Eric Kellerman is a Briton who has lived near Nijmegen in the Netherlands for just over half his life. When not taking photographs, he teaches linguistics at the local university. He works almost entirely in the studio and uses digital equipment from camera to print, although digital manipulation is limited to darkroom-like processes. He has a regular team of female collaborators, most of whom have a serious interest in movement (dance, drama therapy, athletics, martial arts). Some are muscular, some are graceful, some are able to take up positions that appear to deny the laws of physics.
Kellerman considers his work to be distant, abstract, melancholic, ‘anerotic’ despite its subject matter. He emphasises line, geometrical form, texture, implicit movement, and above all, chiaroscuro. He likes to create ambiguity in his photos, so that the viewer is sometimes unsure what part of the body is being looked at. In this way, he attempts to free the female body of its conventional associations.
