EXHIBITING WITH THE
ARTISTS CORNER GALLERY, HOLLYWOOD
By Bill Dobbins
www.billdobbinsart.com
NOTE: My fine art photos include non-erotic nudes. If this kind of
image offends you please feel free to view some other page.
Bodybuilding for women began in the late 1970s. As the Founding Editor of Flex Magazine I was in a position to promote these women and so I did, with articles and photo essays. At the same time I saw these women as a great subject for fine art. Pumping Iron author Charles Gaines has called this kind of body “a new archetype,” something never before seen in any culture at any time in history.
So I began shooting fine art photos of these women – thinking consciously about how a given photo would look on the wall of a gallery or museum. The great advantage of having an entirely new subject is that every photo you do is automatically new and unique. I shot them paying close attention to detail, the way Ansel Adams shot Yosemite. I also went back and used traditional ways of depicting the body in art and used the same approach to capture the special qualities of aesthetically muscular female physiques.
Subsequently, I had two fine art books published: THE WOMEN: Photographs of the Top Female Bodybuilders (Artisan) and MODERN AMAZONS (Taschen). I also exhibited in two museums and a number of galleries. But the art market nowadays is all about perceived value by collectors. Having thousands of fans all over the world does not establish value in the art world unless some of them are collectors whose purchases establish the monetary worth of individual works.
However, I was recently contacted by the Artists Corner Gallery in Hollwyood. They value my work and believe they can promote and publicize my photographs to put them on the map in the world of fine art. I have been included in several exhibitions to this point with more coming – and some really encouraging reaction to the work being shown.
There are several reasons to be hopeful. One is the amazing quality of these aesthetically developed female bodies. They are truly “someone new under the sun” and are significant in term of the possibilities of the female body, sexual and gender identity and rethinking how we view the potential of women.
There is also nobody in the world with an archive of so many thousands of artistic photos of aesthetically muscular women that I have stored on hard drives and in dozens of file cabinets. So once art world collectors recognize the value of these images I will have little or no competition. I have always taken what I call the Ansel Adams approach: Do it first, do it the most and do it best.”
The Artists Corner Gallery and I are gradually printing more and more images for exhibition and sale. Anybody who has seen my photos published somewhere and is interested in a fine art print should get in touch. Meanwhile, I look forward to seeing more of my friends and fans attending exhibitions at the AC Gallery and I have great hopes that gallery sales will not only promote my fine art work but also help to raise awareness of the mainstream culture as to how special and important these women are.
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BILL DOBBINS FINE ART
BILL DOBBINS PHOTOGRAPHY
CONTACT:
email: billdobbinsphoto@gmail.com
phone: 310 721 8666
THE ARTISTS CORNER GALLERY
1546 N. HIGHLAND AVE. LOS ANGELES, CA, 90028
323 464 3900
http://www.artistscorner.us/
MORE FINE ART PHOTOS
ARTICLES
MY FEMALE PHYSIQUE PHOTOS AS FINE ART
WOMEN’S BODYBUILDING: HOW IT ALL GOT STARTED
FEMALE MUSCLE – THE SHOCK OF THE NEW
