John Coplans (1920-2003) was a British artist known for his series of black and white self-portraits that are a sincere study of the naked and aged body.
Coplans was raised between South Africa and London because of the work of his father whom he deeply admired and who instilled in his son a love of art.
Settled in the United States, Coplans was an influential art critic, magazine writer, and art curator. In 1974 he received the Frank Jewett Mather Award from the College Art Association which distinguished him as an art critic.
At 60 he managed to reinvent himself as photographer taking selfies of parts of her naked body.
John Coplans touched diverse subjects like abstraction, classical sculpture, beauty and decadence.
Despite the fact that his series of black-and-white photographs contained the title of self-portrait, Coplans' face was never revealed, so the body was the one that spoke for itself without the need for a face.
During his last years of life, Coplans developed a series of photographs of fragmented body parts inspired by the attack on the Twin Towers that were published in a large volume entitled To Body and they were exhibited at the Ace Gallery in Los Angeles.