Photography Project: Initial Ideas

 I have begun to consider ideas for my photography project this term, and so I have two ideas that I would like to explore.  The first idea comes from an exhibition I visited in London of The Face Magazine.  This was a culture magazine that ran between 1980 and 2004, it celebrated the work of 83 photographers.  Some of the photographers' work I knew really well and the images it featured are now iconic images in pop culture. The people it featured could be ordinary people in clubs or the streets and fashion models, musicians and movie stars. (Siddell, V. 2025)

The Face Magazine: Culture Shift Exhibition 20th February to 18th May 2025

The imagery is all portrait-based, so this is great as it adheres with the brief, and I could look at some great photographers' work.  I want to start by looking at the work of Ellen von Unwerth, some of which was featured in the exhibition.  Unwerth uses staged images however, she is very much waiting to see what will happen, what is unexpected so the shots she gets are surprising, glamorous and unusual. Here are two early images of Britney Spears from Unwerth.

Britney Spears (circa 2003) By Ellen Von Unwerth

Unwerth always has glamour in her images; even when they are dirty and grimy, the women are made up exquisitely.  In the first image here, the frame is filled with Britney. The use of the rule of thirds is clear with her to one side and the bend of her elbow creating shape in the image.  She looks directly at the viewer here, challenging the viewer to stare right back. The use of black and white and the lighting create great contrasts in this image.  The second image is from the top down but uses the body as a leading line as Britney is stretched out on the back seat of a car. The contrast of the dark interior and her white body, clothes and hair again work well with the light and contrast.  The elbows and legs bent create the triangular shapes that make the image really work, and this time, she looks away, and it looks as if we are walking in on a private moment. The third image is completely different, with a different look and style.  Here, she looks up, her neck lengthening her body, which is exposed through the design of her dress.  The long string of pearls draws attention to the bareness of her body.  Here, the background is blurred/overexposed, and she is in motion, so it looks like a snapshot.  

The reason I looked at these images is for my own ideas. I would like to perhaps do a series of self-portraits that look like they should be the front cover of a magazine or an album cover.  The shoot could be the series of images from that shoot, like the ones here. Or like the Mapplethorpe images of Patti Smith 

Robert Mapplethorpe, Bob Heimall, Arista Records, Album cover for Patti Smith, Horses 1975

In my second idea, this came to me in a kind of vision, so I ordered a bulk load of doll heads - unsure exactly of how I would need these...

Then it started to come to me that I wanted to create a set of 10 of the major arcana in Tarot, and I had some initial drawings of those ideas 

The doll's head will be mounted on a black backboard, and then I would place this inside a light box to photograph each 'portrait'. This could be quite creative with the heads, and I like the idea of using the tarot cards as a basis.  I think this would need exploring more, but again, I find myself back to Hans Bellmer and his deconstructed dolls.  I like this image with all the pieces; it reminds me that we are just parts that can be easily deconstructed.  The dolls Bellmer created were both beautiful and terrifying.  So strange and deformed; 'These transformations of the doll's body offered an alternative to the image of the ideal body and psyche popularized in German fascist propaganda of the 1930s.' (MOMA, 2024)

Hans Bellmer, Plate from La Poupée, 1936

I like the strangeness of this idea and would like to see how these would turn out - it would be quite a lot of work, one on each one, but it is doable in the time (I think).  I like the black and white shot I took of the heads and want to do more.  I will test this out further before making a final decision on the project 

References

MOMA (2024). Hans Bellmer. Plate from La Poupée. 1936. [online] The Museum of Modern Art. Available at: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/92611 [Accessed 12 Apr. 2025].

Siddell, V. (2025). The Face Magazine, Culture Shift. First ed. National Portrait Gallery.