The Optimistic Art Star Releases His First Book of Photos

Artist Matthew Stone shares these striking monochrome photographs of naked nubile bodies entwined and submerged in water from his collaboration with Japanese fashion designer Yuima Nakazato. Created to celebrate Nakazato's spring/summer 2012 collection, inspired by the perhaps contrary theme of a “utopian nudist colony,” the series was shot over two days while camping in a country house garden and has been released as a limited-edition art book, The Body Beyond, byVogue Homme Japan's Junsuke Yamasaki. "I was impressed that he was much more interested in communicating his wider idea than necessarily ticking all the boxes of showing the clothes," says Stone of working with Nakazato. “I think that’s a smart way to work as it can expand what the clothes mean.” Since graduating from Camberwell College of Arts in 2004, Stone has shown his photographs and sculptures at galleries and biennials across the world, with his first major US show at Kathy Grayson's The Hole gallery in New York last November - From Nowness