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Photographic collaborators Lyn Balzer & Tony Perkins have been working together for over 12 years in a relationship that is almost symbiotic. Our fascination with the Australian landscape stems from an upbringing on Australia’s east coast near the idyllic rainforests and beaches of Byron Bay—our photographs reflect a deep passion and commitment to the beauty and extremes of the Australian environment. Our work is a 21st century reinterpretation of the “Cult of Nature,” an obsessive urge to create within a world where nature exists around us, but also within our soul—nature as a visual code for the sublime. |
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Lyn Balzer & Tony Perkins
Photographic collaborators Lyn Balzer & Tony Perkins have been working together for over 12 years in a relationship that is almost symbiotic. Our fascination with the Australian landscape stems from an upbringing on Australia’s east coast near the idyllic rainforests and beaches of Byron Bay—our photographs reflect a deep passion and commitment to the beauty and extremes of the Australian environment.
Our work is a 21st century reinterpretation of the “Cult of Nature,” an obsessive urge to create within a world where nature exists around us, but also within our soul—nature as a visual code for the sublime.
The “Ravish of Nature” is a recurring theme in our exploration of the nude. Inspired by diverse visual sources such as Rodin’s sensual watercolours, Marcel Duchamp’s masterpiece GIVEN and the surreal qualities of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, we explore the erotic tension between the potency of nature and the implicit sexuality of the naked female.
We like to put a soft, fleshy, vulnerable body into the environment and then to watch nature overtake it, scratch it, dirty it and, yet, the body never quite succumbs to this primal force, its beauty and spirit remaining strong and defiant. Our muse is chosen for her quality of spirit—an inherent, unfathomable presence.
The powerful symbolism of the unforgiving forces of the environment as they engulf the fragile body, colliding in moments of opposition, is explored with a raw, sensual vision. Our images are all created “in camera,” with little or no retouching or manipulation.
We choose certain films and specific lighting to enhance the surreal qualities of our images so that the embrace of the startlingly strong colours of our country—the vibrant blues, greens and reds—amplify an abstracted, otherworldly state with impossibly blue skies, raw textural flora and pale, ethereal forms. Our images are sites of contrast since the landscape is set against the apparent fragility of the feminine form—milky limbs against the lush, blue of skies and soft skin against the razor-sharp grass.
The Australian landscape stands here as a simultaneously beautiful yet foreboding entity. The strong use of light, colours and textured surfaces marks our awkward co-existence with the landscape.
"Strangelands," our evolving series, is the world that we enter in our images. It physically exists between the boundaries of the everyday and the exotic—marginal places such as abandoned quarries, deserted beaches and swamps. It’s a world inspired by decadence—where the creation of a mythic, dreamlike state overcomes the observational quality of the photographic process. The resultant effect is a combination of abstraction and realism, producing a body of work that is as intimate and beautiful as it is mysterious and resounding.
A selection of Lyn and Tony¹s photographic art nudes can be viewed at www.lynandtony.com.
