Preservation Photography Series by Blake Little

Lindsey, 2013.

Sarah, 2012.

Chandra, 2012.

There’s something almost unearthly or otherworldly about Blake Little‘s photography. When you first view his work, it’s like discovering a new form of the human race, some strange underground or earth dwelling people. It is perhaps the honey that they are dripped in that gives them a crystalline quality, as though emerging from an amber, fluid sack. But the images also share a strange eerie quality, as though the subjects were petrified, immortalised in the golden, orange liquid.

Little started the honey experiment by accident; as most creative discoveries want to be. Getting a bearish looking man to dip his hand in honey started Little’s intoxication with the fluid.

“Blake was amazed by honey’s transformations… how it can distort and amplify forms, highlight physical perfection, engender repulsion, and suggest both immortality and death,” said Kenneth Lapatin of J Paul Getty Museum.

Angelina and Paul (Couple), 2014.

Ouriel (Preservation Book Cover), 2012.

Buddy, 2013.

Naked women are coated in Blake Little’s honey. The fluid slides down their bodies, between their breasts, accentuating their waist and their sensuous curves. The honey highlights all of the erogenous aspects of the female form as though carved from the very marble of Michelangelo. Their half open mouths, as they breath through the viscous liquid, adds a sensuality and a raw sexual energy to Little’s work.

Blake Little casts for the roles by looking for a wide range of people. He has photographed from as young as a 1.5 year old baby up to an 85 year old woman. Different body shapes, different energies, he was looking for it all.

“The honey has a way of democratising people,” he says. “It transforms them in a universal way.”

Paul, 2012.

Tao, 2012.

Isaiah, 2014.

It’s the baby he photographs that vividly brings images of birth to mind. Instead of blood and pain, it’s a silent, calming moment that is captured through Little’s lense, as the honey wraps its viscidness over the skin of the child.

Old women, their sagging skin, bulging bellies and loose hanging breasts are exposed to the same treatment. These images are made ever more graphic by the blunt, shameless exposure of our own insecurities. What will come of us when the time comes to see our own sagging, aged flesh?

Working class men, rough men, men with gruff beards and tatts, men in denim jeans and old t-shirts, all alike are made passive by the thick liquid streaming down their faces. Beautiful, seductive men, with their toned, athletic bodies, broad shoulders and strong chests, wear the honey like silken armour. Couples. Ballerinas. Little’s list is endless. No genre or sexual identity is left uncovered. It is without a doubt a visual feast for the eyes.

Riot, Back 2013.

Katia, 2013.

Moxie, 2014.

“When you cover someone in the honey it has the effect of making them look like they’re in amber. That they’re preserved. That’s how I came up with the idea. And I started calling the pictures, the preservation photographs,” says Blake.

It’s confronting and bold. And it’s also gripping and breathtaking. It does as art is supposed to – it leaves you thinking. But moreover if it’s great art, it leaves you feeling. And you can’t help feeling after looking at Little’s work. Feeling emotions that even you don’t quite understand.