People are things, creating a relationship between people and things. An interesting subject yet a bit odd. After looking at other photographers work I threw myself in to this “deep” world and started photographing.
Patty Carroll
Before I started on this assignment, I looked for inspiration. Patty Carroll intrigued to me as the most interesting photographer for this type of assignment. She did portraits but took the identity of the women by covering the faces with “things”. As I’m also a big fan of portraiture I kept this as my inspiration an created my own portraits.
No identity
These three pictures all have their different idea. The first one with the book is because I’m a huge bookworm. I’m addicted to books and therefore it was my very first idea to change someone to a book. I wanted to use an old book with a worn-ish cover. I found a book at the library that fitted my description and used this for this portrait.
Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul. — Joyce Carol Oates
The portrait with the leaves was an idea that was in my head for a very long time. On the way to the uni I picked up some leaves that were the same colour. Because of the autumn the leaves are heaving this beautiful brown red-ish. I taped the biggest leaves to glasses because they were to heave to stay attached to the skin. I disguised the glasses with the other, some smaller leaves. To cover the face as much as possible I used a lot of leaves and place them the chin and shoulder area. I didn’t want to see any face so I’ve let my model look diagonally away from the camera with as result a interesting and yet colourful picture.
The third picture is an idea that is also from a longer time ago. I’ve done a photography course at The Hague University and during this course I searched for inspiration. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the photographer anymore but it had something to do with taking away someones identity. I can still remember that I found that picture a bit disturbing and scary so I chose to create a less scary and chaotic image. I used two different greens and because the colour got dark with the flash, you can’t see the face through the foil and that was exactly the idea for this portrait. I did want to take the identity from the model but I wanted to have a clean and “simple” picture.
Walking image
During our trip to Hull we visited an exhibition at the Red Gallery. The way of presenting the work was very interesting. The artist created big wall posters and had a perspex image hanging in the middle of the room. You could walk around it. One of our classmates was standing behind it and I said to her to stop moving and shot this picture.