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Body Heat
Fine art photographer Mikelle Moore chose warm bodies over cold ones; now her images are pulsing with life

There’s nothing unusual about switching majors in college but to go from Mortuary Science to Fine Art Photography and consider it all part of a natural progression, you have to be a free spirit and original thinker like Mikelle Moore. 

The Miami-based photographer, who now focuses on images of nudes and female eroticism, has been fascinated by the human body since childhood.  She grew up watching scientific programs on The Learning Channel and Discovery and thought that a Mortician’s career would be the perfect outlet for her anatomical interests, not to mention the fact that, ‘People die everyday, so I’ll make plenty of money.’ Then she encountered her first real corpse at a mortuary.  ‘I didn’t know dead bodies sometimes have air in their lungs, which can make them move or even sit up.  The first corpse I saw sat up, and I freaked out.  That was the end of Mortuary Science for me,’ Mikelle says. 



From the morgue to the darkroom

Always a visual person, Mikelle had worked with professional and student photographers while doing modeling gigs to help finance her studies and assist friends in completing assignments.  In fact, she had a habit of taking over her modeling shoots, sometimes to the dismay of the photographers.  ‘I wasn’t a super-dictator but I do have an extreme appreciation for beauty,’ she says, ‘and when I saw things that would be very nice, I’d say you should do this or that.  The photographers were like, Why don’t you just take a photo class?’

Mikelle didn’t jump at the suggestion.  Most of the photographers she knew were broke, and the more successful ones had invested a huge amount of effort in building their careers.  When she finally did enroll in a photo class, she flunked it-- from an excess of independence, rather than a lack of talent.  The professor wanted students to shoot 360 images a week, and Mikelle thought that was too much of a good thing. 

‘I didn’t know what to do 360 times a week.’ she says, ‘So I split the work in half, figuring I could at least get through and move on to the next class.  It was a little deal I struck with the professor without letting her know.’  The professor failed Mikelle but also summoned her into the office for a long chat which included praise for her potential and strong encouragement to go on with photography. 


Fantasy mixed with biology

Taking the course again with the freedom to follow her own muse, Mikelle was given the freedom to jump right into Photoshop and digital imaging.  ‘Photoshop was a big thing for me because I’ve always been into mixing fantasy with biology,’ she says.  ‘I began incorporating science into my work, starting off with red blood-cells and dead bodies.  A lot of people would see some of those things as gross but I’ve always had an extremely vivid imagination.’

Her fellow photo students were shooting landscapes, and Mikelle dutifully tried to follow in the footsteps of the great Ansel.  But she felt more strongly drawn towards nudes than trees and rocks and was looking for respected photographers to emulate.  ‘Then I discovered Man Ray,’ she says.   ‘He had a series entitled ‘Desire’ with a white woman coming out of a dark void.  There was harsh lighting in certain areas and a lot of shadow so you didn’t see her complete form.  He focused on the beauty of the skin and the composition, not the technical aspects of lighting.  I thought I want to try this with a black woman and see what happens.’  Mikelle’s homage to Man Ray led to a body of work that earned her a scholarship from the Society for Photography Education.  ‘That was pretty much it for me,’ she says.


Artistic and commercial recognition

Mikelle earned her B.A. in Photography at Southern Illinois University and received a graduate scholarship from the University of Miami where she recently completed the coursework for her Master of Fine Arts.  Now working out of her studio in Miami, Mikelle has been exhibiting in group shows since 2003, and was recently invited to participate in the prestigious OMNI ART showcase.  In 2006, she ventured into commercial work, adapting her edgy style to eye-popping posters and brochures for Super Bowl XLI.



Challenging sexually repressive views

Forays into commercial work have not altered Mikelle’s passion for fine art or her highly charged personal vision.  ‘The purpose of my work is to celebrate the female body and feminine sexuality by challenging sexually repressive views concerning women,’ she says.  ‘My work is a combination of historical and mythological stories, my life experiences, and issues concerning women evolving as sexually assertive beings.  Combining traditional photography, digital imagery and assemblage, I strive to take ownership of my sexuality and my right as a female artist to use the feminine body.’

In a series of infrared photos called Pulse, Mikelle blends the erotic and scientific, the romantic and grotesque with strikingly original results.  ‘Infrared film records by heat and not light,’ she says.  ‘So I’m using these images as an anatomical exploration of the female body, allowing the viewer not only to appreciate the female form, but also to see beyond the attractive woman into her life force.’ 


Pulsing with life

Revealing the pulsing veins beneath the smooth skin of her models was no easy task for Mikelle, who sweated for over a year before perfecting her infrared technique.  ‘I started with a very vascular person,’ she says, ‘but her veins didn’t show up that well.  So I began photographing myself because I knew I could take whatever physical abuse was necessary.  But I couldn’t get my veins to show either.’  Finally, Mikelle consulted a personal trainer friend who taught her ‘how to trick the blood and make it rush from the top of the body on down.’  She had to photograph at 90 degrees and ran through three models before finally getting the images she wanted.



Film and digital

Throughout her career, Mikelle has been shooting with film and medium-format cameras and has no intention of abandoning traditional media to jump on the digital bandwagon.  ‘I love view cameras and the rituals of metering and putting the little cloth over my head, and seeing the image inverted in the viewfinder,’ she says.  But she has been experimenting with digital manipulation of images since the beginning and has recently gained ‘an entirely new respect for digital cameras’ by shooting with the Panasonic Lumix SLRs.  ‘The bodies have the classic feel of the older cameras I started off with.  Because they still have all the manual shutter and f-stop controls, they’re much easier for me to understand and work with.’


What are you visually passionate about?

Mikelle began teaching photography while going through the Fine Art program at the University of Miami and found she had a knack for it.  Not surprisingly, she has an original approach.  ‘The hardest part is for people to find out what they’re visually passionate about.  That was greatest challenge for me.  I want people to leave my class with a greater appreciation of what they’re looking at.  The technique will develop if you have the desire.  But when it comes to creating something visually, the main thing is being able to see things that other people don’t see and will appreciate.’  

As an exercise in seeing, Mikelle will often hold up a very familiar image-- the FedEx logo-- and ask people to look closely for something they may not have seen in it.  The writer of this bio took her test and resoundingly failed it until Mikelle pointed out the hidden arrow between the E and the X in the logo.  If you didn’t see them at first, maybe you ought to take her class. 



www.mikellemoore.com