To what extent can I manipulate my own appearance and s6ll present an image that can s6ll be classed as a portrait of myself.
Cris6na Otero cap6vates us with these zoomed-‐in self-‐portraits. Using fruit as her inspira6on in this series en6tled TuA FruA,
Caryn Drexl’ kiss of death’
Ryan Michael Kelly ‘miss behave’
Alex Lucka
Dimtri daniloff
Cris6na Otero
Cris6na Otero has amazed viewers with zoomed-‐in self-‐portraits. Using fruit as her inspira6on in this series en6tled TuA FruA. This series of photographs is based on make up and ordinary and tropical fruit, the colours that she uses with the make up helps bring out the over all colour of the fruit making it more intense and vibrant. She has taken very close up portraits f mainly eyes and mouth. With a plain background and in a well lit studio. The photographs look flawless and nothing appears to be out of place. Otero’s photographs are very bright, happy and cheerful . The portraits themselves may seem too perfect for some people and wouldn’t be what they like even though that the subject maRer is very unusual and work well with the pale flawless skin. The viewers may mistake this as a computer pain6ng and not a photograph I like how perfect the photograph looks I will try to use sweets and crystals to try and create something that looks so perfect and flawless. I also like the way the colour of the fruit is one of the main focuses of the photograph.
Dimitri Daniloff
Damiloff was originally aspiring to be a mathema6cian, however when he was 26 years old he got a camera as a giU and from then on his intui6on has taken over and he has become a photographer with a wide range of focus points from magazine adver6sement and editorials to mostly photo edited photography.’’ My main inspira+on comes from my intui+on. I just need to do what I do. I like to mix new graphic technology with my obsessions. I like to work around the idea of body mo+on / sculpture the confusion between male and female and hidden weaknesses.’’ Damiloff in a lot of his photographs uses models just as if they were mannequins that could be posi6oned in any way that he thinks is best. A few of his photography projects have an atmospheric feeling of everything being fake and plas6c that gives an inorganic feel to it. Those photographs appear dead and without any model emo6on which also makes the photographs cold and in some ways dull. In some of his work he highlights the body conscious areas of the model by making it the focus of aRen6on by adding different things on to it like gliRer or confeA. I want to try and recreate the similar feeling of fake posi6oned photographs where my portraits don’t look natural and are to edited. I will use crystals to exaggerate the areas of my face that I consider to be not perfect and by adding crystals make them more beau6ful even though I had to add to the natural beauty to make it look nicer than they were before.
In this set of photographs I was exploring self portraits while making them look sweet and innocent . I was using different objects that I think are beau6ful and sweet such as sweets and rhinestones. i was inspired by a fashion photographer Dimitri Daniloff who covered the models faces in different gems to make the photographs look more high end and unusual. However I wanted to instead of making the photographs look unusual I was aiming for a beau6ful innocent look, that the white gems create sprinkled all over the face. I also looked at a young photographer Cris6na Otero, she was using different kinds of fruits to be the main inspira6on of the make up in her self portraits. I was inspired by the colours that Otero’s photographs had, the colour of the fruit made the whole photograph pop and come to life. I was aiming to achieve the same effect by using different kinds of bright sweets instead of fruit. By using sweets I'm keeping in with the sugar coated portrait look with having loads of objects covering my face that everyone likes. AUer I finished the idea I think that the photographs all turned out good apart for a few that didn’t have good composi6on because the glue that I used to s6ck on the sweets didn’t work which meant I had to lay down and put sweets on parts of the face that were the flaRest. However the photographs with the gems were by far the best because the gems stuck to my skin and I was able to posi6on them were I wanted in order to achieve the maximum affect.
Marcel Van der Vlugt
Koen Hauser
Alison Brady
Pich Urdaneta
Elene Usdin ‘ la chambre’
Meg Wachter Lilya Corneli ‘ coccon’
Pich Urdaneta Pich Urdaneta is an Venezuelan photographer who mostly photographs people in different environments with out of the ordinary objects with in a studio, he has done a series of photographs to depict the rela6onship that people have between food. In those photographs he has the models faces covered in different food items some that could be found in the fridge and some that are very disgus6ng but are edible. For the ‘the fridge’ series he quotes ‘; we are the same… we are food’ he is comparing us to nature and that we are in the food chain even though we are at the top there are s6ll animals and even humans that eat human flesh. His photographs have a plain background and are very well lit to show off the maximum effect and detail, the models are different shapes and sizes which shows that there is no excep6on we are s6ll part of the food chain. I have been inspired by Urdaneta’s photographs and how focused they are on just the model with food that I have decided to try and achieve similar simplicity with a twist by photographing the images in front of different backgrounds and then edi6ng them to over exaggerate the key points that are disgus6ng to get a stronger response from the viewers. I will try different Photoshop techniques to achieve gruesome photographs that challenge the viewers comfort levels
Evalua6on AUer I have taken and edited photographs with different food items on my face to try and get a reac6on from the viewer , I realized that I need to go and explore different objects on face to get different reac6ons. Layering the photographs created a new portrait that looked even more disgus6ng than before. I think that making the photographs highly contrasted and layered allowed me to achieve a beRer effect. I also no6ced that the portraits like more scary and gruesome when they were in black and white rather than in colour. That’s why my developmental portraits are all in black and white. I also had to saturate the colours of some portraits while keeping the light to the minimum to the the muddy zombie like look that I was going for. I think I made the photographs have the similar atmosphere to the photographer I was inspired by who is Pich Urdanet, in some of my photographs I have kept them in coloured and just lightly edited the skin to make it look flawless and so that all the focus of the viewer would be on the food that’s on my face. If I was to do the same set of photographs again I think I would take more 6me with selec6ng my foods and also I would have done my make up to compliment the food rather than just having minimalis6c make up. I think that if the make up was done to match the food the photographs would have turned out more interes6ng and each thing would have complimented each other perfectly.
Robert Mapplethorpe Ren Hang
Nan Goldin Joshua Hoffine
Photographer: unknown Title : save the children
Andres Serrano, Fatal Meningi6s, 1992,
Joshua Hoffine Joshua Hoffile quotes” horror allows us to express repressed feelings ,such as terror and rage. Horror constructs an environment where these taboo feelings are sanc6oned” -‐ interview with Sublime Rush 2008 “ Horror films are modern fairytales” -‐ interview with Whiskey Greg,2009 Hoffile hid his horror photographs for years and con6nued doing wedding photographs and CD covers. In his horror series he explored childhood fears and how they van be illustrated in an innova6ve and unique way. Hoffile in some of his photographs reenacts the scenes from childhood stories and fairytales, however some of the photographs move away from childhood fears and looks at teenagers and adults fears because they are more graphical and they have no childhood symbolism. Hoffine’s photographs appear to be extra clean and everything is in its place I get the feeling hat even the emo6on is staged, it doesn't’t look natural but fake. I think that the subject maRer has a horror impact on the viewer however the models expressions could be less fake. The vibrant colours of all the images suggests to me that the monsters in the images are the ones that live under the bed, they are always there but out of sight and the child or adult can get on with their life as normal even though the fear could come back when ever it pleases it creeps up to the people when they least expect it . I will try to make my photographs clean and focused on t he horror part, make it the main focus of the photograph. However I will try to use less bright and a smaller range of colours because I believe that the very colourful photographs in Joshua Hoffile’s series don’t live up to the expecta6ons.
Ren Hang
Ren Hang is a photographer, poet and a magazine editor. His work has been displayed widely in china and other countries around the world. Hang’s photography style is unusual and shocking because of his chosen object maRer. His photography challenges the boundaries of taste and boundaries in genera6ons because the new genera6on may see his photographs as art, however the older genera6on may see it as inappropriate and say that it shouldn't’t be displayed or classed as art. I think that Hang photographs things that are unusual and disturbing but, they are also things that everyone is familiar with. This means that it shouldn't’t be a surprise to us the viewers seeing pictures of those things. Hang also combines body parts and other everyday objects to try ad achieve a shock reac6on from the viewer. I have been inspired to create my own disgus6ng photographs by how Hang has achieved such shocking photographs in such a simple way. I will; try and replicate that by combining photographs of different portraits with different or similar subject maRer to create something that is familiar but also disgus6ng and doesn’t look eye pleasing and tasteful.
Evalua6on
For my second set of exploring self portraits I used food to create gruesome looking self portraits, in this set I took a more developed approach by having a costume and a theme with contact lenses that made the look more scary. I was inspired by a set called ‘childhood fears’ by Joshua Hoffine. Hoffine explored different fears that children grew up with and then he went on exploring adult fears. I was amazed with the graphic photographs that he created while s6ll having a normal everyday scene. This set of photographs relate to the fear of the undead which most people are scared off that’s why I think that photographs are stronger and are more symbolic than the first set with more development and though that is behind the idea. I had to get the studio ligh6ng perfect to create a horror film feel . Most of the photographs are underexposed with strong shadows to achieve the depth and contrast that I was aiming for. Even though I think these photographs were a success I think that if I had more 6me and more props I would have aRempted to do more fears that adults may have, because I think there are more unexplored fears that are unusual and s6ll scary. Similarly if I was to do the set of photographs again I think I would explore more than one fear and maybe have a beRer background to create a scarier atmosphere.
Final Outcomes for the project
Evalua6on
I have explored different objects on my face to enhance the atmosphere of my portraits. I also wanted to try and surprise
the viewers by pushing the boundaries of taste from the disgus6ng site to the too perfect and sweet side. I was inspired by different portrait photographers and their techniques , however I wanted to explore different camera seAngs and ligh6ng to make my photographs more interes6ng and unusual. AUer I have done the food on my face I decided to explore different objects that would make the photographs appear more scary and that also explored fear. I was inspired to explore the fear factor by the photographer Joshua Hoffine, who had done numerous series on different fears that children and adults have. I liked how he placed the scary factor in everyday places that most people would think twice about it being associated with that par6cular fear. I think that my zombie like portraits have achieved a similar feel to Hoffine’s photographs. AUer all the disgus6ng photographs I decided to show the too perfect side where everything was sweet and covered in preRy diamonds and crystals. I was inspired to do the fruit portraits by Cris6na Otero Who did the tuA fruA self portraits. I liked the colourful contrast between her make up and the fruit that she was using, I decided to try and replicate that with different kinds of colourful sweets but without the make up because I wanted my face to be a plain canvas for the different sweets. I think that I should have added just a bit of make up to match the sweets because in some photographs that would have complimented the colour of the different sweets. My last set of portrait photographs were with small crystals struck around my face to bring out my strongest features such as the jawline , lips and eyes and areas that I'm not comfortable in highligh6ng I wanted to try and match the photographs of Dimitri Daniloff who liked exploring different areas of the human body and show off the hidden weaknesses within the model. I think that the small crystals worked well to aRract aRen6on to areas of the face that some people hide behind make up, the crystals expose the true beauty because they were applied in those places to aRracted aRen6on to the areas I'm not comfortable in highligh6ng. I think that the photographs turned out very well and I like the effect that I achieved using Photoshop to enhance the colours of the photographs to bring out the crystals and make them stand out more. When I have explored both sides of portraits the disgus6ng and too perfect sides I have come to a conclusion that manipula6on the face with things that people don’t like such as porridge, oil will make them react to it more stronger compared to if the face was covered in sweets. Also when I made my face into something that most people are scared off their reac6on is also stronger. However the zombie look didn’t shock them as much as food therefore I think that to get a reac6on from a viewer food should be used in an unusual way.