As I continued to be fascinated by the hands in the portraits of the women, I started breaking the photographs down into their constituent elements. Anything that indicated expression. Eyes, lips, furniture, fashion, and of course, hands. I photographed hands of women in similar poses and similar directions but very different contexts, I found tailor catalogues of the 1850s which had patterns and advertisements of the fashion that were present in the portraits etc. I also started running some searches on the internet with the names of the subjects. For a lot of them, I found long-ish Wikipedia pages from where I extracted a line that I found funny or an anecdote that seemed contrasting to the propriety that the photographs insisted upon. For some of them, however, I found no information.
I took elements that most intrigued me to create a personal collection of collages with handwritten notes. The layering of hands, mouths, eyes, furniture, and fashion was done to create something absurd, abstract and find new meaning by rearranging the original constituents.
It resulted in a publication called Inaccurate Portrait of A Lady, further emphasizing the fact that the portraits were not an accurate representation of who the women really were, realistic as they may be in their photographic format.
Feedback
What’s working:
- Enjoying the layered meanings, takes time to deconstruct the catalogue. The publication is something you can spend time with.
- Handwritten notes work – intriguing, funny, inaccurate portrait – two truths and a lie, not taking it seriously.
What’s not working:
- Messy collages – if you’re trying to draw attention to conventions – less is more
- juxtaposition of contemporary hands, superimposition the eyes and the mouths (outside of the system)
To develop:
- Where do you feel you are developing a new meaning?
- Continue developing the publication form – but what can you strip back?
- Drawing attention to the conventions of the photographs
- Bringing in more historical information
- Recreate the textures of the hands – comparing contemporary hands to the past
- Raphael dallaporta – photographing landmines as products, translating bombs through the language of products – play with and exaggerate
- Viktoria Bischtok – using online material, playing with composition and lighting… interesting details to bring into the book