NUDES

By Sylvie Blum | Published by 6x6, 2004 | Purchase at Amazon.com


This is a book of female nudes large in size as well as accomplishment. It might be Sylvie Blum's break through body of work. Dimension-wise it is a superbly satisfying 15x10" and features 140 pages of black & white prints. Ms. Blum herself, is a former model who now works as a photographer. She is also the widow of the greatly admired photographer, Günter Blum.

Their time spent together was undoubtedly of artistic benefit to Sylvie, for the magnificent compositional skills that made Günter's work so memorable is strikingly evident in Sylvie's work too. Nonetheless, it's her background as a model along with the strength and fire of her own personality that have together been forged here into a fabulous new vision of the female form.

And the manner with which she sees her subject matter here is framed with such creative abandon, such an overpowering sense of style and composition, it now seems she was truly born to take pictures. That she is such a beautiful woman may have prolonged this, she is such a natural in front of the camera, but it was perhaps inevitable that she would assume her place behind the lens - and this work solidifies the opinion that she belongs there.

The content for NUDES was shot on location in various locations in Berlin, Miami, Los Angeles, and the island of Majorca. Sylvie's vision of strong, beautiful women is the central tenet of this work, and is perhaps a reflection of her own personality as well as her personal quest to stand-out in a medium dominated by men in general and her late husband in particular. Be that as it may, Sylvie claims to have no need to escape from the shadows of anyone, including her beloved Günter, and this collection of work is glaring testimony to her amazing maturation as an artist with her own unique and powerful vision.

Her alchemy of flesh and form, desert and ocean, the natural world and human architecture all combine to shape what is both a delicious perspective of the female body as well as the self-actualization of a sensational talent.