I completed a test shoot today for a new project! Very exciting it was the standard location and lighting test, I won’t give away anything about the series of work itself because I want to write about it properly when it’s finished in a few weeks, but I will say that it was great to get the lights back out.

Another couple of photo walks done which you can find here and here!

Until then, I’ve come across a few bits whilst gathering together info for the photo blogs I’ve just published. One of which is a blog from last month that I haven’t released on this website but it is very relevant to my tableau images and what influenced my ideas, here’s what inspired me:

“Rego, it’s her work that depicts animals in human roles and situations; the Fantasia and Dog Women series’, the latter in particular in which there is an underlying psychological sexuality through a feminine viewpoint (I’m reading this from a university sketch book btw) as women bay at the moon:

“To be a dog woman is not to necessarily to be downtrodden, in these pictures every woman is a dog woman; powerful. To be bestial is good- it’s physical. Eating, snarling; all activities to do with sensation are positive.” – Rego

I’d recommend that you check out her snow white series as well, I won’t go into her style of paintings as from this I mainly took influence from her concepts; the sexuality, the power and bestiality. For this project in which I explored rego’s work i had been working towards a narrative based image about  a woman who was attracting a mate: i’d taken to the whole animal attraction thing and combined that with Helen Van Meene’s images of awkward pubescent girls wanting attention so I’d created the idea of a “peacock woman” who used her colours, amongst other things, to attract a male.

This was after my first narrative idea in which Hopper was my main influence. His paintings reflect his views on American life, urban and rural settings- sometimes combined, and creates effective use of contrasting light and shadow to portray an atmosphere, often playing symbolic roles in his images and can be compared to cinematography of film noir. I especially took from the careful placement of human figures and the attention he paid to geometric design, the people interacting with their surroundings displaying their emotions of solitude, regret, boredom, and resignation. They almost look like film stills- the characters positioned and captured in moment and scene.

All of these aspects combined with the influence i took from photographer hannah starkey and her images that capture moments of the everyday experiences of routine and in relationships: the people quietly observe one another often evoking an atmosphere of tension. This is lead to my first tableau image Breakfast:

“A tableau piece inspired by the quiet, everyday moments between people in their relationships. In this staged situation, I have explored the concept of a stagnant, empty relationship and how the character’s attitudes have changed towards each other in time. The notion of how differences in routine soon merge into one, continuous state of solidarity is hinted at: even as they grow distant they are still tied together by their repeated, everyday routine.

My tableau ideas are all based around people in their relationships and how we attract each other in the first place.”

True story, more to come and these practitioners still influence my ideas now- i’m hoping to shoot a lot more now i’m moving and have locations and people available. I should hopefully have my website up and running within these next couple of weeks too which is exciting  anyway, i’ve touched on this topic before here: http://thefocusproject.co.uk/2011/05/02/curly-wurly-3511/ but didn’t go into as much detail especially with Hopper, I’ve also written about photographer Sarah Small who is another tableau photographer.”

Well, I hoped that explained a bit more about my work until next time! x