The body as an abbreviation

About the photo series "Wandschaft" by Yves Noir

How much body has to be visible on a photo so we would talk about it as a portrait? In Yves Noir's photo series "Wandschaft", sometimes only three to five percent of the picture surface depict a body or parts thereof.

Arms and legs, upper or lower body protrude like abstract symbols, like shortcuts from the right or left into the picture. Is it letters that the model wants to represent with its limbs? Or are they poses that are representative of certain feelings?

First and foremost, it is well-proportioned eye-candy. Up to now, hardly any other artist has captured individual parts of the body - which here seem to alternate between figurativeness and non-figurative, iridescent sculptures - with such grace. The setting is clearly set out: brown wooden floors and a white wall, which is interrupted in the lower part by a wall protrusion with a narrow edge. Sometimes the model is positioned on this surface, sometimes it is sitting or lying on the floor.

The title of the photo series "Wandschaft" is well chosen, because the motif is a charming combination of wall (Wand) and landscape (Landschaft). A wall that does not show a classical landscape with meadows, forests or mountains, but only playful and highly aesthetic variants: fragments of a body, posed in front of a wall.

With much bravery for the gap (a majority of the photos is virtually empty) Yves Noir proves that a naked body and a naked wall can be reconciled with sensuality. In times when we are flooded with colourful all-encompassing stimuli on the street and in photo exhibitions, it is good and reassuring to have a photographer like Yves Noir, who bravely and firmly opposes this flow of images.

Marko Schacher, gallery owner and curator

August 2017

(English translation: Dr Alexa I. Ruppertsberg)