JOHN COPLANS

WORKS CURRENTLY_AVAILABLE CV MEDIA EXHIBITIONS

To capture these images he uses an unmanipulated "straight" technique of photography as employed by the modernist masters. This connection between his work and that of the earlier masters is designed to draw attention to their exclusive fascination with the female nude, rather than the male body on which he focuses.

He is challenging the idealistic tendency of Greek art, which created a model of physical perfection that has been passed down to all subsequent generations, by favouring a more realistic approach to the human body and its inevitable aging. This is not intended to disillusion or dismay, but rather to evoke the contemplation of greater truths and darker realms by emitting both strength and vulnerability. For Coplans, photography is largely about finding a universal identity and a universal human experience and exploring the role of the primitive in an ongoing evolutionary process. This is shown by his attempts to encompass in his photographs aspects of Abstract Expressionism, African culture, history and psychoanalysis.