Portraits

Reflection:

For this project, I wanted to incorporate one of my short stories because I think my written self is my most authentic self.  I think my social self is so censored, whereas art and writing are places where I feel free to be weird, honest, and even brutal.  I tried to make myself look like the protagonist of a short story I wrote about a real relationship I have with someone.  Obviously, our relationship is somewhat strained, although I do care about him a great deal, and I also think the story works perfectly as a portrait because many of the difficulties in my life stem from this difficult relationship.The "me" character is made of mica, so I tried to mimic that in an abstract way with metallic eyeshadow and photo editing.

Portrait Contacts

Amalgamation

Still Life Final Picks and Reflection

For my still life photos, I wanted to avoid cliches and find a way to make the ordinary appear extraordinary.  I also had to do something different from my last project, so pictures of plants were a no-go.  At first, I thought I wanted to just take pictures of different arrangements of hair, because I like images that are a little grotesque and "grungy", but it was very hard to take focused pictures of hair with my camera.  I also found most of the focused ones I did take rather boring.  The one I did really like was the "Get over it" picture shown here, which was created using scotch tape and my hair. For the other photos, I found white objects (including paper, which I crumpled to form crevices and planes that light would hit in contrasting ways) with the intention of creating black and white photos with odd shapes, textures, and shadows.  The results are surreal and I'm happy with them, although there are some I definitely prefer over others.  My favorites are the top photo and the "Get over it" photo.

Still Life Contact Sheets