TITLE: The Forest

Began in late summer 2015, The Forest is a conscious departure from masculinity and modernity, both in medium and in subject matter. My subjects are my contemporaries, from my global community of young artists using their bodies for self-expression, uniquely connected in the digital age through social media. Recent puritanical legislation around the globe has inhibited how we connect and share our work, but we continue to create undeterred.
Being from the same community we are allowed an immediate level of familiarity and intimacy that other (typically male) artists aren’t privy to. We are nude, but it is an unselfconscious and primordial nudity, reclaimed from the male gaze and with a softness and intimacy to the images rarely captured in a male lens. We are in nature and a part of it; we aren’t conquerors of the natural world, we are skyclad witches and exultant earth goddesses in communion with nature, vulnerable yet unafraid. We remain people, as unique and individual as the environments we are a part of, not anonymous figures bereft of identity. We are willing collaborators and active participants, captured with the ritual alchemy of analogue photography.
The timelessness of the setting is complemented by the medium; black and white film, processed and printed by hand. The final prints are not airbrushed, drawing attention to the tactile and physical qualities of the images as objects, in an age where photography is everywhere yet mostly incorporeal and ephemeral. The texture of the film grain echoes the unadulterated skin textures; the irregularities of analogue processes reflecting the natural imperfections of we the subjects and the environment.
The images of The Forest are an expression of freedom, defiance, community and of liberation of spirit, continuing a tradition stretching back generations.

AUTHOR: Selina Mayer (United Kingdom)

I am a British visual artist working primarily with analogue photography, specialising in nude portraiture. I studied Fine Art at Central St Martins and continue to live and work in London.
In 2019 I was awarded an Artist Residency prize and a Special Mention of the Jury Award in photography from the Mediterranean Contemporary Art Prize. Also in 2019 I was a semi-finalist in the Head On Portrait Prize, obtained 3rd place in Nudes from the Monochrome Photography Awards, received an Honourable Mention at the Tokyo International Foto Awards, and was an official selection for the Imago Lisboa Meeting Point portfolio reviews. In 2018 I was a nominee for the PhotogrVphy Grant. In 2017 I was the subject of the award-winning short documentary A Film On Film by David McNulty. In 2014 I received the Silverprint/Photofusion Black and White Photography Award.
The first nude body I photographed was my own. My self-portraiture is a way for me to explore my own vulnerabilities, and I did this by removing my clothing, my armour. Later, others responded to this vulnerability and began allowing me past their own armour.
By shooting on film my photos become tactile objects, a counterpoint to the incorporeal and ephemeral digital photography that surrounds us every day.