ARCHIVE LOVES: AMANDA CHARCHIAN’S DREAMY MONOGRAPH, “PHEROMONE HOTBOX”
What magic lies in that fleeting, amorphous space between creativity and eroticism?
LA based photographer Amanda Charchian harnesses the sensuality and tensions of the artistic nude in her first monograph, Pheremone Hotbox, which is now available for purchase at Hat & Beard Press.
Pheromone Hotbox brings together three years of Charchian’s fine art photography in an empowering visual conversation between photographer and subject. Challenging the demeaning gaze on female sexuality that so frequently permeates fashion, media and pop culture, Charchian explores a alternate mode of seeing that opens the channels of communication between observer and observed. The resulting images are uninhibited windows into the souls and psyches of the female subjects who occupy them, contoured by mysterious landscapes and dramatic architecture.
Of the intimacy that commands her photographic process Charchian says:
“For years, I have been preoccupied by the idea of pheromones and the emissions of our bodies as extrasensory devices of communication. Clothes distract from that. I am interested in photographing the part of a person that cannot be expressed solely with speech or a look from the eye. One’s nude body cannot convey a character it does not actually, for lack of a better word, ’embody.'”
Shot between Iceland, France, Costa Rica, Morocco, Israel and Cuba, Charchian’s project was guided by three underlying pre-requisites: the models were all female artists, nude, and engaging with settings that were foreign to them. A Sri Lankan actress swims through the ghostly tunnels of Cuba’s stalactite caves. A Chilean painter lies languidly on a Corsica cliff, a rocky panorama rolled out beneath her. A sense of sacredness transcends.
Amanda Charchian is an internationally exhibiting fine artists and photographer living in Los Angeles.
Her work has been published in Vogue, Huffington Post, i-D, Interview, Garage and Purple amongst others.
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PHEROMONE HOTBOX
Edited by J.C. Gabel and Jessica Hundley
Designed by Brian Roettinger
Hat & Beard Press #2
Split release with Dilettante Paper
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