At the beginning I wanted to take pictures using a piece of wood that I cut with the laser-cut machine to create a shadow on a body.
Then I decided to do this pictures just as a personal project.
I've took the pictures in the studio using an analogue camera Mamiya 645.
I had some troubles to had a the shadow strong enough. I wasn't using the right lights.
But I manage to have a big shadow to use on the body.
This is a small version of the laser-cut.
contact sheet I
I've showed the pictures to Mohini for the critic group and everybody said that these pictures was better then the other ones that I took for the subject.
And I prefer them too.
contact sheet II
I've choose tho print this one a little bit reframed size a A3 :
And the next ones size A7 will be on the wall next to the big print:
So now I have the pictures, but I still need to think about the project and the references and I'm might try to take new pictures to see if I want to try new things or not.
I made this hanging test for my pre-exam and after talking with Martina I decided that I want to use the sublimation to print on a fabric.
There is a really thin fabric like a veil, Maria used it and she hang her print in the space.
I really like it and I think I'm gonna do something similar.
I use to use a veil on the body for my photography so that could be a way to keep the veil in my practice but in a different way.
REFERENCES
Lucien Clergue is a great photographer that I've always admired for his nude photography using the light to create stripes on the body.
Ed Emrich is photographer that I(m following on instagram for a while, he use projection on body.
Jean-Philippe Lebee is a french photographer, he does a lot of really different images but I really these two.
Oral December
For the subject Weird and Wonderful I had trouble to find something I was happy to go with.
The first idea I had for my project was to take a picture of a woman on a bed smoking a cigarette, using inspirations such as Nan Goldin, Gregory Crewdson, Edward Hopper, Richard Tuschman. I wanted to create an ambiance ‘cosy’, ‘intimate’. Create a setting like a Hopper painting and let the spectator to create his own story with the picture.
I had trouble to find a bedroom like I wanted, but I decided to run a first series of test using digital camera and natural light.
I realised that, even if some of the pictures are quite nice, it’s not what I want.
In the same time for a personal project I took pictures in the studio using a piece of wood on which one I cut an ornamental pattern using the laser cut machine.
I always like to use the light to create shadows and for this time I wanted go a bit further I the process by making the design I was going to use for the shadow.
The body become closer to the sculpture and the shadow is sometimes really sharpen and is covering the body like clothes.
I like when the body disappears and create something else.
I choose 5 pictures of the roll. I want one big and four smalls.
One of the ideas for the print could be to make a canvas using illustrator to play around and having a big canvas with all the images on it.
One of the other ideas could be to do the same thing using a canvas but then by using sublimation print on a fabric. Print on a really soft and thin fabric to recreate the same softness that I have on the picture. And I could suspend it in front of a wall or a window.
I’ve made prints on the smooth mat paper but when I’ll be back at school on the beginning of January, I’ll use the sublimation to print on the fabric.
Sublimation
So, I decided to print my pictures on a fabric by using the sublimation process.
I've made a file with the 5 pictures disposed like I wanted them and print it like this, by doing this, the fabric become the canvas.
I hang suspend it in a plastic stick just from the top and I leave the bottom floating to create a soft movement.
To suspend it I use fishing line so we want see the string and that doesn't break.
I really like the result, it's soft and I've never tried to print on something else than paper before and I have to admit that I like the result very much.
Critical self-review
At the beginning I wanted to take a picture with an atmosphere like in Hopper’s painting, but the tests I’ve made are really different and I didn’t get the atmosphere at all.
However, I had to learn how to use a digital camera to realise the test, so this is going to be helpful for later if I don’t have time to do analogues pictures and process them. Although I still prefer film photography, it was nice to experiment with something different.
For the first project I wanted to take a picture of a naked woman sitting on a bed smoking a cigarette, but I had a lot of trouble to find a place that I really liked, and when I did find somewhere to shoot, the model cancelled twice for the first tests and I was starting to be short on time. I managed to do some tests but not in the right place.
After all that could go wrong has happened, I decided to give up on this project and to focus on another idea, the very first idea I had at the very beginning.
I wanted to work with shadows because that’s something that I always do and really like but for this time I tried to push myself further into the project and for that I made a pattern on Illustrator and I went to the lab to laser cut it in wood. This way I was able to have the pattern I wanted to project the shadow on a body.
For the photoshoot I booked the studio and borrowed lights, but the lights weren’t strong enough to have a strong shadow, so I used a Harry light to have the shadow I wanted.
Turns out that having the shadow where I wanted it to be on the body was harder than I thought but I managed it anyway. I have chosen to use an analogue camera, the Mamyia 645 because I like the format and analogue is important to me, the results are so much softer, and I think in gives a big presence to the image.
For a while I thought I didn’t have any references but that wasn’t true, we’re always influenced by images we saw during our life, so, I did some research to find an artist that could’ve inspired me, and I found Lucien Clergue, Ed Emrich and Jean-Philippe Lebee.
I choose to print on a fabric by using the sublimation process because that’s something new for me and the result is softer than on paper, and it create a movement really delicate and smooth. I can say it’s a real revelation.
At the end no matter the struggles that I could have, I was happy with the final results and learned that you have to trust your instinct and being organised is essential.
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