Seeing the human body as a playful landscape, photographer Allan Teger shows us black and white forms that blend miniature moments with recognizable body shapes.
Shot on medium-format film, the images are dramatically lit, accentuating the curves, shadows, and miniature scenery.
‘fore!’ by allan teger as part of the Bodyscapes® photographic series
Images © Copyright Allan Teger.
Self-taught American photographer Allan Teger has sent designboom new images from his body of work ‘Bodyscapes®’, with a series of black and white photographs depicting miniature scenes on the nude body mimicking various landscapes. The images are not double exposures and uses no digital manipulation, only small scale figures arranged on the naked form to illustrate predominantly outdoor activities, where a belly-button may act as a lake or a sculpted derrière as a mountain.
Teger was initially trained as a psychologist, with the Bodyscapes® concept evolving from his teaching as an academic counselor. Teger would lecture readings on tao te ching, the bhagavad-gita, books by ram Dass, carl rogers, huxley, watts and others. The notions of altered realities, subjective reality, and mystical consciousness became part of his artistic understanding.
Teger describes the development of his work:
‘I remember the moment that the idea for bodyscapes® came to me. I was thinking that the shape and structure of the universe repeated itself at every level and suddenly I had the image in my mind of a skier going down a breast. This was it – the universe repeating its shapes – a body looking like a mountain. It was also an example of two realities coexisting. The picture could be seen as a landscape and it could also be seen as a body. Although they were different, both perceptions were right at the same time. I knew instantly that I had an entire series of images waiting to be captured on film.’
The ongoing project started in 1976, with the set updated regularly to this day, most are shot with a medium format mamiya RB67 and either tri-X or t-max film.
‘sailboat couple’
‘Motorcycle’
‘sailing’
‘tubes’
‘shark’
‘two riders’
‘Train’
‘diver’
‘lovers’
‘golfing the rough’
‘dolphins’
‘fishing’
‘bikes’
‘high wire’
