If You Could Read My Mind (You Might Rethink What You're About to Say)

by Kevin Bacher

“Ralph Waldo Emerson said that "the soul in man is not an organ... but a light…. From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all." As a photographer, I capture light in the form of digital pixels. My task as an artist is more challenging: to capture a glimpse of the soul shining through. I focus on figure photography, with themes of identity and reconnection with that part of us that is natural and wild. My work strives to represent diversity in all forms, and to celebrate the beauty of human sensual experience. As a cis-male photographer, one of the things I am constantly reminded of is my childhood indoctrination, along with most of Western society, into the "male gaze." As I have grown as an artist, I've tried hard to avoid this reductive approach to photographing the female body, and instead, to capture the whole person, with their unique personality and sense of personal agency. Sometimes I get it right; sometimes I fall short; and sometimes I catch a rare moment that is right on the edge, and could go either way.”