Got Milk? Quirky Photos of Milk Being Thrown at People

Photography Tips

Did you ever realize milk had such a lovely heft to it? The shape it makes, when captured with the right shutter speed, can be beautifully wavy. If you want proof, check out this montage of random people being splashed with milk on the street:

The man behind the series, called “Le Grand Spectacle du Lait” (“The Great Spectacle of the Milking”), is Alexander J.E. Bradley, an Australian-born photographer with a “wry sense of humor” based in Paris, France.

The Grand Spectacle began when Bradley was visiting Australia in 2011. He was planning a friend’s party and, quite arbitrarily, decided he wanted an image of milk being thrown on someone. After being unable to find any such photo online, he decided to take one himself. Then another. Then another.

“Every now and again I will see…a comment under my photo reading ‘What a waste of milk’. But I am not wasting anything, I am creating something. Do you think anyone went up to Leonardo da Vinci and told him he was wasting paint? It is the same idea. As a visual artist, anything I put into my photography is a tool of my trade. And in this case, it is milk. It is my creativity, and I don’t consider that to be a waste at all.”

Bizarre concept photography is nothing new for Bradley, whose portfolios include eerie dreamscapes and domestically abusive naked clowns.

Bradley captures his milkings as precisely as he can, shooting in bursts to capture each stage of the splash–the pre-milk anticipation and terror, the initial shock, the laughter at the end.

“If it makes people smile, then that’s good enough for me. Most of my work is pretty crazy, this is probably a reflection of myself as a fairly offbeat person. And as an Australian, I think I have a rather wry sense of humor and will find something absolutely hilarious that others might just think is a bit odd. But it’s all fun.”

The photographer himself, defying his lactose intolerance.

And yet, somehow, none of this is the weirdest part. That Bradley decided to create this series raises a much stranger question–one about the man’s physical health.

“The irony, though? I’m lactose intolerant. I don’t even drink milk.”