Decagon Gallery
photo: Michael Potts
p 3/3
Human Body
the art of seeing ourselves
Renato Soares
Carmo do Rio Claro, Brazil
Retrato Kaiapó
This portrait came about in a simple way. While my hand was painting the child, she told me stories in her native language, teaching me to listen to her words. In a very subtle moment, the young girl looked directly at me, and it was in that instant that I was able to photograph the strength and beauty in her gaze.
Este retrato surgiu de uma maneira simples. Enquanto a mão pintava a criança, ela me contava historias em sua lingua nativa me ensinando a ouvir suas palavras. Em um momento muito sutil a jovem me encarou e foi neste momento em que pude fotografar a força e a beleza desse olhar.
Nicolas Desport
Lyon, France
The Cigarette Break
This man works as a porter in a small market in Bangkok's Chinatown. His name is Daeng, which means "red" in Thai. Having spotted him smoking a cigarette between deliveries, the artist offered to take his picture.
Initially surprised, he was then very flattered, even moved.
Curator Note: Both portraits begin in encounter, but they move in different directions. In the first image, the act of painting becomes an act of listening. The photographer’s hand touches the child’s face while she speaks in her own language, reversing the usual dynamic of observer and observed. The portrait is born not from extraction but from exchange. The paint marks are not decoration; they are evidence of proximity, of trust. When the girl finally meets the camera’s gaze, the photograph crystallizes a shared moment—strength emerging from intimacy. The second portrait begins more abruptly. A market porter in Bangkok’s Chinatown is interrupted during a cigarette break and asked to be seen. The offer of a photograph shifts his posture—from surprise to quiet pride. His tattoos, lean frame, and direct stance register both labor and individuality. The wall behind him is worn; his body carries its own inscriptions. Here, dignity arises not from ritual but from recognition. Together, these images ask what it means to be seen. One is formed through touch and story; the other through chance and invitation. Both resist invisibility. In different cultural and social contexts, each subject occupies the frame with agency—no longer background, no longer passing. The photographs act as bridges, but more importantly, they pause the world long enough for presence to take hold.
Mari Saxon
Shrewsbury, MA
Self Love Club. Self Isolation
Sophie in the forest, wrapped in plastic film — a symbol of her disconnection from society and the world around her, her self-imposed isolation.
Ruben Bellanger
Bruges, Belgium
Resonance
In this aerial photograph, a nude figure is placed at the exact center of concentric circles inscribed in the sand, her body extended diagonally across the frame. The composition merges strict geometry with the fluidity of the human form, offering a meditation on harmony, rhythm, and existence. The subject’s pose, elegant and expansive, recalls the grace of dance, a surrender to rhythm that is both personal and universal. The photograph exists at the intersection of vulnerability and abstraction, inviting viewers to contemplate the dialogue between human fragility and cosmic order.
Curator Note: Both images stage the body in relation to its environment, but they move in opposite psychological directions. In the forest, Sophie stands enclosed in plastic — physically present yet visually severed from the trees that surround her. The material barrier is thin, almost fragile, but conceptually absolute. Nature remains outside; the body is contained, self-protected, self-isolated. The space feels damp, heavy, inward. The image speaks of withdrawal — a body that has chosen separation as a form of survival. In contrast, the figure in the sand is fully exposed and structurally integrated into the landscape. The concentric circles do not confine her; they radiate from her. Geometry and flesh operate in balance. Here the body is not insulated from the world but positioned at its center, aligned with rhythm and order. Where the first image suggests disconnection through enclosure, the second proposes belonging through placement. Together, they articulate two conditions of contemporary embodiment: the impulse to shield oneself from the world, and the desire to find coherence within it.
Trina O'Hara
Perugia, Italy
Woman, Unframed
The artist reflects: "They’ve framed women like me—nude, posed, symbols of beauty and desire. Now I stand among echoes of that tradition: brushes, busts, portraits of those before me. I carry history’s weight. I am here to question. I am a woman unframed."
Todor Tilev
Turia, Bulgaria
Lost
Due to the Covid 19 restrictions during 2020 and 2021 in Ireland we have been in lockdown for 8 months without the option to go anywhere. The worst was the lockdown during the first 5 months of 2021, when nobody knew what is happening. Ireland had the most severe restrictions anywhere in the world. I wanted to show how I and many others felt: locked in a small place without any hope. To take this picture of myself I used the sculpture called 'Triangle' at Lough Boora Discovery Park in County Offaly in Ireland.
Curator Note: Both photographs confront the weight of history, but from opposing positions within it. In Woman, Unframed, the artist stages a deliberate reckoning. Surrounded by paintings, busts, and the visual canon of the nude, the subject stands not as an object within tradition, but as a conscious presence among it. The body is exposed, yet self-possessed. She is neither reclining nor offered to the gaze; she stands upright, alert, aware of lineage and scrutiny. The work questions who frames whom. The studio becomes a site of resistance, where representation is reclaimed rather than inherited. In contrast, Lost turns inward. The nude body is not displayed but compressed, folded into itself within a narrow architectural gap. The surrounding timber—rings marking years of growth—presses in like accumulated time. The sculpture becomes a surrogate cell, echoing the psychic constriction of lockdown. Here, the body does not challenge history; it endures circumstance. Vulnerability is not theatrical but existential. Together, the images articulate two distinct responses to confinement: one intellectual and defiant, the other physical and suffocating. One questions the structures that frame identity; the other reveals what happens when those structures close in. In both, the body becomes the measure of pressure—cultural, historical, or social—and the site where resistance or resignation is made visible.
Brian Cann
Waldenbuch, Germany
Conflict Resolution
Networking
Brian Cann
Waldenbuch, Germany
Brian Cann is a photographer, teacher and writer. Having matured past the age where it is said,
"if you haven't grown up by then, you don't have to", his work is edgy, social, and at times political, but always with humor. Not afraid to take on subject matters others avoid, he tries to steer away from cliche, trends, and the ordinary, whilst creating images that others will enjoy for years to come.
Curator Note: Both images stage the body as a site of tension, but the source of that tension shifts. In the first, limbs knot into one another until ownership becomes uncertain. Hands press, grip, steady, and restrain all at once. The skin is marked, darkened, textured — as if conflict has already left its residue. The frame is tight, almost airless. There is no background to escape into, only the friction of contact. It reads as interior struggle made physical: negotiation, resistance, the labor of holding oneself together. In the second, the struggle is more formalized. The body is wrapped in a geometric mesh that both contains and defines it. The net creates a visible system — a structure imposed from outside — yet it also reveals the contours it constrains. Light sharpens every intersection of line and skin, turning containment into pattern. Where the first image suggests collision, this one suggests entanglement: the body adapting to a grid that promises connection while tightening its hold. Seen together, the works describe two states of being bound — one chaotic and intimate, the other systemic and abstract. In both, the body remains present and resistant. Constraint becomes visible. And in that visibility, the possibility of agency begins.
Nyx Mir
Ashland, OR
Cover Your Face
This self portrait was taken during March 2020, but it's stuck with me as one of my surprisingly timeless favorites. As someone with long covid, I'm covering my face to protect my limited remaining health yes but more so... I think it's about the relationship humans have to wanting to be seen authentically but the risks of vulnerability. Neurodivergent masking, and other pressures of performing gender, culture, and health, or any social norms.
Sarah Rocca
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Alone
Seated in quiet contemplation, the room too small, air too cool. How have I ended up here?
Curator Note: These two photographs approach concealment from opposite directions. In the first image, the figure actively obscures her face, pressing it into folds of dark fabric. The gesture feels urgent, almost defensive. The body is present but destabilized—reduced to fragments of light emerging from shadow. Identity is withheld not by absence, but by refusal. The hand becomes the only articulate element, splayed and tense, as if negotiating with the weight of what covers her. The darkness is not empty; it is heavy, enveloping. The second photograph stages concealment more theatrically. The seated figure turns her back, shoulders curved inward, tattoos marking a personal history across exposed skin. Venetian masks hang on the wall like silent witnesses, multiplying the idea of persona. Here, anonymity is not improvised but constructed. The body is illuminated, detailed, and deliberately placed within a room of symbols—roses, masks, draped fabric—suggesting roles assumed, discarded, or imposed. Together, the works examine visibility as performance. One hides by collapsing into shadow; the other hides in plain sight, surrounded by emblems of identity. In both, the face—the site where we seek recognition—is withheld. What remains is posture, tension, surface. The question becomes not who these figures are, but what it means to be seen at all.
Hèctor Abela Arbués
Reus, Spain
Loud Scream
I use my own body as a way to say things I can’t put into words. Being my own model allows me to push
the physical and emotional limits of the frame, turning the camera into a mirror and the skin into a
sculptural material. I’m not interested in photography as a record, but as a physical construction. I am obsessed with how light can turn the body into something mineral, and how a simple gesture, like folding into oneself, can charge an image with an almost unbearable tension. My work is about the weight, the silence, and the raw fragility of the human form from the inside out.
Jamie Jackson
Tampa, FL
Male Nude Standing
The artist uses the medium of photography to capture an entire story within a single frame. It only
takes a second to capture an image—but the story that image tells can last for years.
Curator Note: These two photographs confront the male body at its most contracted. In the first, the figure folds into himself so completely that he becomes almost circular. Knees pulled to chest, head buried, hands gripping the skull—the body reads less as anatomy and more as a sealed form. The cool, green-blue tonality creates an atmosphere of isolation, as if the air itself has thickened. There is no environment to lean on, no narrative detail to distract us. Only the act of containment. It feels less like modesty and more like survival—the body protecting what cannot be shown. In the second image, the body stands upright, fully extended, defined by light against a neutral studio ground. Yet despite the openness of the pose, the gesture remains defensive. One arm shields the face, the other clamps across the torso. The musculature is strong, almost sculptural, but the psychology is guarded. Movement is suggested in the forward step, but emotionally the figure does not advance. He braces. Placed together, the two works form a study in tension between collapse and control. One body retreats inward, erasing itself into a compact shape; the other maintains physical presence while withholding emotional exposure. In both, vulnerability is present—but negotiated differently. The male body here is not heroic, nor performative. It is conscious of being seen, and uncertain what that visibility demands.
Martin Takács
Budapest, Hungary
Body and Soul
I am a young photographer working with a art-therapeutic approach to photography. My main interests lie in the relationship between text reading and image perception. I work with archaic techniques and analog film, using a large-format camera
Susan Anderson
Colorado Springs, CO
Symmetric Surrender
My work explores the human body as a site of presence rather than performance. Through a series of black-and-white self-portraits, I study form, weight, and restraint-using light and shadow to trace what is often felt but rarely seen. These images are not about spectacle or idealization, but about inhabiting the body honestly, with attention and care. The Body Study collection centers on stillness, internal labor, and the subtle tension between control and surrender. By removing narrative excess, I invite the viewer to linger-to notice how the body holds experience, memory, and quiet endurance.
Curator Note: These two works approach the human body through reduction and doubling. In the first, the pairing of stone forms beside the back of a shaved head establishes a quiet visual analogy. The smooth oval and the pitted, porous rock sit like studies in surface—intact and eroded, whole and marked. Beside them, the human skull, seen from behind, becomes another object in the same taxonomy. The photograph strips identity away; no face, no expression, only contour and texture. The head reads as both organic and geological. It suggests that the body, too, is matter—subject to time, pressure, and weathering. The second image shifts from comparison to symmetry. A seated figure is divided precisely down the center, legs open yet mirrored, arms lifted and folded over the head. The black ground eliminates context, leaving only form and light. The body becomes architectural—an arch, a vault, a structure of tension and balance. Hair falls forward, obscuring the face, reinforcing the idea that individuality is secondary to shape and gesture. It feels ritualistic, almost sculptural. Together, the pair treats the body not as personality but as substance. In one, it is aligned with stone—durable yet vulnerable to erosion. In the other, it becomes an abstracted form held in strict symmetry. Both images ask us to consider the body as material presence: shaped, worn, structured, and ultimately inseparable from the physical world it inhabits.
Benjamin Franke
Pasadena, CA
Trust Fall
When framed against the elements, free of materialism, we're offered a deeper connection with the inner self.
This requires shedding all societal facades and preconception, all the trivialities of life, and being immersed in the majesty of nature. In this courageous act, we begin to touch something timeless, a syzygy of the external and the inner being - a synchronistic state of authenticity. If we truly listen, sink deep into this immersion, we begin to align with the eternal.
Benjamin Franke
Pasadena, CA
Heart of the River
Curator Note: Both photographs situate the nude body within an elemental landscape, yet they articulate very different relationships to that terrain. In the first image, the figure is suspended against volcanic rock and vapor, caught in a moment of descent or surrender. The body reaches outward, almost weightless, as if negotiating with gravity itself. There is risk here—exposure against a vast, indifferent force. The landscape dominates; the human presence feels transient, precarious. In the second, two bodies curl tightly into the red cavity of stone. The posture is fetal, protective, nearly embryonic. Rather than confronting the environment, they retreat into it. The rock no longer reads as hostile or monumental, but as enclosure—womb-like, sheltering. Where the first image expresses vertical tension and outward extension, this one contracts inward, toward intimacy and shared vulnerability. Together, the pair traces a movement between surrender and refuge. One body meets the world alone, suspended in uncertainty; the other finds containment through closeness. In both, fragility is central—but it is rendered once as exposure to immensity, and once as a return to origin.
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Malcolm Glass
Clarksville, TN
Bodyscape II
Jeff Denis
Québec, Canada
Maude 2
I don’t care much about landscapes in the conventional sense: trees, rivers, buildings. After a while, they seem the same. Not so with the landscape of the human body. And could there be a story lurking in these lines and shadows? As many as the number of viewers.
Curator Note: Both photographs slow the body down, but they do it in fundamentally different ways. The first reduces the figure to terrain. The camera moves close enough that the body becomes landscape—ridges of light and shadow, a single navel like a quiet crater at the center of a horizon. There is no identity, no face, no narrative. Only contour. The body is not performing; it simply exists as form, as surface, as light meeting skin. It resists spectacle by withholding everything but topography. The second reintroduces presence. The figure leans back into light, eyes closed, suspended between fatigue and surrender. The window frame, the pillows, the visible dust in the air—these details anchor the image in lived space. Unlike the abstraction of the first, this body breathes. It absorbs light. It rests. Placed together, the pair moves from anonymity to interiority. One image dissolves the human into shape and texture; the other returns us to a person occupying a moment of quiet exposure. In both, vulnerability is present—but once as pure form, and once as experience.
In our house, talking about life, future plans, the sun warming our bodies after lovemaking. Her tattoos, her skin, her calm and serene mood.
Michael Potts
Phoenix, AZ
Ivana Dostálová
Prague, Czech Republic
The Leap
Release (selfportrait)
The release is a connection of the body with the mind and the soul painted by the childhood trauma, the release is a victory upon the past, the release is a personal freedom of the deepest true self.
Selfportrait 2024.
Much of my creative work has centered around emerging from darkness into light. I explore introspection, healing, and reaching one's full potential and ultimately standing with confidence in who we are.
Curator Note: Both images use the arc as a structural and psychological device, but they approach it from opposite emotional registers. In the first, the body lies stretched across a metal climbing frame, suspended in stillness. The curve is mechanical, man-made, repetitive. The figure does not leap or strain; it rests across the structure like a quiet interruption of its purpose. There is restraint here—containment within geometry, the body conforming to an imposed shape. The surrounding trees press in, dark and dense, amplifying the sense of enclosure. The gesture feels paused, almost withheld. In the second, the arc becomes airborne. The body is caught mid-leap inside a cavern, light pouring in from above. The curve is no longer static but kinetic—an explosive release rather than a measured balance. The small stacked stones on the ground anchor the scene in gravity, while the figure defies it. Where the first image suggests suspension within limits, this one embraces exposure and risk. Together, the pair stages a movement from containment to liberation. One body drapes itself over structure; the other breaks free into space. Both rely on the tension of the arc, but only one allows it to become flight.
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