MONA KUHN'S PRIVATE PICTURES

Photographer Mona Kuhn finds herself returning time and again to the desert. Its peculiar, altered reality, in which forms shimmer and are obliterated in glare and haze, and in which one proceeds, seemingly in vain, toward an ever-receding and indistinct horizon, have long fascinated Kuhn.

“There’s a certain magic to that climate,” Kuhn says. “I find myself drawn there more and more. It’s a fascinating ecosystem. For all the seeming emptiness, it’s actually teeming with life if you’re willing to sit still and really observe what’s happening just below the surface.”

Kuhn was born in Brazil to German parents, but for some years now she’s made her home in Los Angeles. Kuhn has been taking photos since early adolescence, when her parents gave her a Kodak camera. In the early Nineties, she moved to the United States to begin her studies, and quickly discovered the work of the seminal photographers of that era, including Nan Goldin, whom she cites as a major early influence, along with the underappreciated street photographer Leon Levinstein.

Like both Goldin and Levinstein, Kuhn’s primary focus is the body, and though her early work leans more towards traditional figuration, more recent series have seen her actively broaden her scope, turning her attention to landscape, abstraction, and the body’s relationship to architecture.

For a new monograph, Private, Kuhn’s fifth publication for Steidl, the photographer focused her gaze on the bleached tones and broad expanses of light that bathe the Mojave Desert, a few hours drive from her Los Angeles home. In a series of thoughtful and intimate compositions, Kuhn catalogs flora and fauna, most of it coarse-grained and engineered for survival. Landscapes are windswept and invite introspection. Hard light falls on no-nonsense structures that are built to last.

mona kuhn

Punctuated throughout these pages are female nudes, bathed in the same supple light and shadow, their faces mostly serene. As in previous series by Kuhn, the artist employs glass as a secondary lens and means of filtration and dissolution of identity, shooting her subjects from outside of structures, allowing their features to soften and meld with the reflections of the surrounding terrain.

The sequencing of the images in Private is expertly tuned to tease out the complex relationship between the vulnerability of the nude female form and the rugged natural context which Kuhn employs as a backdrop. Kuhn’s models are mostly supine, the softness of their luminous skin a foil and a complement to the jagged, indomitable geology of the landscape in which they find themselves. Against this backdrop, the self is by turns magnified and diminished into a dreamy, sensual phenomenology.

mona kuhn

“I was interested in exploring and maximizing those juxtapositions,” Kuhn says, noting that, for her, the body is a site of residence in itself, and the desert is a place full not only of danger and heat, but also magic and sensual pleasure.

Something in Kuhn’s images recalls the observations Jean Baudrillard recorded of driving across the Mojave, a transit he described as “a spectacular form of amnesia”:

“Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated,” he writes. “Admittedly, there is the primal shock of the deserts and the dazzle of California, but when this is gone, the secondary brilliance of the journey begins, that of the excessive, pitiless distance, the infinity of anonymous faces and distances, or of certain miraculous geological formations, which ultimately testify to no human will, while keeping intact an image of upheaval.”

Private is a lovely, dreamlike paean to the arid, depopulated expanses of the American West. Like all of Kuhn’s work, there is an intoxicating poetry to these images that tempts the viewer to revisit them time and again.

mona kuhn

Private is out now from Steidl. Kuhn’s “Acido Dorado: Illusions” will launch this Saturday at the Lapis Press, 8563 Higuera Street, Los Angeles.

Kevin Greenberg is the art editor of The Last Magazine. He is also a practicing architect and the principal of Space Exploration, an integrated architecture and interior design firm located in New York. In addition to his work for The Last Magazine, Kevin is an editor of PIN-UP, a semi-annual “magazine for architectural entertainment.”

1 /3

Related

Von Ammon Co. Remakes the DC Gallery Scene

At his Georgetown space, curator Todd von Ammon establishes a new template for the modern-day art gallery, bringing stimulating work to the nation’s capital, from digital media to sculptures by Helmut Lang.

Russell Tovey Is Terrified of the Future

The English actor soldiers through a bleak future in the new HBO series Years and Years, illuminating the refugee crisis as the moral center of a Manchester family buffeted by a distressing world that is just like our own—only more so.

Christina Kruse Finds Her Balance

After experimenting with photography, collage, and painting, the German model-turned-artist explores a sense of equilibrium in a new gallery show of her intricate sculptures inspired by the Bauhaus movement.

Claire Oswalt Follows Her Intuition

After planning to study medicine before becoming a writer and now an artist, the Austin native approaches her raw, delicate paintings, collages, drawings, and textiles with an open mind and trusts in her own instincts to roam as freely as the Texas landscape allows.

Bari Ziperstein's Ceramics Bridge Art and Commerce

With practices spanning both fine art and design, the Los Angeles-based sculptor and ceramicist questions the consumerist system while taking part in it—all with a feminist perspective.

FUMI NAGASAKA STARTS A 'TEENAGE RIOT'

In her second book, the Japanese photographer captures the individual personalities and æsthetics of four adolescent girls in their hometowns in a collection that is both intimate and anthropological.

ARTIST CONIE VALLESE'S MOTHER AND GRANDMOTHER INSPIRED HER COLLECTION FOR AGMES

In her first jewelry collaboration, the painter and sculptor translates her large-scale plaster heads into necklaces, earrings, and brooches inspired by her family with the help of the two sisters behind sustainable line AGMES.

ECKHAUS LATTA MAKES ITS MUSEUM DÉBUT AT THE WHITNEY

For their first-ever museum exhibition, fashion groundbreakers Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta have created an immersive experience incorporating retail, art, and one-off clothing designs in their continuing drive to question established norms.

COLBY MUGRABI FINDS SURPRISING CONNECTIONS BETWEEN FASHION, ART, ARCHITECTURE, AND DESIGN ON MINNIE MUSE

Drawing on a wealth of visual knowledge gleaned from hours spent poring over books, Mugrabi reinterprets the concept of personal style to encompass art, architecture, and design as well in articles and her signature Muse Boards, which offer a new interpretation of the latest fashion collections.

BENOÎT MAIRE TURNS PHILOSOPHY INTO ART

The French artist pulls from his studies in philosophy and epistemology to create swirling abstract paintings and mixed-media sculptures assembled from found materials that touch on the basis of knowledge and rationality in the search for ultimate truth.

JENNA GRIBBON'S PAINTINGS SUBVERT THE MALE GAZE

The young painter reinvents centuries of art history in works that merge realism and abstraction, beauty and camp, and subversion and self-absorption.

MATS GUSTAFSON ILLUSTRATES THE BODY'S FRAGILITY IN 'NUDE'

In a book of watercolors, the Swedish artist and illustrator turns away from his fashion work for more intimate portraits that reflect the fragility of the human body as a protest against the slow response to the AIDS crisis.

NEW YORK BY THE LAST MAGAZINE: ARTIST BANKS VIOLETTE RETURNS TO THE ART WORLD AFTER HIS EARLY HEAVY METAL-INSPIRED CREATIONS

After bursting onto the New York art scene straight out of Columbia in the mid-2000s with his heavy metal-inspired works, the provocative artist is returning to the city from a stint upstate with newly sophisticated and subdued pieces.

NEW YORK BY THE LAST MAGAZINE: ARTIST VAHAKN ARSLANIAN FINDS SURPRISE IN THE EVERYDAY

Born hard-of-hearing and diagnosed early with autism, the Belgian artist creates work from strange juxtapositions of everyday objects, revealing new facets of their daily existences.

NEW YORK BY THE LAST MAGAZINE: ARTIST TSCHABALALA SELF REINTERPRETS THE BLACK URBAN EXPERIENCE

The young Manhattan-raised artist reinterprets the black urban experience in her paintings, sculptures, and installations, working with “avatars” composed of paint and recycled materials to reflect the city’s diverse energy.

NEW YORK BY THE LAST MAGAZINE: ARTIST RONI HORN FINDS IDEAS IN JAZZ AND NATURE

The legendary artist and native New Yorker takes inspiration from the untrammeled waters of Iceland and late-night West Village jazz sets in her works about identity, memory, and desire.

NEW YORK BY THE LAST MAGAZINE: THE MET'S SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER KIMBERLY DREW BRINGS ART HISTORY TO NEW AUDIENCES

After founding the Tumblr Black Contemporary Art and the Twitter and Instagram accounts Museum Mammy, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s social media manager works to bring new voices and audiences into the art history establishment.

LOUISE DESPONT

Geometric shapes, organic forms, and architectural patterns intermingle in the artist’s vast and richly spiritual drawings.