Self Portraits
I've recently been looking at the relationship between artist/subject and audience along with the value put on certain forms of artwork (personally and financially). After presenting my current work and research to my tutor group last week I decided to focus a bit more on how to turn my ideas and concepts into pieces of artwork. I have several ideas I'm planning and working on but am keen to improve my photography skills over this next year.
I've been in contact with several models that I'd like to work with throughout 2017, but before booking a professional model I wanted to experiment with lighting, makeup and styling to build my confidence behind the camera. I decided to use myself mainly as I could control the shoot from every angle: styling/wardrobe, makeup, poses, lighting, photography etc. but I'm also looking into my role within artwork and moving from model/subject through to artist. Through this process i've become very interested in "becoming/being the artwork". I initially thought this would only be possible through performance style work but I'm really enjoying experimenting with self portraits (both in the form of photographs and paintings along with looking to other media in future).
As a professional model I'm often booked for 'art nude' or dance style work so I really enjoyed experimenting with various 'fashion' styles (or at least different bits of clothing). I really liked the idea of combining a 'formal' look (different suits) with crazy and impractical heels. I also found that wearing wigs was a lot of fun because it was more creative in terms of styling than what I usually do but it also distanced me from focusing too much on myself and made me look at myself as a model rather than letting my personal body hang-ups get in the way of my experiments.
The above three images are some of my favourites I took on the day. I really like the mixture of glamour, nudity and casual styling. I find that 'glamour' images can have a very certain look to them and that is often due to the high-key style lighting. I wanted to mix glamorous makeup and, in some cases, erotic posing (such as the middle image) but with lighting that is often used for figurative 'art-nude' or 'beauty' styles. For these images I went back to using my natural hair rather than wigs but am glad I only took a few in this style otherwise I think they could have easily become quite 'samey'.
I've recently done a project based around John Hilliard, where I put on an exhibition in the Leeds Art Gallery. I took elements from his work such as black and white, shadows and highlights and the idea of using a triptych of images to create a set. I think these three images take on elements of his work whilst still being quite different. I really like how they come together as a set of three.
The above images are other favourites from the evening. I enjoyed setting myself the challenge of having a very minimal set-up but using my body and clothing/shoes/wigs as props to bring the shots to life. As in the other images, I really like the mix of glamour and high contrast lighting. Although I shot a few nude sets I think the addition of clothing makes them much more interesting as overall images.
I'd definitely like to do a lot more self-photography as well as working with other models. I'd like to do more 'location' (outdoor) work but I think the weather is too cold to try this until the spring so I will try some more studio based photography until then.
