Purple Television

[July 21 2016] : art

Deanna Templeton: The Swimming Pool

Deanna Templeton: The Swimming Pool by Thomas Campbell

Directed by Thomas Campbell, The Swimming Pool is a video piece on the beautiful new monograph, published Um Yeah Arts, from California-based street photographer Deanna Templeton. From the human form on the street to underwater, The Swimming Pool series showcases a calming and peaceful side to her photographic œuvre. The enchanting series was born after an impromptu nude swimming-pool shoot of her husband and artist Ed Templeton. This spurred an eight-year journey in the study of light, expression, and the enigma of water.

Shooting on her Leica M6, Mamiya 7II, and Polaroid Minute Maker, Templeton sent friends into the pool to be photographed in their truest form. Unlike her street photography, in which subjects were often strangers, Templeton found that creating these portraits required more intimacy and connection—a feeling that is apparent throughout every image in the series, which show strong, liberated individuals, confident and at ease in their most beautiful and vulnerable of moments.

As Ed Templeton writes in his afterword to this volume, “ the nude swimmer is floating in a void of quiet solitude, the gentle pressure of being underwater enclosing her form like a baby in a womb and nothing exists outside of this world. A lone figure amidst a sea of blues and grays and frenetic sunlight per- forming a solitary dance for the photographer above, choosing movements and directions, twisting and swooping, contorting and expelling breaths painting a picture of form and light together.” The Swimming Pool offers a deep and inspiring view of the human form.

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