Nude

There are several hundred nude photographs in the archive of Edward Hartwig. These take a fairly large chapter in his work, despite which the nude photographs did not have a separate album. For instance, in the serious photography, there was only one photomontage with a nude photograph reproduced. This is a good and significant example for this type of Hartwig’s photography. Nude female bodies usually appear in his photomontages, solar prints, processed under the enlarger in various ways. In those photographs, a woman becomes a geometrical figure or ornament rather than a flesh-and-bones being. Often, women’s characters become literally transparent (their image permeates with other layers of the photograph, such as the background), making their image unreal. Over time, Hartwig’s nude photographs become increasingly more decorative compositions, reaching almost abstract colourful paintings in the 1990s.