Photographers - Part 53

 John Coplans

Recently, my friend Jerry featured a set of photos by John Coplans in his blog Vintage Muscle Men.  I had never heard of Coplans, so I thank Jerry for introducing me to this fascinating figure.  John Coplans (1920-2013) is best known as a British artist, writer and museum director.  But late in life he produced an amazing series of photographic self-portraits.  Vintage Muscle Men only covered portraits up to 1987, because Jerry has a self-imposed time limit of what he considers "vintage."  I have no such limit, and today I'll show some more of the portrait series. 

Let me start with the one above.  It hardly looks human.  Coplans completely redefined what a self-portrait is.  This is Back With Arms Above, 1984.

Coplans said: "I photograph my body. I generalize it by beheading myself to make my body more like any other man's. Nakedness removes the body from the specificity of time: unclothed, it belongs to the past, present, and future. It is classless, without country, unencumbered by language, and free to wander across cultures at will."

Here's another one.  Is it some strange view of his ass?  No, it's Fingers Walking, 1999.

Not that he hid his ass.  This is Back No. 8, 1991.

And here's a front view: Front, Hands on Knees, No. 5, Two Panels, 1999.

Here's a combined back and front view: Frieze No. 1, 1994.

Standing, Side View, Three Panels, 1993.

Sideways, Two Panels, No. 1, 2001 shows his low-hangers.

Crouched, 1990, also shows the low hangers, but it's a more conventional view, showing his whole body (although he's still hiding his head), and it's not divided up into panels.  I have to say I like the unconventional views better.

We end with my favorite Coplans photo, Interlocking Fingers No. 1, 1999.  It could almost be abstract art, and yet it's just a photo of fingers.

Coplans said: “I have the feeling that I’m alive, I have a body. I’m seventy years old, and generally the bodies of seventy-year old men look somewhat like my body. It's a neglected subject matter...So, I’m using my body and saying, even though it's a seventy year old body, I can make it interesting. This keeps me alive and gives me vitality. It's a kind of process of energizing myself by my belief that the classical tradition of art that we’ve inherited from the Greeks is a load of bullshit.”