Fotograf Zone – Jakub Ra – The Body Medium

Carnal Fuck

The body in the body. In the fluid. The hand in the body. In the fluid. All my saliva, sweat, mucus, ejaculations, and fantasies! Everything conscious! The body in the society, immersed in the matter. The matter in the matter. The never-ending Penetration. The permanent Alienation! Blindfolded. When I close my eyes, I can guess any shape, any phase of matter, any cell because I feel them. The touch transformed into whatever you want. I touch your body without touching you at this moment, transferring all the energy! Of your body without any status, stage, or incarnation. I touch your body without your existence! All manners, all shapes and forms are acceptable. All Dreams and Ideas! All my desires! Everything Is and Lives! The cells change as I want; the fat and muscles and flesh are full of my desires, shaping and reshaping, changing and being born totally open and irregular. I am the matter, the carnal vision. I am.

the body itself shapes everything
the body is everything

Photographer Jakub Ra Svoboda has been interested in the body as a central phenomenon of his work for a long time. He understands it in very extensive and deep contexts, metaphysically elaborating on all its transitions and trying to use the body as a real open medium of everyday existence. His work is therefore crucial in terms of carnal aesthetics and finding the diversity of beauty. He is not afraid of internal structures, unknown contexts, and extreme positions, so anyone interested in the body, physical existence and physical experience and their relations to metaphysical being, spirituality and transformation or transcendence of bodily experience should pay attention to his work.

In Medium, Svoboda went beyond his comfort zone and managed to depict the body in a new, refreshing and gloomy dimension, in the both light and dark moment of self-being or self-reflection in connection to the external environment and internal rhythm. From a quiescent inner temperament, he creates a whole range of (re)presentations of psychosomatic feelings and his special harmonic frames show the body in a kind of non-standard state of mind, a kind of new equilibrium.

Text | Peter Susan Šagát

All images | Jakub Ra, from the series Medium, 2017

#31 body

The image of the body can take many forms reflecting the never-ending human desire to create the imprints of ourselves. The theme of the body and corporeality has appeared in photography since the very beginning. But it does not include only the classic and much-repeated nude, already exhausted in its commercial and common academic forms. The body itself is the mortal frame of the human being and its physical existence, whose uniqueness and evanescence we are aware of although we often try to forget about it. The body is born, and it grows, matures and becomes an object or the initiator of amorous passion: the female body produces children, and the male body is involved in a sexual act. Then the human body gets older, gradually wastes away, experiences diseases and bodily injuries, and eventually ceases to exist like everything else in the cycle of time. Photography and photographers have a unique chance to capture or interpret all these phases. Plato’s conception of corporeality gave rise to the dichotomy of the “body” and “soul”. Once we identify them in our being, we can see the body as a primary form of life that fundamentally determines our being in the world and expresses who we really are. It would be interesting if our physical experience was given the same, if not higher, value like our thinking. The representation of the body is the representation of strength and weakness, and the associated social and cultural codes, including sexuality and gender types. In this magazine issue, we focus on author and photographic projects presenting the human body and nudity sometimes as an object, sometimes as a means to stimulate the viewer’s critical reflections on the current political, cultural, sexual, gender, and socio-economic issues.