Lyn & Tony

Photographic collaborators Lyn Balzer & Tony Perkins have been working together for over 12 years in a relationship that is almost symbiotic. Their fascination with the Australian landscape stems from an upbringing on Australia’s East coast near the idyllic rainforests and beaches of Byron Bay - their photographs reflect a deep passion and commitment to the beauty and extremes of the Australian environment.

Lyn & Tony's work is a 21st century reinterpretation of the “cult of nature,” an obsessive urge to create within a world where nature exists around us, but also within our soul—nature as a visual code for the sublime. The “ravish of nature” is a recurring theme in their exploration of the nude. Inspired by diverse visual sources such as Rodin's sensual watercolours, Marcel Duchamp’s masterpieces and the surreal qualities of David Lynch's Blue Velvet, they explore the erotic tension between the potency of nature and the implicit sexuality of the naked female.

Lyn & Tony like to put a soft, fleshy, vulnerable body into the environment and then to watch nature overtake it, scratch it, dirty it and, yet, the body never quite succumbs to this primal force, its beauty and spirit remaining strong and defiant. The powerful symbolism of the unforgiving forces of the environment as they engulf the fragile body, colliding in moments of opposition, is explored with a raw, sensual vision. Their images are all created “in camera,” with little or no retouching or manipulation.

Lyn & Tony choose certain films and specific lighting to enhance the surreal qualities of their images so that the embrace of the startlingly strong colours of their country - the vibrant blues, greens and reds, amplify an abstracted, otherworldly state with impossibly blue skies, raw textural flora and pale, ethereal forms.