In Bathers, Canadian photographer Ruth Kaplan explores public baths as a primordial stage where the human body appears in all its vulnerable splendor. By photographing spaces of shared nudity, she seeks to capture bodies freed from social artifices, suspended between modesty and revelation. Her use of silvery grain and light evokes sixteenth-century devotional painting, transforming bathers into almost sacred figures. Aging bodies, marked by time, become traces of collective histories specific to post-socialist societies. Unlike Nan Goldin, Kaplan favors slowness, silence, and a meditative attentiveness. Water acts as a photographic developer, dissolving identities and establishing a secular grace made of echoes, reflections, and breaths. In an age of digital surveillance, Bathers stands as a nostalgic reminder of a time when nudity could still be shared without fear.
Référence de l’article :
Jessica Ragazzini « BOOK REVIEW: BATHERS BY RUTH KAPLAN | DAMIANI », Musée Magazine, Vanguard of Photography culture, November 2025