The arts consist of a variety of different areas of emphasis, including visual, performing, and literary arts. Photography, as a medium, has been one of the pillars for the arts for many years. From the creation of the camera, to the transition from black and white images to color, photography has always been at the forefront of innovation, pushing the limits of genre and medium to new heights.
Pseudonymous photographers Gert + Gisela (G + G) brings such innovation to life with their creations. They made their New York debut at Gallery 71 at 974 Lexington Avenue on October 1.
The exhibition is for a good cause; it promotes breast cancer awareness month and some of the sales will be donated to the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to advance more cancer research.
G + G exemplify how artist can use their creations to have a role in society that can bring about positive change.
The duo uses nude portraits to introduce new ideas regarding aesthetics, beauty, and the expression of a positive outlook. When observers adopt the artists’ mission it promotes the expansion of ideas through creativity.
One of the most interesting qualities about their work is the fact that some of it can be categorized as contemporary art, while others take more of a classical approach. These artists have a unique sense about what they seek to accomplish through the creative process, which results in fascinating, multi-layered works for observation.
An extremely important concept adopted by these artists is the process of collaboration. The interconnection between their ideas produces powerful digital images .
G + G’s exhibition can be seen at Gallery 71, Monday – Friday 10:00am-6:00pm and Saturday from 10:00am-5:00pm. Please visit the gallery’s website for additional information: https://gallery71.com/
Below is a behind-the-scenes interview that will provide further detail regarding the artist’s and their creations.
1. What inspired you to do this shoot?
Gert: I have had an engaging career as both a photojournalist and fine-art photographer (not under the name Gert, of course). Here, I wanted to reconnect with a love of the human form in all its beauty, dignity and strength but in a way in which I hoped to draw out deeper meaning. I wanted something that had not been attempted with the photographed nude before, so I started by practicing on myself. I had done female nudes for quite some time, but the male body was new territory for me artistically. I began pulling from my own corporeal form notes of pathos, irony and humor. Then, in Paris, I connected with Gisela, and the rest was magic. A new sense of joy and irreverence came to the series. Although she started solely as a model (for the first ten minutes, at least), Gisela quickly assumed the role of equal collaborator. We would soon take turns goading each other on–two Germans up to mischievous fun–accepting greater risks being naked in public and in the resulting photographs. We’ve taken our show on the road to luxury hotel suites and public places on four continents (so far); we have not been arrested yet—but we are still quite young and have many more stories in pictures yet to tell.
Gisela: I was living in Paris and met Gert at a photography exhibition. We got to talking about his work. He offered to shoot a photo of me looking out onto the rooftops of Paris (think Catherine Deneuve or Carrie Bradshaw) that I so much wanted to have but hadn’t been able to get on my own after several tries. We started joking around about how this photo has been done so many times, I said it would only be interesting if I posed in the nude—and an idea was born. Only then did Gert reveal he had been exploring the same motifs by posing in the nude himself. His Weltanschauung (view of life) proved to be perfectly synergistic. I told him to take off his clothes, grabbed his camera and within a short time developed a love of the power and beauty of creating photographic images. In that first picture, in fact, we are nude together; and so began our artistic journey.
2. What was the most exciting place you shot at?
Gert: Paris is always special because it is where this all began for us. We are both unabashed sybarites, and Paris feels luxurious even in places that are open and accepting of all. What other major political and financial capital feels so romantic, couples halt in mid-stride to embrace and kiss? That is perfectly in keeping with our theme of celebrating the joy of the human body and spirit. Luxury hotels remain among our favorite places: Hôtel Plaza Athénée (Paris), the Sacher (Vienna), the Beau-Rivage (Geneva); Nobu Miami (a city where people really should consider getting naked more often); private clubs that likely do not want to be named here, and nude beaches everywhere. A wet, sandy bathing suit is the work of the devil.
Gisela: Singapore felt daring because of the country’s reputation for having strict laws. We took our chances posing on the balcony of our hotel suite, but the results were worth it, I think.
3. What are your three favorite photos and why?
Gert and Gisela: Our three favorite photos are four in number:
Gert’s new favorite is Gisela Fährt (Gisela Drives). As we have seen so often, the subject of the typical “art nude” in photography is a gorgeous woman commanding an exaggerated tableau of lurid elegance. These images, once starkly fresh, have grown so tired, you can save the money on prints and imagine one in your head: a finely dressed young man sits at the wheel of a luxurious sports car; a gorgeous woman dressed only in Louboutin stilettos is gliding toward the passenger seat; a waiter stands stiffly at the ready with Champagne on a tray; and a trainer holds a well-groomed but fierce-looking rottweiler on a leash. The scene is obviously staged, the car obviously rented, the dog obviously a well-paid model, and your credulity is obviously being tested. The photographer is nearly always a fully clothed man, and the effect is leering. It can still work sometimes, but most of that genre has devolved into erotic kitsch. In this picture of Gisela, we got a chance to have fun with the very thing that it is: yet another photograph of a nude woman with a luxurious sportscar. Gisela is walking naked to get into a Ferrari, but look carefully: she is quite clearly in a real parking space, with oil stains on the ground and another car parked beside hers, and she is not going to play the babe in the passenger seat; no man is in the picture, and she will be driving herself. Nothing was staged (and I was also naked while we worked on the picture together). The photo is a burlesque on an eroticized artistic contrivance, and just as important, the model (Gisela) is also the co-photographer and as much in command of the situation as she will be in command of the Ferrari once behind the wheel. She is both the observed and the observing—the commentator and the subject of commentary.
Gisela Liegt am Sofa (Gisela Lies on the Sofa), which is in a pose reminiscent of a classic odalisque (with all allusions to concubinage please put to rest). We like references to classic art, and to achieve an appearance reminiscent of post-Impressionist nudes, we used a century-old Kodak folding camera made for the amateur market, leaning into the effect caused by its charming imperfections. That effect is ethereal and gracious, and it matches my impressions of the beauty and inner strength of my collaborator, Gisela.
We want to have fun, to tweak the noses of our friends, colleagues and, yes, our beloved collectors and curators. That is perhaps best shown in Die Beziehung Geht Weiter (The Relationship Continues): Gisela is seated on a coffee table in a luxury hotel suite, reading The Great Gatsby in Italian. (If you have to ask why Italian, you are already reading too much into it; just let the impressions flow.) Gert lies under the table, eating a banana. Both are nude, of course, and somehow, in the strangeness of it all, the pair stay connected, holding hands. The rest we leave a mystery and invite our viewers to make their own interpretations.
In Sonntag Früh, ehe Gisela (Sunday Morning, before Gisela, a naked, lonely and obviously sexually frustrated Gert prays before a homemade altar of a cross formed by multiple prints of a photograph of a woman’s nude buttocks. What happened next, when Gisela arrived in Gert’s life, with her cleverness and beauty? Are they lovers, friends, business partners–married to each other or to spouses not seen in the images? That is also left to the viewer’s imagination.
4. Why did you decide to do this shoot in the nude?
Gert: Western art began around the Age of Pericles, in ancient Athens. It is grounded on the celebration as humankind as the greatest of all things. The most beautiful form known is the human body, and because people are therefore the universe’s most precious asset, from there you get democracy, the rule of law—and the grounding presence of the nude in Western art. Painting and sculpture have drifted away from that, but they can be abstracted fairly well. Abstract photography, however, is almost a contradiction in terms (and with AI has become far too easy to do), but the nude blessedly remains among its primary genres. We started with a celebration of the greatness of the human body and–this is important–most of the time stopped taking it seriously the moment we would get to work, letting notes of humor, irony and pathos emerge.
Gisela: It started out as a dare and evolved into something much more: a chance to defy conventions, explore parts of you that you normally keep hidden from both yourself and others, and to break through the monotony of daily life and regular jobs. There is the public image we put out into the world and the side of us we keep hidden from others. Nudity can be a way to bridge the two.
Germany also has a strong culture of nudity (Freikörperkultur or FKK for short) that in many ways is much more progressive than in the U.S. For followers, nudity is seen as something freeing and quite beside the point: the focus should not be in the fact that we are nude but on the wider visual canvas of each photo.
5. What is your creative process?
Gert: The process is simple: go to an intriguing city. Check into another hotel suite you are supposed to regret paying for, draw inspiration from your luxurious surroundings, and order a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a bucket of ice. As the server departs, put the “do not disturb” sign on the door. Take off your clothes, and let the ideas come; the photographs will surely follow. If not, put on the bathrobes hanging in the bedroom wardrobe, order another bottle of Champagne, repeat. I think that, one day, when we are old, we will look back on our pictures and be glad we did them. We have shot this series for ourselves, that is, and we are only now, at last, seeking to bring our story and our joy to others through the images we have created. My energizing epiphany is that what you create only becomes art once an appreciative viewer sees what you have done; if that means presenting yourself naked to others, so be it.
Gisela: Because I began this collaboration as a deep admirer of photography rather than as a trained a professional, I often provide the outsider’s perspective. I favor poses that look funny and unexpected. I also draw upon my past lives as a competitive chess player and fencer: the poses sometimes make reference to a game of chess—each position hinting at the move that will follow—and fencing teaches you how to manipulate your body to best advantage.
6. What do you want the viewer to take away from this exhibition?
Gert: We hope viewers will find in the photographs a love of beauty, told with a sense of joy and in an atmosphere fragrant with mystery. The photographs are intended as a celebration of humanity through the human form. As a man of the 21st century, this is important to me: our work is about female empowerment. The woman has an equal voice to the man, and the best way I know to be a strong man is to accept the full equality of a strong woman. Sometimes I am snapping the shutter, and sometimes it is she; we switch roles as the model as the mood strikes us, and often we appear naked in the same image. The days of the male photographer profiting from cheesy images of nude women should be put behind us; it was all fun while it lasted, but take a look here: we stand together, the man as naked as the woman, and you can draw from that whatever inferences and pleasures you may prefer.
Gisela: I agree with what Gert said, but I’d also like the viewer to think about the parts and versions of themselves they never allow others to see. Nudity is the most obvious metaphor for that, but we hope it will inspire viewers a path to explore things that are deeper and of personal meaning and resonance.