FMP_Research

Desiree Dolron

Desiree Dolron’s images have a painted like quality that sets them apart from other images.  This painted like quality makes you think that you are not looking at an actual person but a depiction of one making the image easier to look at because you don’t feel as though someone is staring back at you. The image has a gentle, soft quality but still feels real and touchable. Her work was heavily influenced by the painter Petrus Christus (1410/1420 – 1475/1476) who did various portraits featuring a distinctively pale complexion.

I can see the similarity between Petrus Christu s ’Portrait of a Young Girl’ (1460) and Desiree Dolron’s work in terms of the perfectly smooth skin and the simplicity of the composition. Although the painting has a warmer tone than that of Dolron’s portrait it still has the same feeling of fragility and resilience combined. The dark background in both makes the skin look even paler. they share an impassive expression and an element of self assurance. I like the painted feel of the Dolron image and the impassive nature of the sitters coupled with the paleness of the skin. This  is what i’d like to achieve in my own portrait images.

 

Oleg Dou

Dou’s images explore a region between repulsiveness and beauty. The image is achieved by overly smoothing and whitening the skin in postproduction. The subjects of his images no longer look like who they were. He’s removed the details from their face that define them. Removing all pores and blemishes creating an unnaturally smooth surface which no longer resembles the same texture as the original skin. This makes you perceive the subject differently. It means you can focus purely on the emotion in the face rather than who or what it is you’re looking at. But the emotion is not obvious, its subtle. The subject blends with the background possibly to try and illustrate that it’s hiding its emotions but by removing all the detail in the skin which may distract the viewer, Dou has brought a lot more of the subject’s emotion into the picture than otherwise would have been visible. The inhuman human quality of the subject is something which I want to translate to my own work because of how it affects the viewing of the image. I also like the aesthetic of the technique because of how unreal it looks and how hard it is to believe that what you’re looking at is a real person.

Loretta Lux

Larretta Lux says she ‘Uses Children as a metaphor for a lost paradise.’ Her pictures are partly self-portraits expressing a childhood where she was forced into a communist lifestyle in East-Germany. You can see this in how the child looks to be controlled in her actions and expressions and you can see this in the regimented, uniform beat of her drum. The image doesn’t show a child at play, even though she is holding and playing a children’s toy. There is nothing childlike in how it’s played. The drum seems to feed into her body as though it’s become a part of her and her her life, controlling what she does. Her pictures have a pastel like quality derived from her love of artists such as Valázquez and Bronzino. The composition of the image is very precise. The elbows of the subject line up horizontally and the V pattern on the drum is taken up through the center of the child (reflected in the V of her clothing) and then out through the vertical line of the wall paper.

I want to try and capture that eerie quality which Larretta has got in her images. I’d also like to match the colours of the background with that of the skin of my subject and use the eyes as contrast to draw the viewer into the picture. 

Ruud Van Empol 

Van Empel images are constructs of multiple environments and people. He uses a variety of children shot in his studio and uses different facial features from the images to produce one final subject. This produces gives the subject a slightly odd, intriguing look and feel. he uses the same composite technique to create the background. Wandering through Dutch rainforests in search of fine leaves and branches before tearing them all apart in photoshop and reconstructing them into the final result. Unlike many of the other images and photographers I’ve researched Ruud Van Empels images are colourful and vibrant while still maintaining that intrigue That all the others have as well.

Although Ruud Van Empel has achieved that eerie intrigue which I also want to achieve in my images, I don’t want to photograph a lot of people and would rather just photograph the one and create a composite background for the subject to sit in. Compositing the background will mean that I have more control over the final look of the image and will be able to make the background look how I want. 

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