CHRIS GUNTON
I was born in London. Totally self taught as a photographer and artist. Most of my work is; The World I See, Portraiture and Nudes. The nude photos have been exhibited in galleries all over Europe including, The National Portrait Gallery and The Institute of Contemporary Arts (both in London), as well as appearing in magazines and as postcards internationally and as far away as Australia and America. Gay Mans Press published a book called 'ESPRIT' devoted entirely to my nude male photography. I work with film, video and digital media.
"Rather than only photographing the outside shell, my pictures try to uncover the more intimate side of the human psyche. I manipulate light and shade, using shadows as a means to reveal the sensuality hiding deep inside the male nude".
articles
There are ambiguities in Chris Gunton’s photographic studies of the male nude. His work is well able to stand up for itself, touching on the darker side of our sexual selves. A powerful sense of theatre and dance is well handled by Chris Gunton, as naked men, in carefully staged poses use such props as a cross, barbed wire or the sensuality on net fabric to comment on desire, on pain and of the diverse nature of sexuality. Nakedness is presented, not as an expression of sexual desire, but as a stripping away of the trappings of convention in search of a more direct and ultimately more honest statements about the complexities and contradictions of the emotions.
emmanuel cooper, gay news
trixx no. 27
Since 1984, Chris Gunton has been creating a body of photographic works of the male nude in which he endeavours to contrast visions of repression with those of liberation....
charles adam
CHRIS GUNTON, born in London in 1952, worked in an office for two years as a draughtsman, then started working in the theatre as, amongst other things, a professional lighting technician. This experience instilled in him a taste for photography, which was soon to become his main career.
He moved to Amsterdam in 1984, where he lived for five years. It was there that he first achieved success with his photography, which until then had only been a hobby. His photos of the male nude were exhibited at the Spijker Bar and he took up drawing again, one of his great passions. The Rob Gallery, highly regarded and influential in the gay art world, exhibited his drawings, for which he used the pointillism technique.
In 1989 Gunton returned to London. Since then his photos and drawings began to attract more attention and were exhibited at many gay venues, including Cafe Gallery Kudos, Cafe - Restaurant First Out and the leather stores Expectations and Clone Zone. One of his portraits was shown at the prestigious National Portrait Gallery and he also donated works to Stonewall, the gay and lesbian pressure group, to help raise funds for HIV patients.
His reputation started growing when his photos were published by several leading European gay magazines, among which the "late" 'Gai Pied'. More recently, 'Erotica', an ironic but highly professional British photographic magazine, featured his work.
Chris Gunton, who learnt his lighting technique in the theatre, regards photography as a means to an end, not just an end by itself. A photographer should look at images the same way a nose appreciates fine perfumes or wines. He is convinced that a photographer must be technically adept and, at the same time, an artist trying to realise his vision. In that respect he thinks that a society with repressive morals or one that is simply ill at ease with sexual matters, suppresses and stifles and will not stimulate a healthy creative atmosphere. His long stay in Amsterdam was above all a sexually liberating period as well as the catalyst for his creative energy.
It is obvious that the tension between, on one side suffocation, denial and selfdestruction, and on the other a contradictory path to self-liberation have left a powerful mark on his work. His most 'eloquent' photos in that respect show a naked man struggling with barbed wire whilst trying to escape its grasp, or, in the same vein, a young man wrestling with rope. These images represent the extreme, violent side of an iconography where Gunton usually tends to stage bodies caught in heavy draperies or materials with the lightness of gauze. His latest photos include a body trying to break free, like a chrysalides caught between the protective but smothering shell and the painful yet liberating struggle for freedom. Sometimes the movement born from this tension becomes very 'aerial' and is reminiscent of the flight of a butterfly or a bird with a taste for freedom, other times the folds in a sheer fabric paradoxically transform their wearer into a tragic character, or, like a Baudelaire image, into an albatross with its wings spread wide. The photographs showing the merging of men and branches, the former transforming into tree-like beings, larger than life itself, branching out into space, are also evocative of flight and yearning. However, the vengeful vine which imprisons the tree trunk also ties down the body, conjuring up yet more images of suffocation and claustrophobia.
Gunton's work is rich with men inhabiting an iconographic narrative, in which one can read isolation, despair and growth. The way they occupy the space exposes their imprisonment in reality. They are vulnerable, and not simply because they are naked; their depiction reveals a strong desire for confirmation. The images of closed fists are a simple yet forceful metaphor, evoking strength in a gesture typical of chrysalides men.
translated from the french by: tasio ferrand
