John Coplans (1920 – 2003) was a British artist, art writer, curator, photographer and museum director. Coplans is a veteran of World War II and emigrated to the US in 1960. He has exibitions in Europe and North America – including the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Modern Art, NY. He is known for his series of black and white self-portraits which are a study of the naked and aging body. He photographed every part of his body but never his face as his photographs would not focus on a specific person or identity. Coplans’ photographs questioned the taboo of age through the forward style in which he addressed his body. Coplans stopped making paintings in the early 1960s and in 1979 took up photography; he says he decided to become a photographer because “I wanted to go back to being an artist. I had had enough of art history, critics, museology… I chose photography because I could not go back to painting… photography… is a medium to build an identity out of a composite personality, to find an artistic identity”.
“I have the feeling that I’m alive, I have a body. I’m seventy years old, and generally the bodies of seventy-year old men look somewhat like my body. It’s a neglected subject matter… So, I’m using my body and saying, even though it’s a seventy year old body, I can make it interesting. This keeps me alive and gives me vitality. It’s a kind of process of energizing myself to my belief that the classical tradition of art that we’ve inherited from the Greeks is a load of bullshit”
Coplans shows through this explanation that he believes just because he is older his body is not inferior to what a conventional body in its prime is – he believes that an aging body should be celebrated and documented for everyone to see. Coplans began to think about the body as being able to express a language through shapes and lines. The photographs produced by Coplans were always cropped tightly and dramatically enlarged. To capture the photographs Coplans would use a video camera and monitor to view parts of his body. Once he has selected an area, an assistant would take a photograph using positive/negative Polaroid film which would create an instant image as well as a negative used for later printing in large scale. The fragmentation of the male body and the manipulation to create ambiguous shapes recalls artistic classical sculptures such as the Belvedere Torso as well as sculptures by artists such as Franz Xaver Messerschmidt who would explore extreme expressions to create something away from the ordinary in the way that Coplans does.
Coplans/Tim Booth and ‘Variance and Similarities’
The work of Coplans is similar to the work of Tim Booth in ‘A Show of Hands’ in which he photographed portraits of subjects through their hands to show an insight into the subjects lives and professions through markings and objects related to the subjects’ lives, such as a chess piece for Lord Carrington’s portrait. Booth’s work explores the body in detail in the same way that Coplan does and brings emphasis to the small details and flaws within the human body and celebrates the details that make everyone individual. Both photographers also use a black and white filter in order to highlight the blemishes and veins rather than the viewer focusing on colours. These projects fit into the theme of ‘Variance and Similarities’ because they look at how each individual has unique marks, likes and shapes within their body that makes their body individual and unique to them – these may be features that the owner of the body believes is private to them or may be individual but obvious lines such as a person’s fingerprint. I believe that this is what Coplans is trying to show through his focus on his body; he wants to show that everyone has flaws and quirks in their body and they should embrace these individualities rather than feeling ashamed because of them. I plan on responding to both Booth and Coplans by conducting my own photoshoot focusing on the hands of the subjects – I will do this in a style more similar to Coplans than that of Booth’s as I believe that a more macro and close-up/abstract approach to the shoot could be the better option but I will be experimenting with both.
Analysis
In this photograph of Coplans hands and knees it appears that he has used a strong studio lighting to create dark shadows behind the wrists and in the space between the knees below the fingers, resulting in dramatic and contrasting atmosphere within the composition. This dramatic use of light to create shadowing creates a wide tonal range within the photograph ranging from the deep black tones underneath his kneecaps to the light grey of the background. A deep depth of field will have been used when setting up the photograph which can be seen as the whole of the photograph is in focus and both the hands and knees are clearly in focus allowing the viewer to pay attention to details as small as the hairs on his thighs. A quick shutter speed with an ISO as low as 100 will have been used in this photograph as to capture the highest quality photograph possible with correct exposure Coplans will have ensured that he kept the ISO as low as possible whilst having the shutter speed slow enough to allow plenty of light to enter the lens from the studio to create a composition that is correctly exposed. There is a slightly cold colour cast to the photograph which reflects the fact that Coplans doesn’t want to create compositions that are friendly and familiar – his work is about pushing boundaries and comfort zones.
For the same reason as using a cold colour cast to the photograph, Coplans has used a black and white colour palette as he wants to create a cold-feeling to his work. This black and white colour scheme also allows the viewer to focus on the small details within the hands and body, such as the veins and hairs, rather than focusing on the colours within the composition. Although this is a self-portrait, Coplans doesn’t show his face as he instead focuses on isolated body parts such as hands and feet, showing them enlarged and close-up, so that they seem at once familiar and unfamiliar – this leads to an interesting composition that sets his work apart from other artists that have explored the body, such as Tim Booth. The photograph was taken at the level of the knees, viewing them directly from the front. The skin at the joint of his knuckles appears stretched and the wrinkles can be clearly seen throughout the photograph, creating a textured, deep and dramatic composition. The image is tightly cropped, ending at the artist’s wrists at the upper edge and the bottom of his knees at the lower edge. A narrow margin of white background on either side of the legs frames the body. Due to the narrow margin of white background and the framing of the hands and knees there is a slight 3D effect to the photograph which, when paired with the textures and shadows within the photograph, brings the details out to the viewer.
Coplans believes that an aging body should be celebrated and documented for everyone to see. Through photographs such as the one shown, Coplans began to think about the body as being able to express a language through shapes and lines whilst creating an unfamiliar composition using familiar body parts in an abstract way. Coplans would set up the photograph and composition using a monitor and then use an assistant to take the photograph once it was to his liking. By using this style of photography Coplans wants to show that even a body of a seventy year-old man can be extremely interesting as the marks and folds show the events and life that the person has been through. Ultimately, Coplans is showing how individual and abstract the human body can be and that everyone has flaws/marks that they are either proud of or try to hide; but Coplans believes that the way forward is to put these individualistic features on show for the world to see.
