Honey and Craig Blacklock at Tweed Museum of Art, 2004.

A VOICE WITHIN — The Lake Superior Nudes

One hundred and twenty-one photographs of the photographer’s wife, Honey Blacklock in wilderness landscapes around Lake Superior. Originals captured on 4×5 inch and 6×7 cm film.

Book published in 2004 with essay by Honey Blacklock and introduction by Jim Brandenburg. Winner of Independent Publisher Award as best photography book from 1327 publishers worldwide.

Selected  images have been exhibited at solo shows at:

Banfill-locke Center for the Arts, Fridley, Minnesota

Minnesota Center for Photography, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth, Minnesota

Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Winona, Minnesota

Featured in American Photo, Fine Art Photo, Minnesota Monthly, New Nude, and other publications.

Prints numbered 1-25 in each of three sizes:

14×18 inches (image size) Starting at $650

22×28 inches (image size) Starting at $1200

34×42 inches (image size) Starting at $2200

Pigment prints on Epson Legacy Fiber (mat surface) paper, signed and numbered  on paper margin.

Inquire for current availability and pricing. Prices escalate as edition sells.

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 About the A Voice Within project:

Having established himself as a preeminent portrayer of unpeopled landscapes, Craig Blacklock in his most recent project utilizes both human form and voice to add new layers to his lifelong consideration of nature. A Voice Within features Craig’s wife Honey as both voice and vision, model and mediator. Her bodily positions and hand gestures offer the vicarious sensations of flesh against sun-warmed stone, rough driftwood, and storm-tossed ice along Lake Superior’s shores. Her words open up the experience even further. Her first-person writings provide dimensions of realism and insight, and bring color to Craig’s photographs, which in this project reduce his multi-hued palette to a classic single tone. Honey also fills the role of surrogate for Craig, who has never occupied his work quite as eloquently or revealingly as in this project; as an artist and a husband, his photographs serve as both appreciations of form and testaments of love. Crafted by partners in a long-term, intimate alliance, Honey and Craig Blacklock’s A Voice Within follows the photographic lineage of O’Keeffe and Stieglitz, Wilson and Weston, Edith and Emmet Gowin, and Bebe and Nicholas Nixon.

—George Slade, Artistic Director, Minnesota Center for Photography — 2004

Reviews and comments:

Blacklock’s pictures are some of the most beautifully considered and sumptuously reproduced examples of the genre we’ve seen.

Blacklock’s artful Lake Superior nudes bring a classic genre into the digital age…the work picks up where Edward Weston left off.

— Russell Hart, Executive Editor, American Photo magazine

This is one of the most powerful and moving works ever published in the realm of environmental nude photography.

A Voice Within clearly follows in the tradition of such landmark collaborations as Edward Weston’s work with Charis Wilson and Alfred Stieglitz’s work with Georgia O’keeffe… one cannot fail to be deeply moved by this.

A Voice Within is one of those rare and precious treasures that will undoubtedly stand the test of time and transport the Blacklocks into the history books as one of the most exciting duos in the art world.

—  Jack Gilbert, Michelle7

I get a lot of publications for review by the likes of Taschen, TeNeus, etc. and this is by far one of the finest books I have ever set eyes on. 

— e-mail from Andrew Kaiser, Editor for The New Nude magazine

Craig Blacklock is one of the finest photographic interpreters of the Minnesota landscape. For the last 25 years Craig has searched and researched the striking land and waterscapes surrounding Lake Superior to create a stunning and extensive body of work on the subject. In his process of discovery, Craig extensively hiked and kayaked including circumnavigating the entire lake giving him an intimate physical and emotional knowledge of its varied topography. He also knows the seasons and times of day when the light both reveals and reinterprets the landscapes. During these years Craig thoroughly mastered the materials and techniques including the latest digital technology to produce his beautifully seen and accurately rendered color work. He is the acknowledged master of capturing these magnificent landscapes.

Over the last five years Craig challenged himself to take on one of the most difficult genres of photography, the nude, in this case the nude in the Lake Superior Landscape. It is as if over the last many years Craig has been doing research for this current body of work. He now returns to his classic landscapes and takes on the risky business of placing the nude in them. I say risky because there is indeed a risk of the two genres clashing and/or competing when in the same frame. Craig avoids the pitfalls and cliché to magnificently marry his selection of location with placement and posturing of the model in them. His model also happens to be his wife, Honey, who like Craig loves these landscapes through a similar physical intimacy that is obvious as she moves through them in these images. The spontaneity of her poses and Craig’s vision are as one mind thinking, one heart directing.

Once again Craig has studied and mastered his process, in this case classic black and white film manifested into images through his digital darkroom. Beautifully composed, he masterfully uses and blends light to reveal an incredible range of tonalities and textures. The gentle lines of Honey’s body, fully expressed in her varied and complementary poses, contrasts strongly with the rugged textures of the landscapes, and in the process, draws attention to the inherent beauty of both. Long an admirer of his color documents of the Minnesota North Country, I was thrilled to see the leap in maturity and vision in this body of work. While remarkable in itself it also portends the many directions this important photographer will yet be taking as he continues to mature through personal artistic challenges.

— Vance Gellert, Former Executive Director of the Minnesota Center for Photography — 2004