The Body Of Whom

My Exhibition, after weeks of preparation the name, location and hanging is all decided.
The title is ....

The leaflets made to hand out and promote the exhibition...

For the booklets for our exhibition we will have numbers put at the bottom of the image with a booklet showing that number and the work assigned to it. We are writing some information about our work for the viewers to know a little more. 

Here's mine ....

We all have an identity; our identity is what makes us unique. There are many categories of what makes us who we are. Everyone is different if it’s either the body or personality. “The Body of Whom” is the title. Covering the persons face to make them have no identity and unknown to anyone. So does our face determine who we are? Make us individual?  Using different mediums in a creative way to hide who this person is makes my work both mysterious and comical. Our face is distinctive and without it we wouldn’t know a person’s mood or thoughts covering it lets the viewer project a narrative onto the person.

After lots of deciding about the amount of images and what type of image i will use in my exhibition I have decided on using six images all in portrait format and picked the best, the most comical and mysterious images i have created. 

Here is the layout of my images...

I have decided to do six images as i didn't want to many or too little as i did have many to choose from. I printed them between A4 and A5 size as i didn't want them too big and been over powering. I put the two end images at the edge as there the only two in a chair and then makes the set seem more symmetrical. 

Images Taken

This image below was a little experiment to see the effect of the final image. I printed the photo I had taken and turned the image into an origami shape. Then photographed the origami shape on a black background, so it will stand out the more. I love the result as it is intriguing and unusual and is the only image that i have shown the complete face. I like the crumpled effect which makes the image more distraught.

Images Taken

Here are some image I have taken in the studio, but I have experimented with different techniques similar to those of Alma Haser. I have used the effect of the kaleidoscope to distraught the face but still making it slightly noticeable but making it look overall unsettling. I took the images then edited the face in Photoshop and copying a triangle shape into a hexagon and then placing that over the face and making it slightly bigger to cover the entire head. 

In the above image I added objects to the face to make it relate to the person in the image showing a little bit more about her personality. But after experimenting with this it didn't work out very well and didn't give off the effect i wanted. 

Alma Haser

 Artist Alma Haser has created a series called "Cosmic Surgery" where she combines the traditional portraits with the art of origami to create unusual portraits that almost seem to come from another time and place in the universe. To create this effect, Haser photographs a person then prints multiple images of the subject's face, folding each image into a complicated origami structure. She then rephotographs the portrait with the origami placed on the persons face. The final photograph is both unsettling and intriguing, and I love the fact to the viewer they have to think about the image and can see the creativity and work gone into it. 

My work is somewhat similar as it hides the face and at the same time distraught's the features. I want to do this in my work and create something unusual. 

Images Taken

The two above image I added two different images together to great a sureal effect and trying to cover the face in the process. The second one I feel looks better but i was experimenting with the overall look and how if shows confusion in the person and the covering of the face. 

Theses image again was experimenting and seeing how layering and repeating the images look. I do like the images overall but I don't think it shows what I want it to and shows sadness and lost in my opinion. Maybe that's due to the colour. 

This again is cutting away the face and experimenting with cutting the body apart to see if the surreal effect works. 

These two images was made to show how these strong bold lines are covering the person face, hands and feet and hows thing stop us expressing what we want to. The use of the blue is in relation to the Klein blue and how its a feminist action. 

Images Taken

These images I have featured the same model in all, all taken fashion based and in the studio. I have edited them with a flower effect covering the face and used different colours. I did this as I needed to cover the face as that is my aim but also to add a bit of humour into my images as it looks like she has a bunch of flowers pushed in her face. Some of the images have work better than others as it looks like the have been blown over the woman. 

This image is lightly different to the rest as i used a different flower setting to create more separate clear looking flowers. I used different colours to create a different effect to the others. I think this works well but not a humorous as the others. 

Stephan Gill

In the series of work called Hackney Flowers by Stephen Gill  he has again used his east London surroundings as the inspiration for his work. This time he has collected flowers, seeds, berries and other objects from various locations in Hackney, pressed them in his studio and photographed them alongside his own photographs. I am looking at this work in relation to mine as through experimenting i found adding flowers to cover the face created a more feminine feel to the images. I don't think at all this is he intention in Gills work but i think as mine are of women in a studio and fashion based it creates this affect. So I am looking at Gills work in relation to flowers and photography and how he combines them. 

Charlotte Caron

The paintings by artist Charlotte Caron explores both the ancient tendency to humanize animals and the dreams of humans to transform into animals.  Caron’s uses acrylic to paint over the photographed portraits to make them look like animals. I am using Caron's work as research as she hides the identity of the person in the photograph making the viewer project a narrative onto a person and this is what i want my work to do. Even thought the face is covered there seem to be a personality shown through the paintings. I do really like the composition of the portraits such as a straight on or slightly side view of the person cropped closely, this will be to show the painting but I think it makes you connect more with the view the closer cropped the image is. 

Paolo Roversi

Paolo Roversi’s soft and romantic style gets feature in an issue of Vogue where the Italian photographer shoots leading model Arizona Muse. I am adding this work into my research as it is fashion based images in which i am going to use in my images. Our work has a similar style in which there women, fashion based, and studio based. I love the use of the overlaying of the images and enabling you to see that he has overlayed the images due to the layout and the boarders. I want my images to have the strong, powerful, women, feminist feel to them. 

Maurizio Anzeri

Anzeri uses old found portraits of people he doesn't know and stitches on the image and makes intriguing embroidery patterns. The images have an old antique feel to them in contrast to the bright shimmery thread overlapping. 
Quote from Anzeri:
“I’ve been collecting old photographs for a long time. A few years ago I was doing ink drawings with them and out of curiosity I stitched into one. I work a lot with threads and hand stitching, and the link to photography was a natural progression. I put tracing paper over the photo and draw on the face until it develops. Sometimes the image comes straight away, suggested by a detail on a dress or in the background, but with the majority of them I spend a lot of time drawing. Once the drawing is done, I pierce the photo with a set of needle-like tools I invented and take the paper away; the holes are obsessively paced at the same distance to convey an idea of geometry. When I begin the stitching something else happens, drawing will never do what thread will – the light changes, and at some points you can lose the face, and at others you can still see under it.”

This I found interesting about his images:
“There’s a dynamic in what happens between the photograph, the embroidery on top, and you standing in front looking at it. I try never to completely cover a face, you can always still see the face underneath. There are no rules other than I always leave one or both eyes open. Nothing is bigger in my head than a face, it’s the best landscape we can look at. It’s all to do with the centre, the body. Like a costume or other identity, my work reveals something that is behind the face that suddenly becomes in front. It’s like a mask – not a mask you put on, but something that grows out of you. It’s what the photo is telling you and what you want to read in the photos."


The style of this work is somewhat similar to mine due to hiding the identity, the media is just different, I would love to try it as I think the effect of covering the face but still be able to see it underneath.

Images Taken

Here are some images with similar intentions as to Urs Fisher and John Stezaker who I have just previously researched. For Fishers work I did add objects over the face but made it slightly different as I used the objects to cover the entire face. I have just fruit and flowers in these images as I thought the circular shape will cover most of the face.

In this particular image I showed the eye as I thought i might add abit of a story and even with this you still don't know who it is. 

I really like this image as it allowed me to cut a hole in the image where I could show the eye and it still make you the view interact more with the image but you don't know who it is. 

These images are in relation to John Stezekers work as i had added a landscape over the persons face.

Some of these image work but I don't think there as thought out as Stezaker's work as in where the facial structures are in relation to the landscape. When I first saw Stezaker's images I did think that the landscape what where the person wanted to be and thinking of and I still think that now when I see these images.

This is proberly the only image looks like the landscape is the face in my opinion as i made the shapes of the building juin the the edges of her face. 

John Stezaker

There is one piece of work I am looking at in relation to my project that work  is called "Moving Image". His work features males or females in a black and white portrait from a 50's film still and has glued over the top a postcard of a landscape. The alignment of his work is key, for example this image below of the couple about the kiss. The use of the cliff as the jaw and the foliage as the eyebrows and even the light difference between the people and the background is the same. There are many juxtapositions in his images such as colour/ black and white, male/ female and portrait and landscape.

I find Stezaker's work really imaginative and clever to make such similar shapes from the landscape as the face. I wanted to add his work to my research as he does hide the identity of these people and I find the style of the mix media of putting another image on top of the original is clever. Although the style is different to my work the use of covering the face is the same I guess our intentions are both the same.