Honorable Mention
Cocoon
DESCRIPTION
The idea for this picture came from the 1979 science-fiction film Alien in which a foreign organism sucks on one of the crew members. I was 18 at the time, and a number of scenes impressed me. Many, many years later, I met a photographer at a summer workshop in Hungary. When I saw him using medical bandage as an accessory, the idea of the cocoon came naturally to me. All I had to do was attach the bandage to the studio ceiling and find a photo model who could express a sense of fear. So I asked Aleksa to improvise on this idea. Since, I've asked other models to improvise on the idea, but it was Aleksa who came up with the best version. AUTHOR
Eric’s career in nudes photography started when he moved to Germany in 1990. He bought a photo magazine in which he found an ad from Kerstine, one of the best amateur models at that time. She and Eric met and organized many shootings in the 90s. During this learning-by-doing period, he also bought many books from famous photographers, including Helmut Newton and Jeanloup Sieff. They have probably influenced his work since.Eric learned high-quality nude photography with the professional German photographer Arboulan in the late 90s. In 2004, he started to work with the Hungarian artist Szeni Jung who was facilitating the so-called Sebesviz workshop. He then decided to start his project Venusonearth, including his own website, being a member of photo communities, and working with some of the best amateur models in Germany, Hungary and other European countries. Eric’s first ambition was to get printed in the French magazine PHOTO. He first succeeded in January 2007 and got printed eight times since. After a longer break, his main project in 2012 - 2017 was a portfolio of nudes with Julia, a German student, who became his first muse. During this longer period, his approach was to capture her development both as a model and as a woman.
Today, Eric has worked with more than 100 models and succeeded in getting international recognition, including PSA gold medals, honorable mentions, jury choices and many acceptances. Juries from Trierenberg in Austria, the German Open Circuit, or Riedisheim in France have also valued his work. The best way to describe his passion is a quote from Richard Avedon: “If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it’s as though I’ve neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up“.