quote:

For months, one diligent artist has toiled to make and curate a majestic collection of landscape photographs, unlike anything you’ve seen before. Were these merely pretty landscapes, Clancy Philbrick would be just another world traveler with an aspirational Instagram account, but they’re not: they’re Nutscapes. And there’s a big, hairy nutsack in each one. Which means he’s also a genius.

You could argue that the conspicuous testicles—mostly Philbrick’s, although he has a partner in the project and accepts worthy fan submissions—obscure the scenery, but that would be missing the point. They’re a compositional element that forces the viewer to rethink the entire milieu. The photographer has emerged from behind the lens and inserted something of himself—to wit: his balls—into the frame.

Philbrick spoke to the Daily Dot about the moment he first became so inspired by natural beauty that he felt compelled to drop his nuts into it.

“I was on a solo trip out in the bush of New Zealand shooting some typical landscape photography,” the Nutscape navigator wrote, “and while on top of a mountain looking out at this amazing concave glacier in the distance, I felt a great gratitude for my surroundings and a primal urge to connect on a deeper level with Mother Nature.”

“The next thing I knew, I was taking a picture of my balls dipping into the negative space above the glacier.”

Like all world-changing ideas, it seems obvious in retrospect. It’s now difficult to imagine a reality where eye-popping landscapes aren’t viewed through a glistening haze of ball-hair, twinkling in the sun.

Which is why it breaks my heart that by drawing well-deserved attention to Philbrick’s nutsack, we may have doomed it to ultimate obscurity. Such is the effect of the observer on the observed—or just the effect of Instagram’s censorship policies. I fear that once the notorious nipplephobes at the Facebook-owned photo sharing site catch wind of Nutscapes, it may not be long for this world.

I urge you to contemplate it while you’re able. In these nuts, find your own meaning.

As a great poet once said, nut-thing gold can’t stay.