Human Nature: Double Exposure Collaboration with Jaci Berkopec

Many world philosophies view humanity as being One with all of life: all that exists, existed and will ever exist. I share this philosophy and as I watch nature grow around us and the constellations surround us, I realize that we were all once star dust: elements from the cosmic, descendants of the great universe. We were once all born so simply in nature, evolving and surviving off Earth’s gifts—it was and is a part of us, around us. We communicated with the trees, spoke to the stars, looked into the winds, for guidance. As animals, we relied on the land to feed us, to clean us, to shelter us. We are One with nature. I have always been fascinated with the human body—its powerful mind, perfect arrangement of limbs, fantastic muscular strength and incredible agility. We are, no doubt, beings of extreme capabilities. Photographing dance and movement has always been a big part of my work as a photographer. With infinite possible combinations of movement, human silhouettes become beautiful works of art: natural masterpieces that defy limitation. The artist/photographer Jaci Berkopec and I created “Human Nature” together as a collaborative double-exposure project. When I first saw Jaci’s landscapes, I fell in love. She has a beautiful, esoteric way of seizing the Earth’s intensity. It is as if you can actually feel the souls of the trees in her photographs. Looking closer at the work, I began to recognize branches that resembled ligaments and bones, boulders that looked like muscles, leaves that looked like organs—the inside of the human body appeared so vividly in the nature her eye was capturing. With this concept in mind, we started marrying her images with mine, reuniting human and nature, with the inspiration to create imagery that tells that primitive story of man: that we are, indeed, all one. Lots of time was spent going through dozens of each other’s images, finding the perfect correlations. The more we worked on the art, the more in awe we became of how intricate patterns in nature manifest in our own bodies. Each image from “Human Nature” conveys a specific message or communicates an important juxtaposition between Earth and man. “Core of the Cosmos” was inspired by the philosophical idea that the universe exists within ourselves—that deep within our mind’s consciousness we have access to the greater whole: to absolutely everything. It’s with this concept that all limitations can be lifted, that all fears can be dissolved and that all possibilities become endless.