One Week Sketch

Your assignment is to create a series of 5 portraits that consider portraiture in a creative, original manner. Your images should show an understanding of the conventions of portraiture by using them or breaking them in the quest for originality. Your series should not be purely aesthetic in nature, but should be bound by an underlying idea or concept.

Example Artists: Loretta Lux, David Hilliard, Pinar Yolacan, Helen Van Meene, Nancy Burson, Jake Rowland, Yasuma Morimora, Jason Salavon

Chris Drake

The intention behind these photographs was to create a sense of mystery, distance, and anonymity. I wanted the person’s face to be mostly covered. When viewing a portrait one thing that we all do is pay close attention to the subject’s eyes. We do this to gain a sense of direction and feeling for the person.  I wanted to take that away and force the viewer to confront a stranger. I took the pictures in a way that can tell a story. I focused on lighting and shadows, to emphasize the eeriness of the subject and his postures. There is a reason for only one subject because I wanted the viewer to have a feeling that he/she is following this stranger around and he doesn’t know it. I wanted the locations to be close in depth of field so that it would be difficult to imagine where he is. The only element that unites the locations is this dark, bare atmosphere that puts this stranger in a shadowy ominous place. So in all these series try to bring the viewer into a strange tour that follows a mysterious character in which we cannot find a unifying connection with. The viewer has no control or place in this glimpse of a world he/she does not understand. We step into a deep cave with no lights.

For this specific assignment, I wanted to experiment with and investigate the classic notion of the portrait.  As we discussed in class the other week, portraits technically have no specific definition, although it is undeniable that the term “portrait” connotates something specific, and therefore connotates the presence of specific things (most notably, a face).  With that being known, I wanted to explore what would happen if you started to remove some of these “portrait-esque” characteristics. I had my five models conceal their faces with their hair, and while I had originally thought this would steal the individuality away from the subjects, I was wrong. Each model, for the most part, still has their individuality: whether it’s their hair color, hair type, skin color, or body type, they are clearly not the same. Although, that being said, these women are clearly stripped of something significant.  Because the viewer is unable to make a connection with the subjects face or gaze, they begin to look elsewhere. Viewers might find significance in the uniform setting and uniform dress of the subjects.  These portraits are meant to be a commentary on the individuality of women in a world where individuality isn’t always encouraged, but rather where the generic, commercialized beauty is.

       Humans and nature share a very complex relationship because humans rely on nature but at the same time try to conquer it.  Nature on the other hand, is completely different because it continually gives but depending on the circumstances humans see this as either being wonderful or overwhelming.  My pictures attempt to demonstrate this relationship, showing how easily humans can dominate nature but at the same time can become lost in their surroundings.  In each of my pictures nature begins to play more of a role and you slowly lose touch with the human figure. 
In order to become closer to something that is very different than you, you often take on traits of the object you want to resemble.  My pictures demonstrate this relationship through the use of camouflage to show how humans have tried to adapt to the environment, sometimes successfully and other times not at all.  The last picture in this series demonstrates this relationship to the extreme, where the line between human and nature is almost completely lost.  Which brings me to a question; do you think nature has to camouflage itself to adapt to humans?

One of my goals with this series of photos was to create an obscure and surreal relationship between space and figure. I find this relationship particularly interesting in theatre and dance—the idea of a figure so minute in comparison to the hollow immensity of a stage.  It seems to me that a stage is to a dancer what a canvas is to a painter, and in this series of photos I attempted to realize that very concept. It is for this reason that I chose a blank, muted space for the background of the images. The dancer becomes, in a sense, the paint on the canvas.  I am fascinated by the idea of the many events that take place on a stage. The floor and the atmosphere of a stage seem to capture and contain every note sung, every script read, and every tap of a point-shoe, long after those events have taken place. With this in mind I chose to capture a dancer’s actions in sequence. In dance, just as in life, each movement comes and goes. But each moment, though it has physically ended and visually disappears, stays on the stage in spirit. In this series of photos I have worked to catch those movements that disappear, and capture them visually as a stage does metaphorically.

Time is a constant pressure that affects everyone similarly but in different ways.  Throughout the stages of life time has varied impacts on individuals.  When we are young time is regulated mostly by our parents that allow you have time to play until dinner is ready and it seems like a week is more like a year.  As we learn more there are still restraints on our time, homework, deadlines, school time, but more freedom is granted for us to use our time as we would like.  Then there is work after school and time is what we make of it, as life progresses time seems to move faster and faster until as I imagine it the end of life sneaks right up.  Through these pictures I tried to portray the journey through life from a young age where you are not aware of time in normal sense through to an older individual coming to the end of life where every day is another step closer to the end of life.  Time has changed over the generations, I imagine it was once as simple as night and day unlike now where it seems like the glue that helps our society function.

For this assignment, I shot the photographs with a traditional black and white film camera, then scanned the developed negatives into the computer. The overall theme of this series is looking at portraiture in a new light, where the subject is not seen head on. This is an appeal to untraditional portraiture, and a break away from works of the pictorialist era. I used natural obstructions and angles that do not involve the subjects face. I used the subjects hand and feet in two of the five photographs, strategically placing them in a specific order of sequence. For the photographs in which the subject is obstructed, I chose natural settings and objects that make the facial obstruction appear more organic and less forced. I purposely chose only one full-body shot for this series in an attempt to better represent the idea of breaking away from traditional portraits, where the subject of the photo is seen in a full and clear way.

Without using words, you are able to understand someone else’s emotion.  An individual has thousands of expressions.  These expressions are sometimes hidden within; a person may try to hide their true emotion.  They may not truly express how they are feeling and give a false sense as to what they are feeling.
I looked at this project as an opportunity to show several different facial expressions a person may have, but all at the same time.  By using a simple portraiture project and interlacing the expressions just a single person may have.  The expressions I choose were laughter, anger, being upset and being surprised.  Putting these images next to one another so they create a single greater portraiture truly shows the different ways a person may feel about something.  But showing this at the same time creates a very odd character and one that does not seem like it should fit together.  The character is a representation of all of us at different stages of our lives.

I chose to photograph a single individual to capture many facets of a single person.  I took places and actions that represent the core of who he is and what made him the way that he is to display to viewers who he is.   Each of the places I visited with him on the path to gathering these photos,  was a place that opened a new window into his psyche.  I chose to leave the first photo concerning travel as a very blue photo because of the relaxed and focused mentality that he had while driving.  His obsession with coffee and coffee houses as well as rugby show two very different facets of his personality; harsh and at the same time soft.  As for the grave sites, he is a mason and a veteran, and both graves put a haunted yet determined look on his face.  As a veteran, suffering from PTSD, I wanted to capture him not only as I see him, but as others do.  This series is a conversation of the two faces he shows the world and how I am privileged to be able to see both. 

The underlying idea behind the series of images is the exploration of the face. I thought it would be interesting to photograph a face in studio type lighting, but not in a studio. I used a regular lamp to light the subject’s face and took pictures of different angles within the face. I looked at the relationship between the shoulder neck and lower face. I also examined the relationship between the eyes, nose and hair. Although I took many different pictures of different sections of a face, each of the five images can be put together to create a whole face. Additionally there is a whole face as a reference point.
Just as each section of the face evokes a different mood, I felt it appropriate to process each section of the face to evoke a certain mood. This goes to show that things that may appear so different often go together. Each section of the face has a different exposure, some of the effects make the image look older and some make the images look more modern. The main reason for this is to also show an element of continuity over a hypothetical time line.

I entered into this series with the intention of portraying the many facets of youth.  As we grow up, we grow maturely and responsibly…most of the time. But regardless of what age you are, there is always something from your childhood that is close to your heart. I took the idea that “everyone is a child at heart” is visually exemplified it through one prop: SPRINKLES. I chose sprinkles because it is reminiscent of birthdays, cakes, Mr. Softy Ice Cream truck on summer days, and most of all the little surprise your mom puts on the dinner table when it’s time to make sundaes on Sunday.  I instilled in my models the question: What would you do if you were a five year old with a 4 pound bag of rainbow jimmies? They did the rest.  Ideas about waterfalls of jimmies overhead came up, but we had limited resources. Ideas like rolling around in sprinkles, sprinkle fights, and the classic “SPIT AT YOU” moments stood out best to be portrayed on film. This series of portraits was a collaborative work between my initial idea, and the youthful minds of four very able college students.