Dylan Ricci restores the male nude to its rightful place in the world of fine art photography by recapturing the purity and formality pioneered by Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston and other master photographers of the 1920’s and 30’s. Ricci’s images are stylish, classic with a sense of timeless beauty often lacking in contemporary male nude photography. While studying sculpture in Florence, Ricci came to believe that the male body, at its physical peak, is the most pure and beautiful form of art. In his quest to escape the often cliched depictions of male nudes in contemporary fine art photography, Dylan discards the swords, Roman pillars, unmade beds and other paraphernalia to capture the purity, sensuality and sculptural beauty of the male body.
He concentrates on lighting, shadow and composition to lift his beautiful men from the two dimensional world of the photographic image to create images of the male nude that are timeless and which capture the true beauty, power and majesty of the male body. In addition to being published in a number of international art magazines and fine art photography books, Ricci’s male nude photographs are held in galleries and private collections throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. Dylan Ricci was born in Rome in 1966 and moved to Australia with his family at the age of seven. He currently divides his time between Asia and Europe.
“I have become regarded as a photographer of the male nude, although it is not the male nude per se that interests me. What excites and fascinates me and motivates my explorations of the innate aesthetic beauty of the male body are the very same elements of image-making that have obsessed western artists for centuries: the interplay of light and form. The unadorned body of man, a powerful vehicle for the exploration of light and form, is saturated with associations – eroticism, power, religion, masculinity, sensuality, sexuality, history and the long tradition of the male nude in western art; from the ancient masters such as Michelangelo, Donatello or Caravaggio through to the more recent renderings by photographers such as Mapplethorpe or Herb Ritts.
Although these powerful cultural relationships and the inspiration of the painters, sculptors and photographers who have gone before me have all influenced my exploration of the nude male as an object of art, it is the dynamic play of light on form that is my ultimate passion. My interest in partial views and extreme or unusual poses was born from the realization that the power of the face, with its countless associations and expressions, often betrays the pure aesthetic and sculptural qualities of the human body.” (Dylan Ricci)
