Experimental Portraiture

These are images that i created during a  college project called experiment portraiture, i highly enjoyed this project using many creative techniques I had  a lot of inspiration from nick knight, Damien Blottiere, Bec -Wonders and many more.    

Portraiture

Part One 

The History Portraiture 

A portrait before the 19th Century was mainly of extremely wealthy people but mostly people who were important and had a name for themselves such as the arch bishop, army commanders, and barons. These types of people mainly had a portrait painted of themselves to prove their existence or to show off their wealth as they were they were thought to be important.

  To have your portrait painted it was a very expensive process due to materials needed to paint the portrait and also the time that was consumed whilst painting the portrait, it could take years to create a portrait of someone before the 19 Century as people change and times change and they needed to somehow make that painting look like the sitter. The materials that were used to create a painting was soot, glue, water based ink, pencils, and charcoal.  

Elizabeth I of England, The Armada Portrait

Artist- George Gower

This portrait of Queen Elizabeth, she’s displayed as powerful, proud and in control. In the portrait you can see her crown which symbolizes her wealth, power and her control that she has over the country her position in the monarchy. It’s also believed as her faith in the church and her views on god and religion.  Also in the portrait she is wearing lots of expensive pearls, gems and rubies are all over her dress the sleeves on the dress are rather large it would take a hell of lot of material to make something as astonishing as that all of these things show that at the time she was a very wealthy and important woman who wanted to show off her wealth her belongings and how dominant and just how powerful she is.  

In the background of the portrait there are two paintings on both sides of Queen Elizabeth. These both symbolize the war with the Spanish Armada, the one to the left is the English in battle and the one on the right is the Spanish Armada in battle with the English. There is a clear contrast between these two paintings, the English in battle’s painting has smooth white sand and their ships are tall and strong whereas the Spanish painting the seas are harsh and the colours are more disheartening its quite obvious what she is trying portray just in these two portraits that the English are stronger wealthier and winners were as the Spanish are not.  You can also see that she has her hand on top of globe which symbolizes her power over the countries she ruled and taken over. 

Part 2

Photography and the Portrait

In the book Camera Lucida, written by Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes. Roland describes to  the readers about this one image of this mother who recently passed away he calls it calls it the Winter Garden photograph which was taken in 1898, when his mother was 5, Roland was looking through many photographs of his mother and says he is ‘looking for the truth of the face I loved. And I found it.’ (page 167). Personally I think what he was trying to say was he was looking for a natural image of his mother natural in way that the world has not been able to affect your personality yet, as you grow older so does your personality you become a totally different person. He wanted to see an image of his mother where nothing significant had been able to affect her yet.  He wants to explain how personal and powerful photographs can be to an individual. To him the effect of that picture of his mother means the world to him and that to any other person to see that photograph would ruin the personal value. 

Photography as opposed to a painting is that a photograph is objective and a painting is subjective. A photograph is a true representation of a person without any manipulation. A painting on the other hand can be easily changed as most of the time they aren't a true representation of the truth for example the portrait of Queen Elizabeth.  

Part Three 

The Alternative Portrait 

Orlan is a French artist who lives and works in Paris, New York and LA. She creates all sorts of works; videos, sculptures, and even performance art. The Reincarnation of Saint-Orlan, a new project that started in 1990, involves a series of plastic surgeries through which the artist transformed herself into elements from famous paintings and sculptures of women, these works were filmed and broadcast in institutions throughout the world, such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Sandra Gehring Gallery in New York. Orlan's goal in these surgeries is to question the ideal of female beauty. When the surgeries are complete, she will have the chin of Botticelli’s Venus, the nose of Jean-Léon Gérôme's Psyche, the lips of François Boucher’s Europa, the eyes of Diana   

Looking at Orlans work has opened my eyes in a way to see how far people will go to achieve greatness, she is probably one of the most outrageous artist I've ever come across and to be honest I cannot honestly say whether I love her work or I hate it. I guess it’s all about understanding the concept and whether you agree with it or not. The more unique and the more your work has to say for its self the better it will be I think her work is remarkable in that sense because it’s shocking, it’s different, it gets people talking and asking questions. I may not understand her work fully yet but I think with this line of work you have to have an open mind. Although, she’s been criticized for her work and even been called name’s like the ‘devil’ I think that this is just proving her work to evoke passion and true emotions, and if an artist can do that, it shows that they’re doing something right. 

Part four

My Distressed Image 

This image is a self-portrait; firstly I chose the ugliest and hard faced photo I could find of myself, I’m a very awkward person when someone tries to take a photo of me I can assure you nine times out of ten I will either refuse to smile and just stand there or do something stupid, I hate the idea of someone being able to see me vulnerable and try to look nice for a photograph I find it so much easier to just stand there and look obviously ugly that way it doesn't matter if they try and judge me.  

The red in the image symbolizes the love that has fell into my life and has changed me as person, you can see there is more red then black in the image which shows that there is less sadness in my life now, but it’s still there. I think I put the black drawing over my forehead subconsciously because people always say I am my own worst enemy which I know is correct. I’m a very private and secretive person I hide behind funny and sarcastic characteristics that’s why I have drawn on top of the image to hide my face away I made it so you can still see my eyes because people say the eyes are the gate way to our souls. People also say that my eyes are cold; does that make me a cold-hearted person?  At one time in my life I did believe this for a while but in time I began to learn that this was a lie, I’m not cold hearted I’m just a tad strange I’m awkward, I’m weird, I’m secretive and I over analyse everything just like I’m over analyzing this image right now.  

Summer Diary In Spain

These six photographs were taken in Mijas

Gibraltar's only runway

           

These six photographs were taken in Gibraltar

These four photographs were taken in fuengirola, bioparc

these two photographs were taken in fuengirola town center

these three photographs where taken in torreblanca.

The Diary Of A Mad Man

Duane Michals is a self taught American photographer his work is most known for its

innovation and artistry. Although he’s worked in different fields of photography, 

He is most known for his photo-sequences, His photo stories involve sectors taken

 from his life, made up stories and reality. I guess in most cases at the time his

 work was seen as different and daring some may say special but personally his work 

is just not for me I find it hard to connect with it and some of his images I find 

rather pointless.    

"I Dream The Perfect Day in New York" - Duane Michals

The  narrative  of this story is well, the perfect day in new yourk. 

This is my insperation photo because the person is travelling around the city 

and even though i dont really like the photo sequnce in its self, i like the fact 

that it's based on travelling around the city. 

My Work

I've named my photo sequence "the diary of a mad man" because I've taken photographs of a biker doing stunts and tricks on the road whilst riding, I know it’s not much of a diary but instead of words I've used pictures to capture his every move. The way i Have set my sequence out is very different from Duane Michals  i wanted to make it look a bit more modern although i love black and white images i just didn’t think black and white suited my images that's why I have done them in colour, and I've put my images on to single  A4 and A3 pages so you can see each image more clearly and so you can see the stunts in much more detail, I like to think that how I’ve set my pages out gives the illusion of a on-line book and how that makes the connection with the word diary.