"The Beach" by Luis Artus

Lluis Artus is a Catalan-based photographer whose work includes a series of portraits taken on the beaches of his native Barcelona. In these works, Artus shows the beach not just as a place, but as a kind of structure that claims to be natural and at the same time shows its artificiality. The beach for Artus is an allegory of Eden in the modern world. A dream destination chosen by all lottery winners and long-awaited vacations from Düsseldorf to São Paulo.

(Caution! Nude under the cut)

(Total 30 photos)

1. Thanks to a very modest set of outfits and accessories shown on the beach, signs of status and belonging to certain social and cultural groups are erased here.

2. The beach increases the degree of political, economic and religious equality of its inhabitants almost to the limit.

3. Artus takes advantage of this true equality by allowing subjects to be true individuals rather than units within certain categories.

4. The author's approach is humane, individualistic and democratic.

5. Artus displays his subjects with some sympathy, but no praise. Oiled bodies without voyeurism, flaws without judgment.

6. He avoids both the English desire to portray either a hero or a target of ridicule, and the German tendency to categorize and objectify everything.

7. Artus is an excellent representative of the Mediterranean vision, which is outside the Anglo-German mainstream of artistic photography.

8. There may be a slight trace of the Catalan revolutionary ideas and egalitarian anarchist political ideologies that Orwell saw in Barcelona in the portraits of Artus.

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