The big (almost life-sized) color photographs Jeff Bark showed late last year at Michael Hoppen’s

Jeff Bark, “Untitled (Dusk),” 2004–05, C–print.

London gallery had the grand scale, studied composition and chiaroscuro effects of Caravaggio and Georges de La Tour, but the luminous nudes that glowed from their depths were decidedly contemporary.

A woman lazed on a rug in a dimly lit living room, one leg raised on a cushioned stool, one hand dipping into a bowl of cookie dough. A fleshy male figure, his head lost in the shadows, sprawled in the dirt alongside dead chickens and fish traps, his thick thighs flung invitingly wide.

Frankly erotic, marvelously controlled and full of sly wit, the series, titled “Abandon,” was as accomplished as it was sensational. Although Bark, 43, has had a successful career as an editorial and advertising photographer in New York, the London show was his gallery debut. “Woodpecker,” a cinematic series that involved the creation of a rural swimming hole in a Brooklyn studio, delves further into dark narrative and bad behavior, this time among a group of adolescents. Hoppen plans to introduce it at Art Basel this summer.