Over the past four years Voltaire's photography has appeared in over 15 exhibitions across the US and Canada. His images were shown at the two most recent Seattle Erotic Arts Festival exhibitions - the rough equivalent of the Salon de Paris of the late 19^th century for the genre - and subsequently placed in permanent collections in that city. H Gallery (617 W. Nineteenth St.) will give us the opportunity between October 16^th and 29^th to see what Voltaire is telling us by exhibiting many of the pieces that have toured the country and many that have not been exhibited before.

The exhibit has an almost retrospective flavor in that it covers earlier work from Voltaire's Peau Moite and Time Facing Out series, but it also includes more recent work from Ethical Nudity. Even though the exhibit covers diverse material, one thing that distinguishes this photographer begins to stand out: his subjects. Voltaire works predominately with black women. This deviates from what is typical in most fine art nude photography and in how black women are often depicted in the current Urban culture. The Time Facing Out series speaks to this specifically with the models taking inspiration from the classical poses defined by the works of Rodin, Maillol, Claudel, Ingres and Lempicka, but also from fashion magazines. The point is that one's attention is initially drawn by the image itself with the ethnic heritage of the subject coming as a later realization, and not the other way around.

Voltaire's fascination with the black female form started with his earlier work in Peau Moite (roughly translated to damp skin). He was inspired by Uwe Ommer and Renee Cox, but did not want to emulate their style or, in the case of the latter artist, the controversy. This blue-toned series of photographs uses water droplets on bare skin to draw attention to texture and body structure. Sensual and geometric by turns, Voltaire's minimalist style allows the body to speak for itself - a style that has carried forward into his current work.

Ethical Nudity evolved from Voltaire's concept of Method Photography. In this technique model and photographer work together much like actor and director in film and theatre - familiar territory with 6 years of designing theatrical lighting in Montreal behind him. Models are given selected images to use as inspiration. They assign their own interpretations to the images by drawing on personal experience. In short, the models own the emotional content of the image with the task of the photographer being to capture the moment.

The range and diversity of Voltaire's photography can only be discovered through this largest ever assemblage of his work by Heidi Powell, director of H Gallery. But what is important is that ideas about ethnicity, art and ethics can be shared in an environment that is non-confrontational. Perhaps this is something we need.