Artists Uses His Own Naked Body To Create Surreal Landscape Photos

It’s said that artists put a bit of themselves into their art. Arno Rafael Minkkinen does that literally. His photographs always feature a part of him interacting with the surroundings. And it’s not literally plucking flowers or throwing dirt; Minkkinen uses his hand to follow the curvature of the mountains, or pretends to be holding a bunch of hay (it’s actually a tree and it’s reflection in water).

Arno Rafael Minkkinen is a Finnish photographer working in the USA. “Many of my photographs are difficult to make,” he writes on his website. “Some can even be dangerous. I do not want to have someone else coming in harm’s way taking the risks I need to take: to lean out off a cliff or stay underwater for the sake of my picture. We control how much pain we can tolerate; such information is unknowable by anyone else.”