When did you have your first contact with photography and why did you involve yourself with this art form?
‘Before I bought my first camera, I used to draw and to sketch using charcoal pencils. That was my creative outlet. I just came in contact with my first camera when I was 18 years old. My first experiences were nature photography; I love everything about nature and photographing nature I went to school for 6 months to study photography but left after 6 months.
‘I left the school because I was young and needed money, I needed to get a job more than I needed to be at school so I left photography go for many years. I was in my 30s when I bought the camera out. About 10 years ago, I enrolled to NMIT, now known as Melbourne Polytechnic, I studied photography which was just the best thing that I could have done.’
What led you to take nude photos, your motivation? Why did you choose this form of art?
One of Ross Spyrou's artistic nude photos Source: Supplied
‘We are told, as we grow up we are told to wear clothes, to cover up, that we shouldn’t show the human body. Sometimes, I hear that it's shameful to show the human body. I am the opposite; I broke away from all that a while ago. When we actually break down those barriers, when we strip the human body of the clothes and all those layers, we are just the same as was everything else is out there in nature, we are part of nature.
‘When we cover up with separate ourselves from nature, in a way. This is why I tried to combine the human body with the landscapes, whenever that is possible. The human body and the human form is a beautiful thing and that's how we need to start looking at the human body. When you actually photograph this beauty, you are showing that we are beautiful people and that's exactly what we are, that’s exactly how we are meant to look at each other, as beautiful people with and without clothes.’
In the Ancient Greek and Roman period, and also during the Renaissance, artistic nude was a very popular form of art. Are there any similarities now and then?
'Back in those days, they celebrated the naked human body. But now and hundreds of years later, we in a way are the exact opposite. When you look at those paintings and the statues, it was the intention to show the beauty of the male form and in a lot of cases the female form as well. What I try to do is possibly very similar to that. But it's very different nowadays because it is a different culture will living in, it is a different mentality that we are dealing with nowadays.
People don't look at the human body anymore as a beautiful thing. We are just human, we are born naked and without clothes. Shortly after, we are wearing layers of clothes. There's a lot of Greek artist that actually show the naked form and especially on stage, and more so than in photography. I am too actually just showcase the beauty of the human body the beauty of the human form.'
