Newswise — Professor of Architecture Jean-Paul Bourdier’s newest book of photography, Body Unbound, continues his visual exploration of human existence through the physical, ethereal and our cultural ancestry. Beyond his visual landscapes, Bourdier takes readers behind the scenes to show the process of how he builds his beautiful analog photographs from their architectural sketches to the live shoots. The book also includes contemplative verse from Bourdier.
Professor Bourdier is a photographer of unique style, passion and compelling imagination, which he balances across the nexus of multiple crafts, among them painting, poetry and performance art. His work is stunningly original, brimming with self-assurance, and paradoxically simple and yet complex.
Each image in Body Unbound is a unique scene – created, staged, captured - of natural landscapes joined with the human form, expressing beauty, truth and wonder in the physical plane, as well as in the imagination. The natural landscape connotes the fabric of human existence. The human bodies are bare to connote the primordial human condition, vulnerable and dispossessed of material necessities in the face of Earth and its natural elements. The images are meant to fluctuate between moments of clarity where all said elements appear to be unified, and more problematic moments which relate to human limitations. Many of the images in Body Unbound focus on a most common human desire - the longing to experience true freedom.
Professor Bourdier’s painting exhibitions, photographs of body art and sculptures have been widely exhibited, winning 14 national and international competitions including Guggenheim, American Council of Learned Societies, NEA Graham, UC President’s Humanities, and Getty awards. This latest collection of photographs by Professor Bourdier is the third in a series of books exploring natural landscapes joined with the human form: he is also the photographer and author of Bodyscapes (2007) and Leap Into the Blue (2013). Body Unbound is scheduled for release in December 2016.
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