For
the magazine Preservation Los
Angeles-based photographer Blake Little submerges men, women, and children in
bucket loads of honey, allowing the sappy fluid to enfold and enshrine them as
if in a block of amber. The idea for the project was born while Little was
working on a separate shoot; when honey was introduced, he was immediately
transfixed by the ways in which it cascaded and settled over flesh. Like amber,
the organic substance seemed to alter and distort the body below. Beneath
its sheen, the anatomy emerged as a figure both liquified and hardened,
undulating yet fixed in place. In honey, Little discovered a metaphor for the
eternal, an unconventional means crystallizing and embalming and the
mortal form.
For
this photo-shoot, Little selected models aged one to eighty-three, finding that
the honey had a way of equalizing all bodies, of morphing figures to the point
where all resembled one another. Here, individual identities become secondary,
surrendered to visceral and sensory impulses. In conversation with Little, one
model explained that the substance was initially cold to the touch but
eventually warmed with prolonged contact. Throughout Little’s visual narrative,
the honey casings alternately liberate and imprison, delight and torment. The translucence
of the material belies its heaviness, allowing it to become—like immortality
itself— both alluring and sinister.
I really like these photos
because most people would not think to do something like cover people in honey
as a form of art. It is very interesting
to see the way the stickiness of the honey and the way that it almost morphs
the features of the people it is drenching.
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