Adey on nudes and love letters

Text by Tova Olsson, Photography by Adey and Luka Perkins Petit

I’m meeting the person who two days earlier asked me to take my clothes off and crawl on the white limestone cliffs of Marseille. It’s nothing unusual to the British photographer Adey, who considers clothes to be fake and has dedicated their work to portray the weird creatures hiding underneath.

Having flaunted everything but their face around the world's most prestigious galleries, the anonymous artist has now arrived on the south coast of France to write a love letter and drink rosé.

So, you’ve seen me naked... Do you think that changes how we interact now?

“No, not for me. But I’ve seen a lot of people naked. So I don’t know... Now that you bring it up I get the image of you naked in my head, which is quite funny. Maybe it makes us more connected?”

Yeah, there is really nothing to hide haha.

Adey has been looking to peel off the uncomfortable layers of life for the last 15 years, when they left London and a career of dance behind and moved to Sweden. “I was fed up with the fast life, tired of living my life to zero every month. I worked my ass off and didn’t feel appreciated.“

In search of simplicity they started drawing stick figures, using an analogue camera and portraying naked bodies to create what they describe as images of utopia. People playing around in abandoned buildings or deep forests without a care in the world, perky buttcheeks juxtaposed with gray concrete. Photos that strike me more as cute images of what the end of the world could look like rather than of paradise. Reading from the hype for Adey, people seem to be longing for the innocentification of the world that their photos offer: playful images of a dystopian future and the naked body itself. The latter – in popular culture, so often offered to a consumer in a dark context of “sex sells” – is through Adey’s lense set free to play.

Looking at your previous photos I sometimes think of Pina Bausch, maybe because of how the industrial meets the tender and romantic...

Is that something you see in your photos?

“Yeah I do see it. It’s not a conscious integration but when I was young and studying physical theater we went to a Pina Bausch show and I remember that my mind exploded. It was the best thing ever.” To Adey, the industrial emptiness also speaks of their personal experience of living in Scandinavia. “I do feel lonely in Sweden and I think that’s translated into my work. I don’t want to go into it too much but I’ve definitely been through times of depression in Sweden. Luckily, people have always managed to pull me out. They know I find the fun in the world around me, no matter what.”

To Adey, movement itself is an energetic form of love, running through every part of their life. As a way of reconnecting with that source, Adey is looking to break with the passive position of the photographer. “I’ve staged my photos to the point where I’ve become static, because of the way I was shooting and the equipment I was using. Now I want to move!” In recognising movement as their very fundament, Adey’s new project is telling the story of their personal journey, inviting their parents as models: “My new series is in some ways a love letter to dance. Knowing my parents kind of enabled that I think that they should be a part of the series. But, they are divorced so I’ll see if they’ll agree to participate haha...”

As even time is moving forward, Adey themselves became a parent last year: “I feel like it’s impossible to put into words what it’s like having a child before you experience it. Sitting there watching this young person discover movement is magical. Watching that everyday... Sometimes it happens secondly.”

As we are about to wrap up the interview Adey whips out their phone to show me a photo. “I drew this for a couple...Knowing it's not really possible. It's someone just straight up sitting on somebody's head. And then...” They swipe to the following photo. “It happened!" Adey laughs and shakes their head: “We’re such funny creatures, we’re really weird... Like what the hell is going on and why we’re still here.”