Shy Guy

Like cool perfection emerging from the heat of Hades, Andreas Bitesnich's nudes are almost too hot to handle. Rhoyce Nova unveils his artistry.

Austrian photographer, Andreas Bitesnich, is no fan of the fig leaf. His concern is to capture the beauty of the human form in its entirety, including the penis.

"I think it's ridiculous to hide the dick," he says. "What I find attractive is the whole of the body, the way it is put together, the way it moves in front of the camera. That's what I work hard to show in new and different ways."

In this series, Shy, Bitesnich successfully combines classical tradition with an edgy feel.

The physical perfection of Bitesnich's subjects is matched only by the technical perfection of his work. The heightened aesthetics of the Vienna-based artist's pictures belie the fact that he is completely self-taught and works in a very instinctive manner.

"When I shoot I work from the heart and the stomach. This series was done very spontaneously after an advertising shoot and took only one hour," he says. It is only in the darkroom that his perfectionist streak emerges, where he claims to spend up to three days on one print and throw as many as 30 prints into the rubbish.

Bitesnich attributes his intuitive gift for shooting his subjects to his comfortable personal relationships with them and the fact that he has eschewed traditional art school training.

"I look at photo­graphy as the exchanging of gifts between the model and the artist," says Bitesnich. "I tend to work with many of the same models in both my advertising and artistic work and so we build up a relationship of trust and faith."

Although perhaps best known for his male nudes, Bitesnich claims to have as much affinity and passion for the female body. He is currently looking for a publisher for a book of male and female nudes he is in the process of completing.

"I love to experiment with the sculptural form of both the male and the female," says the artist, "but there is one more picture I want to capture for my book - the erect penis. I want to shoot it as a sculpture in and of itself. Is that the final taboo?"