers. Freed became a mentor to her and took photographs of Kate at different sites around the country. When Freed died in 2006, she decided to turn the lens on herself and says that making self-portraits is the purest form of intimacy and ultimately freedom. Hagerman shoots with a Leica M6 and has taken courses at the International Center of Photography. In 2008 she will be exhibiting her Nude Self Portraits alongside the Nudes Freed took of her at the Monika Mohr Gallerie in Hamburg, Germany. Some of these Nudes are also at the Brill Gallery