Thomas Hammel

My work is mostly nudes. Frequently abstract, often formal, sometimes whimsical, and occasionally political. Not obscured, coy, demure, or reserved, but direct, frank, forthright, and unambiguously nude.

I made my first nude image over 40 years ago. It was 1977 and I was a young photography student. For my initial assignment with a view camera, my partner reclined on her battered old wood desk and that was our first nude image. I still have the negative and she still has the desk.

It was a typical nude image for the time, a partial torso of an attractive young woman discretely posed. For that matter, it’s a typical nude image for today too. The photographic world hasn’t made much progress when it comes to depicting nudity.

Since that time we’ve shot a lot of nudes. At times life interfered, jobs and kids take up a lot of time, but there weren’t many months in those forty years that we haven’t shot something. A lot has never been printed or shown. There were false starts, mistakes, and reshoots to correct flaws.

The best images are grouped into the major projects shown here. I find it helpful to have a theme and then I work it to death. I’m usually working on a couple of projects concurrently. It takes me a long time to ...