Creative Portraits

Below are some INSTRUCTIONS AND INSPIRATIONS for you to experiment with creative portraiture outcomes.

YOUR BLOG POST/S

Create a Blog Post called ‘Creative Portraits‘ and complete the following:

Choose a 1-2 styles from the below experiments.
Research the inspiration behind the particular style and….
Recreate your own edits in the style you have chosen (using or existing portrait photos or take some more).

Experiments:

DOUBLE/ MULTI-EXPOSURE: layer or merge two or three images into one portrait- View Tutorial Here
JUXTAPOSITION: Place two images together to show contrast / similarities / symbolise something. This can be two portraits or a portrait juxtaposed with an object / environment / abstract image
MONTAGE: Select an appropriate set of portraits and create a montage of layered images in Photoshop as an A3 document.

DOUBLE / MULTI-EXPOSURES

Double or multiple exposures are an illusion created by layering images (or portions of images) over the top of each other. This can be achieved in the camera settings, or on Adobe Photoshop by creating LAYERS and then using BLENDING OPTIONS and OPACITY CONTROL, but also by erasing through parts of layers to reveal parts of other images.

Artist have used these techniques to explore Surrealist Ideas and evoke dream-like imagery, or imagery that explores time / time lapse.

Man Ray:

Alexander Rodchenko:

Claude Cahun:

Idris Khan:

Since 1959 Bernd and Hilla Becher have been photographing industrial structures that exemplify modernist engineering, such as gas reservoirs and water towers. Their photographs are often presented in groups of similar design; their repeated images make these everyday buildings seem strangely imposing and alien. Idris Khan’s Every Bernd And Hilla Becher… series appropriates the Bechers’ imagery and compiles their collections into single super-images. In this piece, multiple images of American-style gabled houses are digitally layered and super-imposed giving the effect of an impressionistic drawing or blurred film still.

Lewis Bush, Trading Zones:

Tiffany Sutton:

Michael Betzner:

More ideas:

JUXTAPOSITION

Juxtaposition is placing two images together to show contrast or similarities. For inspiration look at some of the page spreads from ED.EM.03 where pairings between portraits of Henry Mullins and Michelle Sank are juxtaposed to show comparison/ similarities/ differences between different social and professional classes in Jersey mid-19th century and early 21 st century.

For inspiration look also at the newspapers: LIBERATION / OCCUPATION and FUTURE OF ST HELIER produced by past A2 photography students and the publication GLOBAL MARKET by ECAL.

LIBERATION / OCCUPATION newspaper 25 April 2020

FUTURE OF SY HELIER newspaper 18 Sept 2019

Becque á Barbe: Face to Face: A portrait project about Jèrriais – the island of Jersey’s native language of Norman French. Each portrait is titled with a Jèrriais word that each native speaker has chosen to represent a personal or symbolic meaning, or a specific memory linked to his or her childhood. Some portraits are darker in tonality to reflect the language hidden past at a time when English was adopted as the formal speech in Jersey and Jèrriais was suppressed publicly and forbidden to be spoken in schools.

Juxtaposed with portraits of Jèrriais speakers are a series of photographs of Jersey rocks that are all designated as Sites of Special Interest (SSIs); important geological outcrops that are protected from development and preserved for future public enjoyment and research purposes. The native speakers of Jersey French should be classified as People of Special Interest (PSIs) and equally be protected from extinction through encouraging greater visibility and recognition as guardians of a unique language that are essential in understanding the island’s special character.

Nikita Pirogov:

Alicja Brodowicz:

Unknown artist…

PHOTO-MONTAGE

Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image.

Try using textures and frames to add to your process ; you can find some pre-saved examples here

M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\Resources\Frames and textures PHOTOSHOP

The roots of this process is in Dadaism and political artists such as Hannah Hoch…Known for her incisively political collages and photomontages (a form she helped pioneer), Hannah Höch appropriated and recombined images and text from mass media to critique popular culture, the failings of the Weimar Republic, and the socially constructed roles of women. After meeting artist and writer Raoul Hausmann in 1917, Höch became associated with the Berlin Dada group, a circle of mostly male artists who satirized and critiqued German culture and society following World War I. She exhibited in their exhibitions, including the First International Dada Fair in Berlin in 1920, and her photomontages received critical acclaim despite the patronizing views of her male peers. She reflected, “Most of our male colleagues continued for a long while to look upon us as charming and gifted amateurs, denying us implicitly any real professional status.”

Russian Constructivism

Russian Constructivism was the last and most influential modern art period to flourish in Russia in the 20th-century. Looking back in 1924, the painter Kazimir Malevich wrote: “We have drawn two conclusions from Cubism, one is Suprematism, the other Constructivism…” Like Suprematism, Russian Constructivism was formed in 1914, before the October Revolution in 1917…

John Stezaker :

John Stezaker: Is a British artist who is fascinated by the lure of images. Taking classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations, Stezaker makes collages to give old images a new meaning. By adjusting, inverting and slicing separate pictures together to create unique new works of art, Stezaker explores the subversive force of found images. Stezaker’s famous Mask series fuses the profiles of glamorous sitters with caves, hamlets, or waterfalls, making for images of eerie beauty.

His ‘Dark Star’ series turns publicity portraits into cut-out silhouettes, creating an ambiguous presence in the place of the absent celebrity. Stezaker’s way of giving old images a new context reaches its height in the found images of his Third Person Archive: the artist has removed delicate, haunting figures from the margins of obsolete travel illustrations. Presented as images on their own, they now take the centre stage of our attention

Kensuoke Koike:

Thomas Sauvin and Kensuke Koike: ‘No More, No Less’
In 2015, French artist Thomas Sauvin acquired an album produced in the early 1980s by an unknown Shanghai University photography student. This volume was given a second life through the expert hands of Kensuke Koike, a Japanese artist based in Venice whose practice combines collage and found photography. The series, “No More, No Less”, born from the encounter between Koike and Sauvin, includes new silver prints made from the album’s original negatives. These prints were then submitted to Koike’s sharp imagination, who, with a simple blade and adhesive tape, deconstructs and reinvents the images. However, these purely manual interventions all respect one single formal rule: nothing is removed, nothing is added, “No More, No Less”. In such a context that blends freedom and constraint, Koike and Sauvin meticulously explore the possibilities of an image only made up of itself.

Jesse Draxler:

Ole Christiansen (Danish): A special preoccupation has been music photography, portraits, but also – often strongly graphically emphasized urban landscapes which is reflected in his portraiture . Ole has over the years provided pictures for a myriad of books, magazines, record covers, annual reports, etc.

MORE PHOTOMONTAGE CLICK HERE

The 3 EEEs

In addition to complete the work listed above, you are expected to show evidence of the following three EEEs on the blog for the work on Creative Portraits

EDITING: For each portrait shoot produce a contact-sheet, select and adjust your BEST 3 IMAGES in Photoshop using basic tools such as cropping, contrast, tonality, colour balance, monochrome. Describe also the lighting setup using an image from ‘behind the scenes’, ie. key light, back light, fill light, use of reflectors, gels etc.

EXPERIMENTING: Complete at least 2 out of these 3 experiments on DOUBLE/ MULTIPLE EXPOSURE, JUXTAPOSITION, AND MONTAGE (see more details below). Make sure you demonstrate creativity and produce at least 3 different variations of the same portrait experiment.

EVALUATING: Compare your portrait responses/ experiments and provide some analysis of artists work and images below that has inspired your ideas and shoots. Use this Photo-Literacy matrix: