Carolle Benitah Inspired Photoshoot

I believe my attempt at recreating Carolle Benitah’s work with the theme of identity and place was successful as you can see clear similarities between my work and the work of Benitah, and I think I executed my ideas clearly by using inspiration of Carolle Benitah but adding my own ideas and methods to the images. I decided to colour over the eyes in each image as Benitah, herself often does this and I believe it adds a sense of curiosity and mystery as to how the individual has changed throughout their past purely through their appearance, and removing the eyes removes the emotion from the face, which allows the viewer to focus on the blank expression and the change in appearance, rather than emotion or personality.

In terms of identity and place, I think my images represent this theme well as it displays the past of both my relatives and myself, and how this formed my identity. I decided to also show the past versions of my parents as they also helped to form my identity, and it also shows how their own identity has changed from their past.

Francesca Woodman Inspired Photoshoot

I decided to study Francesca Woodman’s work for this project as she focuses on the struggle of mental illness and especially depression. Myself and my family, as well as millions of others, have struggled with their mental health in different periods of time which is why I believe it is an important part of a person’s identity, as it can affect both physical and emotional aspects of someone’s identity. I decided to use Woodman’s common method of long exposure, I feel like this represents mental illness in the sense that it produces a ghost-like movement and some may say living with a mental illness is almost like a ghost living in the present world, as they can feel excluded and lonely.

I think my attempt at recreating Francesca Woodman’s work was successful as similarities can be identified, the main similarity being the use of long exposure to give the photographs an uneasy atmosphere. I also used Woodman’s theme of the monochromatic filters for the same reason.

There is also visual differences between my work and the work of Francesca Woodman, such as the natural lighting used by Woodman is slightly softer and not as bright. Her photos also contain a lot of empty space, whereas the only empty space in my images is in the sky.

If I was to re-shoot these images I would have done them in an empty building with natural, soft lighting in order to achieve the same sort of shadows that Woodman’s images display. I also believe the use of the negative space would have added to the ominous aesthetic of the images, so I would change my location in order to shoot these images again.