Wednesday 29 April 2009

Self initiated project

"Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon" - Woody Allen

At first just after the briefing on this project I thought that it is a great opportunities to incarnate one of my old ideas. For the long time I have been thinking that interaction with completely unknown people on a street would be very useful for the level of my favorite documentary portraiture. I had a talk on a tutorial with Eva and was pretty sure to start working on it. But those thoughts on a theme of loneliness in cooperation with sudden interest in multiple exposure experiments and our upcoming gallery show caused a birth of a new, unexpected update.

Do you like to be alone? I do, well not all the time of course but there are some moments when I desperately need this quiet dialogue with myself. The Narrative project made me understand that the most successful photographs I took alone just camera and myself. After that I have been thinking about loneliness and researching it. I am not an individual person who loves walking alone a lot of people do the same. My camera and ipod help me to focus on the process while shooting. But what to others do to feel themselves separated? Bingo! Double exposure, portrait of a stranger, loneliness, everything can now be connected in one!

Michael Kenna, Antoine D'Agata, Alan Khlug, Roberto Kusterle, Wynn Bullock and especially Diana Arbus, plus some of young unknown artists from internet, inspired me to make double exposure portraits of people being alone in town. First exposure would be just a usual portrait containing his/her face looking into the camera. O second layer I would ask my model, while staying maximum still, rise up a tool of their solitude in front of his/her face. Double exposure automatically lets the second layer be as transparent as you wish. All I needed to do is to experiment with exposure times of two shots and go taking photographs.

After unsuccessful tries in Luton town centre I decided to go to a bit more positive place.

It was a lovely weather on Friday the 3rd of April when I was building my roots through Brighton on Hove. After four hours of walking I have won a favor of 9 out of 10 people. Success!

Second trip was a bit less successful but I am really happy with such a piece of experience.

Here are some of the images I have done:

Kit: Bronica SQ-Ai, 6x6, 80 mm, F/2,8, Fuji Pro 400, Photoshop CS3, Lightroom, Silver Efex Pro.
















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