Hello, welcome to this page. In this section you will get a glimpse of the progress I make to reach my final photography piece. I had a wide range of alternatives to pick from however I ended up choosing 'Disguise' as my fundamental idea. I ended up picking 'Disguise' because it had a lot of potential and different ending points, I knew there was a lot of techniques I could experiment with including photo manipulation using a digital software to alter features and that was one of the areas in photography that I have always wanted to improve my abilities on but I never had the opportunity to do so. Using 'Disguise' as a starting point for my photography project was also substantial because it meant that I could ameliorate my artistic skills when thinking of techniques on how to conceal a persons features.
Some Ideas On Disguise:
To start, I just wanted to experiment this idea of distorting an image with photo manipulation via a digital software by corresponding to the photo on the left. I began by taking photographs of my little sister then using the app 'PicsArt' to overlap images on images obscuring the original version of her face.
My most favourite photograph I took from the first experimenting collection must be this photo on the right, In the photograph you can see my sister in a red jumper that is almost engulfing the whole of her face, in the bottom middle of the photograph you can see that she is forcefully pulling the jumper away from herself. What this represents is that she is trying to break through and show the real her but there is a barrier that is blocking that from happening. If I were to do this photo shoot again I would maybe position my sister differently to intensify the meaning of the image.
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Interesting Photographers:
Inge Morath and Sual Steinberg
So to actually begin doing the project I started off by gathering some inspiration to kick start my own ideas. I began researching key artists / photographers who did a similar thing to what I'm doing now, those which included of... John Stezaker who merged images of two disparate portraits together creating a new deformed version of a human making the original people unrecognisable, Kensuke Koike who bought old photographs from flea markets and distorted them in his studio hiding certain features of the faces and giving the pieces of work a new meaning, Viviane Sassen who used light and vibrant colours as a mask to hide the faces she took photos of.
Those were only a few examples of many photographers that influenced me however, Inge Morath's and Sual Steinberg's Mask Series stood out to me. These were two artists that resembled the direction in which I want to move forward in with my project. The earliest photographs begin with Steinberg in his own apartment, simply modeling paper-bag masks that reflect variations of his own alter ego. That made me come up with a few of my own ideas as I also want to include a personal meaning behind photographs that I take. For instance going against Steinberg's original idea for his Mask Series and sharing my insecurities instead of showing a fake persona. Or like Saul Steinberg, reflecting variations of my own alter ego onto pictures that I make.
On the right side of the screen you should see a compilation of Igne Morath's and Saul Steinberg's work to give you an idea of the pieces that have inspired me. I noticed that gradually Steinberg's masks started developing and evolving from plain self portraits into more of a improvisational variety of detailed personas with unsettling manic smiles hinting towards elegance and grandeur.
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To the right you can see I have picked out a black and white surreal portrait picture from the Mask Series with Saul Steinberg, taken by Inge Morath from 1962 titled 'Group Portrait with Masks'. I think this photograph represents an upper middle class family from in between the 60's and 70's as parents usually had a lot of kids in those decades and the paper-bag masks could potentially appear as the family trying to present themselves in a certain way, hiding their true selves with materialistic things. When I first looked at this picture my eye was drawn to all of the masks that the family were wearing. I like the way Steinberg uses a different approach on each mask so it adds more meaning to the photo as a whole.
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Kensuke Koike
Another talented artist that stood out to me whilst I was doing research was Kensuke Koike, a surrealist artist. Koike discovered his passion in Milan 2012 when he found old photographs at an antique dealer which he then pursued to create original images out of these photos giving them new meaning and a different set of prospective explications. Men had arms for legs and legs for arm, completely shaping these found objects into something unique. I was fascinated by Koike's works of art, specifically his pieces titled 'No One Knows' that were made in 2011 using the 'contact print' technique for testing negatives. This has given me a lot of ideas on how to move forward with my project. I'd like to experiment with portrait photographs I take and re-shape facial features transforming the photos into something new.
On the right you should see two surreal portrait photographs from the 'No One Knows' collection made in 2011 by Kesuke Koike. These are more abstract like images contrasting to Inge Morath's work. The 'No One Knows' collection are two portraits of friends, every frame represents a section of their face and mantains their facial characteristics however in the end when the frames are put together they reveal the never seen or dreamt aspect of themselves.
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Douglas Gordon
Douglas Gordan is a Scottish artist whom I decided to do further research on. I was immediately drawn to his work from the 'Self Portrait of You + Me' series. Gordan would collect photographs of famous musicians then burn parts of their features to make them less recognisable. This has inspired me to do something similar to Gordan.
To the right I have linked a YouTube video showing Douglas Gordan's Exhibtion so you can see how he presents his work to the public.
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Assessment - Disguise
To the left of the screen you should see a photograph created by Lucas Blalock however, this is more of an unusual image that you could come across by. By the composition we can clearly see this photograph has been reworked using photoshop as what looks like to be a head has been turned into a few squiggly lines floating above a dark blue jacket that has been rested on a chair. There is no body connected to the deformed face yet Blalock added some hands underneath the head to maybe manipulate the image and make it look as if there is a bodiless person sitting on the chair. I think this image belongs to the genre of portraits however it does go against some of the conventions we usually expect from portrait pictures like seeing features and qualities clearly in comparison to Blalocks portrait.
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I think Lucas Blalock had to take two big steps to make this photograph, starting off with having a photograph of some type of background. Blalock's image looks like it was taken in some sort of studio environment. Secondly he used a digital software to add the face and hands to make the image more interesting. If I were challenged with making an image in response to a picture like this I think I'd follow the same steps as I'm assuming Blalock did. I would take a photograph of a plain background with a chair in the middle of the frame then take another photograph of a persons hands and face then deform it.
Looking at Blalocks piece makes me feel empty because there is a person with missing features and an unrecognisable head symbolising that it's not whole and is still looking for something or somebody, the hands are in a resting position, dangling down which exemplifies unhappiness and misery. Their body language indicates that they want to keep to themselves. Blalock also uses a lot of cold tones in his photo which also intensifies the sadness and emptiness that it makes me feel. A set of questions I would ask Blalock if I ever had the chance to would be... "What was your inceptive idea around making this image?", "What response did you want to get from the audience, did you want them to come up with a meaning or did it already have one?", "Where was this picture taken, my first initial thought was that it was in a studio?", "What editing software did you use to photoshop this image?"
After researching Blalock in depth I realised that all his images are light hearted and humorous for example his 'photoshop fails' are intentional to create a relationship with the audience making them relate to the work. In the end I think the way this image Blalock took relates to disguise is because it is a portrait photograph which tries to hide/deform the subject in some type of way.
My favourite image I took out of all of these must be the one of both of my friends which I’ve photoshopped to have animal heads this is my response to Blalocks piece as I use simple photoshopping techniques to cover a persons face. For the image I googled two animal faces and just added it on top of my friends faces creating a surreal type photograph. If I were to do this again I think I would switch more much unnoticeable features like one of my friends having lizard eyes instead of the whole face being an animal.
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