Arnold Frolics Takes Haunting Photographs Using Nudes and Skewed Perspective

Arnold Frolics is a Toronto-based photographer who uses nudes, skewed perspectives, floods of light in darkness, and subjects who often appear withdrawn and almost defeated to create lonely, yet magical and dizzying, environments. His photos are imperfect but beautiful and haunting. If you ask him about his work and inspiration, he’ll gush about how his friends and associates inspire him to do more. It’s comments like these that speak to how fresh Arnold is to his craft. His freshness, which is often a detriment to most artists, is used to his advantage. Recently, I was able to sit with Arnold to talk about composition versus intuition, the sexuality of nude subjects, and the sacrifices inherent in living for your work.

VICE: I think that what makes the naked body interesting is that we’re conditioned to see the naked body as sexual or pornographic. The nudes that you have created aren’t necessarily sexual, but there’s something disarming about them. Why do you think they're not sexual?
Arnold Frolics: It bothers me when people say that there is a sexual aspect to my photos, and I’m glad you say that they’re not so sexual. Having to make a response or having to react to that kind of interpretation is weird to me, because when I come up with these ideas, sexuality is not what I’m thinking about—so I don’t know if it is or isn’t sexual. For me it was just something that made me feel something. I don’t know why a nude had to be in there; it just felt right. As for the other photos where people aren’t nude, they felt right to me as well. It was an organic process—that’s where my interests suddenly were, and I went with them.

How did you come up with the idea to change photos' perspectives? 
We get to create our own narratives and stories to a certain extent, and our realities can be so boring. As a kid, I was excited about space and superheroes and telepathy or something crazy like that—reality isn’t as interesting as all that. So if I’m doing something creative, I might as well create an alternate reality. One of the first composed photo shoots I did was under water, where the sense of orientation doesn’t exist anymore—it’s like being in zero gravity. It’s hard to place what’s up or down. There’s no reference point so you can skew it in any way. And that has always intrigued me. Looking at it in that way felt more appropriate.

I like the photo of the woman on the structure with the white sheet.
Yeah. I really love photographing places that don’t exist anymore, like structures that are going to be demolished. A lot of photographs I did were only structures for a couple weeks, so no one will ever photograph those locations ever again.

Why do you hide your subjects' faces?
Looking over three years worth of photos, you get to see a thread, and there’s definitely a feeling to the photos I chose to share. It’s not just something that’s present in my nudes but also in the other photographs—there’s this sense of being catatonic. I don’t know what the origins of that are. I don’t think when I’m taking a photograph; it’s a state of meditation, as ridiculous as that might sound. That style, that feeling that you see in those photographs, I can’t explain it. It’s to the point where it’s subconscious. It’s a habit. I never leave the house without a camera, and still when I see something beautiful, I photograph it right away. I don’t want to be alive to see the day that I don’t do that and go through the effort and the energy to make that happen.

I think a lot of people would be an existential mess if it wasn’t for the fact that they could create stuff.
I used to feel similarly, and I still do to a certain extent. Taking photos, making music, drawing, painting. All these things helped me remain balanced and sane. The photos I took (the nudes included), strained a lot of my relationships, so it made that [my photography] wasn’t unilaterally positive. My genuine love of photography has outweighed the negative experiences. I can’t imagine my life without it.

Check out more of Arnold’s photos here and here.