For this Photography Project as my portrait shots tend to be self-portraits simply for ease of model! I have been re-reading Susan Bright's Auto Focus. This book is all about the self portrait in Photography and I thought I would share artists that interested me and have sparked some ideas.
I will begin with Ken O'Hara who in the 1970s became known through his portraits of people which were 'tightly cropped headshots, printed in full bleed, with no explanatory text.' (Bright, 2010:28) the repetition of the shots made this an interesting art piece. He then did the same with himself through the day for many days, the book was like a concertina and his day unfolded through these shots.
The next artist I looked at was Sunil Gupta who is an Indian-born, Canadian artist who, in his series 'From Here to Eternity' (1995) began when he was diagnosed with HIV. The shots he created in this series were a self-portrait shot paired with a London Gay Club. These images I was really taken with as I like the juxtaposition of his portraits of himself at medical appointments, at home and then showing places that looked closed down, this is a very personal journey but in the images, there are 'links between religion, salvation, colonization and control' (Bright: 2010:42)
I am now torn between an idea similar to Gupta as this would mean five photos of myself matched with five places - this is certainly very simple to do with the right places and the right idea of the message. This would work within the timeframe and https://artfacts.net/artwork/stop/48230I am almost tempted to create colour images to do this. The Paradeis images are also an attractive idea as I could create images that are just in my mind and these would be a strange compilation of images however these are more complex precisely because they have remained in my mind! I think overall I will attempt a project like Sunil Gupta - it comes from a different place, a different experience and that is why is could make for a really interesting series.
References
Bright S. (2010) Auto-Focus: The Self Portrait in Contemporary Photography, Thames & Hudson, London.
Hales Gallery. (2025). Sunil Gupta - Overview. [online] Available at: https://halesgallery.com/artists/91-sunil-gupta/overview/ [Accessed 19 Jan. 2025].
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