Turning the Camera Inward: A Journey Into Embodied Myth (and getting naked in the desert)

Kurt Beardsley about his photographic art

I didn’t plan to photograph myself. For years, I photographed others — mostly women — drawn to the sacred feminine, the sensual, the mythic. I loved exploring embodiment through their eyes and bodies. In graduate school, I was assigned to create a nude. My usual model (my wife, who’s long been my collaborator) wasn’t feeling up for it, so I did what I never thought I’d do: I stepped into the frame. I photographed my back against an adobe wall. Simple. But when I saw the image, a deep discomfort rose — not technical critique, but a quiet, cultural shame.

I wasn’t just looking at a photo. I was staring straight into a quiet, deeply ingrained discomfort. Not about the pose, not about the body itself, but about the act of being “seen”. I realized I wasn’t sure I could submit the image. And in that hesitation, something clicked. Why was it so easy to share images of the nude female form, but so hard to share my own? Why had I, like so many others, inherited a cultural unease with the male body’s softness, its vulnerability, its unapologetic presence?

Self-portrait of Kurt Beardsley in the Oregon Badlands Desert

I submitted the image anyway. The class fell silent. Dead silent. Turns out a penis in an art critique is still a cultural grenade. Nobody knew what to say. Eventually, after I gently prodded my professor, a halting, awkward conversation emerged. That silence spoke louder than words — a collective discomfort, a disruption in the gaze we’d all been trained to carry.

That moment cracked something open in me. It launched my first major project, “Counter-Gaze” — a raw, sometimes humorous, sometimes uncomfortable exploration of how we see, what we fear, and what it means to be the subject of one’s own lens. It was an unbinding, a reckoning with vulnerability, masculinity, and the cultural scripts we carry around desire, shame, and power.

That project became a gateway. It led me deeper into the desert I love so much, into solitude, into a new series called “Terra Eros”: a pilgrimage into the mythic desert body, where eros, land, and sacred presence weave together. And eventually, it brought me to “Mythic Figures Oracle”, where the body becomes a vessel for remembering, for ritual, for archetypes lost beneath the noise of modern spectacle.

'Coyote Den' from the 'Desert Oracle' series

At the heart of my work is animism — a deep belief in the aliveness of land, body, stone, wind. Every figure I photograph is in conversation with the land. The body becomes a carrier of ancestral memory, a walking altar, a vessel for stories that are older than words. These figures aren’t performing for the camera. They arrive whole, self-possessed, and unhurried. They’re not timeless because they’re ancient, but because they’re still relevant.

I’m trying, in my own imperfect way, to reconnect with the roots of our humanity — to push back against the Western tendency to separate human from nature, body from spirit. We’ve paved over reverence. We’ve traded relationship for consumption. And that loss offends my very being.

Working this way isn’t without its challenges. There’s solitude — a lot of it. Standing naked in a canyon, waiting for the light, hoping no hikers show up. Running across sharp rocks to beat the self-timer. Setting up a tripod in questionable terrain. But honestly, I wouldn’t trade it. The land feels like company. The old gods feel like company. There’s a communion out there that goes deeper than words.

'Laissez-Faire Day in the Garden of the Gods' from the 'Desert Oracle' series

If loneliness creeps in, it’s not from being alone — it’s from being misunderstood. But the work keeps calling me back to connection. Each image feels like an offering, a small act of remembering in a world too quick to forget.

Right now, I’m working on shaping “Terra Eros” into a photo book — weaving together years of images, poetic fragments, and mythic references into a larger arc. A ritual tool for remembering, for listening, for invoking. It feels like the threads are finally coming together.

I don’t have all the answers, and though I don’t know where this will go in the end, I do know I am not yet done. Honestly, I’m mostly stumbling along, guided by instinct, myth, and whatever old gods are still watching. But I know this: there’s something holy in the act of showing up — body and soul, raw and real — and offering that presence back to the world.

Website: https://xanima.wixsite.com/kurtbeardsley

Instagram: @xanima_arts