Antony Crossfield

Antony Crossfield has something of a dream life: the painter-turned-photographer makes a living solely from sales of his fine art works in Europe and the United States. His provocative, thoughtful images often take as long to compose as a painting.
Many fine art photographers accept commercial work to pay the bills. Crossfield didn’t even accept it in his early career. Instead, the man who has made his name distorting images of human bodies spent his remunerative hours perfecting them beyond reality. “Photography as a whole seems completely preoccupied with the young naked female figure,” said the former full time retoucher.

"Part of my interest in the body is to address that and to balance it with a focus on the male figure. I’m also interested in the imperfect body. The first thing that everybody wants a retoucher to do is remove all the wrinkles and fix all the lumps and bumps. I like to use the tools of commercial retouching that are usually used to remove all of those flaws in the body for different purposes and leave all the flaws in. I’d like to show a different view of the human body, as vulnerable to age and disease. Many of the artists that interest me take a raw, unsentimental view of the body."