NUA

NUA is a photographic project resulting from a fortuitous and decisive encounter between a movement artist and a photographer, both inspired by the body and nudity in relation to nature.

The authors
Etienne is an author and photographer. He was born in Marseille and lives in the Hautes-Alpes region of France. Photography, which he has practiced since adolescence, has always been a guiding principle for him, and he has devoted himself entirely to it for a long time. Maïra is a multidisciplinary Brazilian artist. She arrived in Europe twelve years ago to study at the Ecole Supérieure des Arts du Cirque (ESAC) in Brussels, where she graduated as a trapeze artist, and now lives in Marseille. She is a mother, yoga teacher and passionate about the living arts and movement. She is currently writing her first solo show, "Macacada".

The project
Maïra met Etienne Renzo during a photo shoot in May 2022 in the Hautes Alpes region of France. As a professional circus artist and dancer, she has been exploring the relationship between nudity and wild environments for several years. Etienne has always photographed faces and bodies in nature, the nature of flesh and the taste of skin. This harvested pollen has become the essence of his photographic approach over time.

Maïra:
I feel that it was my Quilombola* and indigenous cultures that have given me the tools to connect with other forms of life in nature. But it's also thanks to my background in the movement arts, through circus, dance, yoga, climbing and capoeira, that I feel I can dance, massage, stretch or embrace the body of a tree or stone with my body. * Quilombo is a self-sufficient organization that originated in Brazil during colonization. Enslaved people who managed to escape their condition as slaves found refuge in the deep forest in a confluence of indigenous and African cosmogonies. An example of resistance that persists to this day, not without difficulty.

Etienne:
In my photographs, I seek to rediscover the mythological dimension of the universe, this luxuriant Chaos, the mystery of the earth in silt, of the flesh in the body. I want to rediscover lost innocence, reinventing it with tenderness and voluptuousness. The insurmountable reconciliation of nature and the natural hominid, the one before man, provokes all the possibilities I want to believe in.

The NUA Book with full text and photos is available on the "contact-shop" page.