As a part of my response to thew Journeys and Pathways title I wanted to explore topics such as street art and how it has evolved over the years. I also wanted to experiment further with editing my photos by hand and using different mediums such as paint, coloured pencils and cutting/ re sticking things together, this was in order to show what usual everyday streets in Jersey could potentially look like if more street art was incorporated. Therefore, when I was searching for artists and photographers to make case studies on and develop from I saw some of Heath Ledger’s art and photography work in amongst these. I have always really loved his acting work as he was very talented but until recently I wasn’t aware that he was also a keen artist.
‘In the documentary I Am Heath Ledger, the actor is painted as something of a Renaissance man. He was an obsessive photographer, who loved taking stills, then drawing all over them with paint, markers, and even nail polish. Here are rare images of the actor’s artwork shown in the documentary’
Vanity Fair
Ledger loved taking photographs, capturing stills of the London Underground, the contemplative faces of former girlfriends, and deserted Australian landscapes. His artwork was always very experimental with what he chose to capture and then later add elements over the top.
‘It’s a fascinating, little-known side to the actor, who was celebrated in life for his performances in films like The Dark Knight (for which he earned a posthumous Oscar) and Brokeback Mountain. The documentary delves into the life of the man behind-the-scenes, a restless creator who loved to moonlight as a photographer, then give those photos a personal touch.’ Heath would often take a marker pen, nail polish or paint to any image to give these ‘personal touches’ His addition brightens up any image, this is especially present in the image of the subway station. Instead of having just a regular subway station, he has added yellow streaks to the flooring and small additions of blue paint to the bare walls.
Vanity Fair
‘His friends were similarly artistic. In the documentary, Ledger’s best friend Trevor Di Carlo accompanies him on all his filming escapades, snapping rare images of the raffish star in his downtime. You can see those images above as well; one captures Ledger as he leans in the middle of the floor, camera in hand. In another, he’s running down an empty street in Australia. Ledger took the latter photo and marked it up, scratching in ghostly stick figures as though they too were running with their arms outstretched on the wide open road. The result is kinetic and wild, like much of Ledger’s personal artwork. It’s the same expressive quality that carried over into Ledger’s work as an actor, cementing his reputation as a multi-faceted movie star—one whose work is still worthy of discussion and admiration long after his untimely death in 2008.’
My favourite of Heath’s artworks is the one of his maybe girlfriend’s face and the wide open road in Australia with the figures, which is talked about above. I find the woman’s expression to be captivating and the marks around her seem to frame her in perfectly. The spot of colour on the forehead I think is a great touch and brings everything together with the colours around her and in the background are now also on her face, instead of just basic black and white. I also like the out of focus background with the woman in black and the pink painted wall, it makes everything tie together but also keep the attention on the woman’s face. To make a response to Heath and develop my photos the way he has I plan to take some random photos in town or just portraits of my friends and experiment with them, just to see what happens and where it takes me.