CLAUDIO AHLERS ARTIST PAGE

CLAUDIO AHLERS

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CLAUDIO AHLERS
BODIES & SOULS FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Bodies & Souls is a series of photographs created by fine art photographer Claudio Ahlers, in his Bristol studio in late Summer 2015.

Photography in many ways appears to be the least ambiguous of the arts. Much of its credibility as a practice is underpinned by the assumption that its representations are all the more true and meaningful, the more they have been selected with intent, the more precisely they have then been distilled from reality, organised with clarity and compositional coherence and finally presented to us in their purest, least ambiguous and thus most meaningful form.

For much of its subject matter, the application of these principles creates fascinating, very successful and truly great photography. And yet, emotional landscapes, states of mind, layers of identity, the experience of the physical body – all of these do not readily submit to such techniques.

For being human is to be continually in flux, to move from one state of being to the next, to re-visit familiar or entirely new sets of emotions and states of mind or to experience unfamiliar combinations of already familiar ones. This is often best understood intuitively and therefore very successfully communicated to us in art that, through its creations, succeeds to represent what is ambiguous about our lived experience. BODIES & SOULS is an attempt to find photographic representations that enable the viewer to find such meaning as if by chance, instinctively.

By diffusing identity, form and place, these otherwise condensed and pure, (naked), bodies escape a conventional photographic reading. Their disguised presence invites the viewer to explore rather than identify their states of mind, to feel rather than witness their physical condition and to intuitively compare their own lived experience with that of the fellow humans depicted in the images. And while the act of being hidden from view and shrouded in partial darkness grants these figures a reprieve from prying eyes and curious minds, their diffused appearance and dignified self-expression still gives audiences permission to un-hurriedly contemplate the fundamentals of their humanity.

Claudio Ahlers is a German fine art photographer. Born in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1966, he spent his childhood and formative years in Hamburg, Germany where he worked as a musician and in independent theatre before leaving for the UK to study music in 1993.

After four years at Salford University College and another year completing a Masters Degree in composition at Bristol University, he has since worked in documentary and feature film making as a sound designer and composer. An autodidact in the art of photography, he now dedicates his time to creating photographic works from his studio base in Montpelier, Bristol, where he also collaborates with many of the artists who base themselves in and around Stokes Croft, the city’s most creative and independent district.

Drawing inspiration from his work in music, theatre and the moving image, as well as the rich history of photographic art, he creates unique still photographs that capture the fleeting subtleties, striking contradictions and nuanced layers of human emotion and identity

Claudio's 2015 photographic series, "Bodies & Souls" is available on paper or aluminium DiBond (framed and unframed) in limited editions of 8. Prices start at £15 for a small 7" x 5" unframed print to £900 for a framed DiBond measuring 90cm x 60cm image size.

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