Exhibit brings diverse art

New York-based photographer Len Prince began venturing into nude photography while working on a commercial project photographing spring flowers for Macy’s.

He invited individuals from the street to pose for his work, offering UPS workers $100 to pose. Word spread, and Prince’s portfolio expanded.

Prince is now famous for his portraiture of celebrities and nude figures.

“(I) realized I had an austere innate vision I was immediately able to isolate and compose,” Prince said.

“The Photographs of Len Prince,” an exhibition of Prince’s work, is on display until
Dec. 21 at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction.

“He has photographed so many different types of individuals, different events,” said Catherine Johnson-Roehr, a curator of art, artifacts and photographs at the institute. “It was really pretty easy to put together a pretty diverse show that I think is really quite interesting.”

The exhibit has a broad range of figures, from colorful close-ups of women lounging on the beach to mid shots of men on motorcycles.

The genre works well with Prince’s passion for photography.

He said his favorite projects explore transformation of individuals into iconic characters.

“I still see images,” Prince said. “It really doesn’t matter where, who or what. The character still intrigues me.”

Prince said it was never a question whether he would become a photographer.

“I never had another choice,” Prince said. “Nothing else mattered.”

Years later, the Kinsey Institute received his work as part of a donation.

“The reason we have this show is because last year we received a significant donation ... from a single donor, a gentleman in Florida who had collected (Prince’s) work for many years and actually donated over 200 photographs,” Johnson-Roehr said.

Johnson-Roehr said the exhibit helps draw the public to the Kinsey Institute with beautiful art, which also helps people learn the history of and current research at the institute.

For Prince, it is a lifelong passion that he was able to transform from a hobby.
“Forty years into it, I still have the same good, childish grin of satisfaction with the work,” Prince said.