I grew up with an intense interest in nature and science. As a child this interest manifested itself in bug and rock collections, later in Boy Scout outings, hiking, backpacking and bird watching, and finally in a ten year academic career in which I studied botany, zoology, and physiology, and which culminated in a doctorate in animal ecology. During college and after, I avidly took multitudes of slides of things natural, but especially of plants, animals and landscapes that I could eventually use for teaching.

Over time I began to do international travel and I photographed unusual and endangered species and wild places (e.g., Madagascar, Kenya, Central Asia). As a rock climber, I also photographed numerous other rock climbers in action and have had many of those images published. All of this photography was in color, and mostly slides. Gradually my photographic interests evolved as I began to be concerned with composition as well as subject matter.

Then, on one photography trip to Madagascar, I shot a few rolls of black and white film, among the first I'd ever used, and was excited with the drama and the inherent emphasis on composition, light and form in the images I made. This stimulated me to study the work of many of the great masters of black and white photography (e.g., Edward and Brett Weston, Wynn Bullock, Imogen Cunningham, Paul Strand, Dorthea Lange, Walker Evans, Ansel Adams) and  I became fascinated  with the medium. More and more of my photographic efforts were in black and white. Although digital methods have now become the predominant form of photography, I've continued to prefer the more tactile and sensual darkroom techniques of the "old school."

In 2002 I began to formulate an idea for a black and white photography project of nudes taken in natural settings. I started this ongoing project in earnest in Spring, 2003 and it continues to this day. The work you see here is born of that project. The photographs are handmade, silver-gelatin, fiber-based prints, archivally-processed and selenium toned. They are permanently mounted and overmatted with archival acid-free mount board. Most images were made with a Contax 645 medium format camera.

Although I am primarily self taught, I have studied under master black and white photographer Bruce Barnbaum, and worked with large format color photographer Yousef Khanfar. 

Chris Corbett