Photographing a Body Painted Human Temple

Photography Tips

In an effort to bring awareness to the Beyond The Four Walls project, artist Trina Merry has created a new photograph of a living temple. Merry is known as a body painter from her work on the Human Motorcycle and Fiat car ad campaign, both of which were featured on PictureCorrect. In the video below, you can watch behind the scenes footage of the artist at work on her latest piece, Human Temple:

The structure you see in the final photograph is a result of a perfectly posed group of 17 dancers and circus performers who underwent hours of makeup time to be painted for the piece of “living” art.

The artist painted and repositioned the models throughout the project.

The group was constantly repositioned as they were being painted to make sure all the details lined up correctly in the formation.

The temple in this photo is actually 17 body painted models.

The crew was in the company of a Buddhist monk throughout the recent live performance at a San Jose, California art gallery. It took nine hours of preparation to assemble the temple.

“Bodypaint creates a special connection to a person that other visual art forms have trouble accomplishing; it’s a distinctly human experience. My surface is living, breathing human beings making this a highly relevant & immediate medium.”