Untitled, from the Man and Nature series, 1989
Cibachrome print
Image 7 × 7 in
Edition of 10
Nov 17, 2025
This is the kind of picture that feels like an invitation to a dream. A delightfully allusive image that is rife with associations, this photograph is made up entirely of interesting questions, leaving the answers to the viewer.
This work is from a series of staged photographs that Bruce Charlesworth created, using environments that he meticulously constructed. All the components, including the color and lighting, are carefully controlled, to craft a scene that is full of heightened drama and mystery.
Part of the charm of this image is the abundant care that is self-evident in its construction, and how this allowed for the creation of a picture that is at once both a totally fabricated reality and a straight photograph. Looking at this work 36 years later, it's particularly striking that this is an analog image from a pre-digital era—a time when things were made with hot glue guns rather than buttons on a keyboard—when even worlds of imagination needed to have a basis in the material world.
