There is a sure cost in Senta Simond’s oeuvre that captures not simply the physique, however the emotional residue of being seen. If the Swiss-born photographer has lengthy centred on how the female determine is felt as a lot as noticed, then in her newest e-book, Blue Hour, she redirects that inquiry towards the masculine – in her accomplice, mannequin Leon Dame. Published by Mörel, the ensuing collection is a examine within the pressure between performing visibility and easily being seen: shifting by publicity and tenderness, picture and individual, the general public and the personal.
What started as a non-public alternate quickly developed right into a dialogue between photographer and muse and, by the way, blurred the road that separates topic from collaborator. “It became very natural, this project together,” Simond recollects, “I was never really interested in photographing men before but because of him, I started to look more at the male figure in photography.” There was no plan or expectation from the outset: “We both love photography,” she says, “it was our freedom to do something together, to explore anything we wanted outside of fashion.”
Shot throughout New York and California over a number of months, the photographs are without delay cinematic and contemplative, a contact cheeky but sincerely heartfelt. Spliced between portraits of Dame himself are honed fragments and blurred scapes of movement and equipment that frivolously evoke the fabric world so typically related to masculinity. Yet on the centre of the collection, Dame’s presence, his instinctive self-expression, is the emotional axis round which the work revolves. “He’s very bodily,” Simond observes, “he really knows how to inhabit himself, like a dancer sometimes. It can be something very emotional.”
But the perceived symbolism of masculinity woven by Blue Hour merely amplifies the very human topic shifting by all of it. Well worn denims, and the very particular shorthand of crisp white underwear will be tender and alive when held in Simond’s gaze. As the writer notes, “When Senta undresses her muse, masculinity suddenly becomes soft and fleshy, something that is the object of admiration and intimacy rather than solely the subject.”
For Simond, the method of assembling the e-book is as necessary because the image-making itself. She and Dame edited the sequence collectively, from the number of photos to the format of the e-book. “It was important that he was part of everything,” she says. “We really constructed the images together. I never asked him to perform. It all came very organically.” And this sense of reciprocity extends past the web page; the pictures really feel much less like documentation than dialog.
Yet Blue Hour can also be a contemplation on the act of showing itself, each in Dame earlier than the digital camera and within the work’s launch into the world. Simond admits that she felt “intimidated” sharing one thing so private. “It’s strange that it’s now exposed, but it’s also a relief,” she displays. “I’m still very nervous to show these pictures. When it’s in a book, it feels different, more protected. But on social media, it becomes something else.” In this regard, Blue Hour captures a slippery conundrum of immediately’s image-saturated period: how you can preserve one thing sacred within the face of visibility, and how you can stay human as masculinity is regularly flattened into show.
Blue Hour by Senta Simond is out there for pre-order now by Mörel Books.
