Kit Leonard: Appearing To Myself

Light and Form Studies - and other experiments

2011-11-13T18:40:00.005+01:00

Male Monument

2011-03-30T20:16:00.000+02:00

Tried to see how far I could get with an open shutter!

Kind Words from Michael Kline

2011-03-30T20:11:00.000+02:00

I found this on a website I'd never heard of yesterday - http://www.barryjones.artapsu.com/?author=35

I was amazed and surprised to be included with a lot of "real" photographers! Thank you Michael Kline!

He said: "Kit Leonard is a fantastic photographer who uses double exposures to capture the human form, age, and self. These images invoke mystery and often possess a strong narrative quality. His images often feature himself nude, paralleling himself in a sort of duality of spirits, existing in the same being. The bulk of his work was probably created with double exposures and slow shutter speeds to emphasize the form in movement and demonstrating the expressive power of the simplest of poses."

Dispute

2011-02-28T20:22:00.000+01:00

The Art of Balance

2011-02-28T08:21:00.001+01:00

More Appearances to Myself

2011-02-28T05:26:00.000+01:00

2009-02-19T21:34:00.024+01:00

These experimental images were unexpected; I was taking shots of myself to draw, and discovered that I could, by setting the shutter speed, and using the right light, appear with myself. This opened up a whole new world of possibilities to me - as I'm an actor and performer by training.

2009-02-19T10:53:00.009+01:00

From here on this is a diary of a (semi) naked man. I don't mean to be rude or exhibitionist - but the classical art I'm inspired by has a lot of nakedness in it.

2009-02-19T10:43:00.029+01:00

The process that produced these photographs started after a recent trip to the Louvre museum.

I felt re-inspired by the human figure as art - particularly the male; not as advertisement, or muscle-magazine cover, or underwear packaging, or come-on.

So, as I've mentioned, I started to take some shots of myself as the model for life-drawings (no one else to ask). But I soon got more interested in the photos themselves; in light, shadow, angles - and, finally, the shutter-speed trick.

By timing things right I could appear to be two places at once.

If not two people at once.

But I wanted it to be more than a trick.

My experience as a playwright (as well as an actor) makes me think in terms of conflict, tension, and themes - not just beautiful or surprising images.

My love of Renaissance art, the accounts of angelic confrontations from the Bible, the themes of self-confrontation and reckoning from theatre, especially King Lear, all fed into the process.

I realised, at the same time, how strange it might appear - a man in intimate contact with himself. But that's only true; I have a sometimes intense relationship with me.

So then it grew to become a sort of essay in my view of manhood.

I'm struck by something the English artist Antony Gormley (who uses his own body in most of his art) has said about his work: it's not the figure of a man he's after, but the traces that man leaves of himself. I suppose I share that idea - the ephemeral side of our seeming reality.

2009-02-19T10:23:00.012+01:00

The fact that we're born naked and exit same -

The fact that we're all, eventually, like King Lear on the heath - stripped bare and facing the storms and the reckonings in life, the 'tempests in our minds'.

The fine line between genuine self-love and selfishness/idolatry.

It was a surprisingly vigourous, athletic process -

Emotionally and physically challenging -

I began to think of it as a form of solo performance art.

Whenever I tried versions of these with a shirt on - it never had the same impact. It is the diary of a naked man, after all. By that I mean a man trying to be honest about, and with, himself.

God made the male and female form beautiful. Not always perfect but beautiful. The wonder of it is, that's how, for the first time in my life, I'm starting to appear to myself. Thanks for viewing. Kit.