Recommending: Denisse Ariana Perez

The exploration of the human body and of its representation. Young or old, hairy or wrinkly, under the sun or underwater but always soft and safe, this is what the pictures of Denisse Ariana Perez are about. What the human body is for real.

It is very pleasing to see body representations that go further than being solely beautiful. There is a sense of beauty and visual aesthetic strongly present, but it is very different from the stereotypical representation of the body that can be (too often) seen in photography. It is more about finding beauty in the realness of what our bodies can look like. In the first place, I had started writing about the simplicity that comes out of those pictures but that is not what it is, but rather about effortlessness and intimacy.

Somehow it feels like Denisse is providing such a caring and soft perception of the models she is photographing and I think you can really feel that in the small introduction text she writes for many of her projects.

“I keep coming back to water scenes. I keep coming back to rivers and lakes. I keep coming back to oceans. I like to explore the interaction of people, particularly of young boys and men, with water. Water can disarm even the most armed of facades. Becoming one with water is not about rushing but rather about flowing. And flowing is the closest thing to being.”

In fact, water rarely leaves Denisse’s work and is present in a majority of her projects. From the project “Flowers and water I”, “Boys and Water II”, or “Albinism Albinism I & II” and “Black Girls Surf”, water will often be the main environment in which the models evolve. More than solely focusing on water, nature seems to be taking an important place in Denisse’s work and you’ll find some splendid vegetation, especially in projects like “Q&A- Q  for Queer, A for Africa”, which is also very important for the topics it touches upon.

Overall Denisse’s work focuses a lot on a combination of textures. There is always a delicate balance between the textures of the environment where the photography takes place, the clothing or fabric worn by the subjects, and the bodies and skins presented. So many details that you can let your attention innocently admire, and hopefully, who will bring you as much serenity as they do for me.