Nudes nominee

In The Shape of Breathing — Bodies as Structures, I photograph the body not as identity or story, but as a living structure, an architecture that bends, holds, compresses, and pushes back. Breath is both subject and method: a quiet rhythm that keeps shifting volume, tension, and balance. A still image can’t show breathing outright, so I look for its traces—the rise of the ribcage, the soft pressure in the abdomen, the held strain just before release, to suggest a body that is alive, yet suspended.

This series comes from a long fascination with how bodies occupy space. Instead of idealizing the nude, I approach it as construction: muscles like beams under load, joints like hinges, skin like a membrane responding to inner pressure. The intimacy here isn’t erotic intent, but closeness and attention. Faces are often absent, and the body is cropped or fragmented to quiet biography, so form, texture, and spatial relationships can lead.

The visual language stays restrained. Light is used to describe structure more than mood, and shadow works like a set of construction lines, carving depth. In this chapter, softness becomes a kind of strength—vulnerability not as spectacle, but as a condition of structure.

Feng Yan (Frank) is a Netherlands-based artist working across Europe with a focus on film, large format, and darkroom practice. His work centers on the idea of the body as structure, viewing the human form, athletes, and botanical shapes as architectures that hold breath, memory, and emotional traces. His ongoing series The Shape of Breathing merges intimacy with restraint across different visual registers.
Yan’s work has been recognized internationally in the professional category of several major photography awards. In 2025 he received the Silver Award in Fine Art / Eroticism at the Analog Sparks International Film Photography Awards, as well as an Honorable Mention in Technique / Instant. He also earned distinctions from the Budapest International Foto Awards (BIFA, Fine Art Honorable Mention), the Tokyo International Foto Awards (TIFA, Fine Art – Nudes Honorable Mention), and the ND Awards in the Professional Fine Art category.
His photographs have appeared in more than twenty international magazines and were featured by the Royal Photographic Society’s Photo Gallery. His Budapest series has also been collected by the China Cultural Center in Budapest. Yan continues to expand his exhibitions and develop new work across Europe.