BODYGLYPH

At a young age I learned from dusty old copies of National Geographic Magazine that the body is the original canvas. But in my American culture I saw no expressions of impermanent ceremonial body adornment, aside from the Native American pow-wows my mom would take me to as a kid once a year.

I longed to connect to this ancestral memory embedded in our DNA, and began to paint on myself while living in San Francisco at the turn of the Millennium. The city, which had not yet been taken over by tech companies, was a fertile playground for artists. A few years later, after archiving my grandfather Philippe Halsman's lifetime of photographs, I began my "Nomadic Studio Practice", and have lived out of bags traveling around the World working on series of art projects ever since.

The practice of painting on my-self has transformed into painting on others. Photography has become the means to capture my impermanent body painting, and the ritual and dance that takes place in nature with the women with whom I choose to participate.

For too long women and nature have suffered at the hands of men and industrial growth. This series of photographs is a reminder of the sacredness of the Feminine, and the connection to the planet we need re-activate if we hope as a species to survive the next 100 years. The elements of nature do not have a marketing budget or a PR campaign, so we artists must use the aroma of beauty to wake up those who behave as though they are in a deep sleep.

-Oliver Halsman Rosenberg, Fall 2016 NYC

All images copyright Oliver Halsman Rosenberg. All rights reserved. 

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