As the first project of my degree in contemporary photography, I have been asked to create a still life portrait of myself, without me appearing in the image.
As part of the task we were given an example of still life, a painting by Hans Holbein called 'The Ambassadors' 1533, and a brief definition: The careful arrangement of certain chosen objects to tell a narrative or portray a given theme.
Therefore in order to create my still life I had to decide on a series of objects that represented myself and my personality.
This provokes many philosophies about what ones self is, who are we? and what makes us what we are?
There are many ongoing debates and arguments about nature vs. nurture, however I decided that this delves too deep in a way, and that a better approach would be to tackle self identity, personality.
We are all two identities, the self which is observed and the self which observes itself, the you in your mind and the you in the minds of others.
In modern society our surface personalities are often judged quite harshly around consumerism, the clothes we wear, the styles we choose and so forth, but we can also express ourselves through this medium as well, which is something I often do.
This picture was taken under low lighting conditions, using a red rock salt lamp on the floor as my base lighting, my camera was mounted on a tripod, using an ISO of 200, a 30 second shutter speed, and an aperture of F9. I shone a regular fluorescent torch on the pocket watch for 20 seconds of the exposure time, to draw the central focus of the picture to it.
I am often lost in escapism, looking back over past era's through rose tinted glasses imagining a different society, a different world. My medium for this escapism is generally through films, and I have a particular love for the film noir, for their unique cinematography, and mastery of social dilemma, hence the 1940's fedora hat, and the low key lighting choice.
The coat is a winter coat with a slightly eccentric design, it was the first expensive item of clothing I ever bought, mainly for its elements of Japanese styling to it, and have ended up living in it every winter since. As I have been an avid lover of anime, and Japanese cinema, for their repetition of questioning self identity within their cinema. I chose the red oriental curtain as the back drop as well to compliment this.
The stand I used for the coat and hat is quite an unusual item, I simply wished to prop up the coat and hat like they would sit on a mannequin. The only thing I could use was actually a sculpture I kept from my year 0 course at UCA, it was a tower constructed from rough iron pieces with plaster cast hands wrapped around it, and a light bulb being held at the top. Its meaning was to show mankind's struggle to master technology and progress it as high as possible, but the plaster hands got more distorted and less human the closer they got to the light bulb atop the tower. It was a concept based on the Greek tale of Icarus. I would have liked for it to have been clearly shown in the picture, however I could not effectively frame it without the image being too vague and cluttered, so unfortunately it was sacrificed as just a stand and has become quite an unknown item in the picture.
The pocket watch was chosen for similar reasoning, my tendency towards escapism, and my fascination with previous eras, however it is the one item that is always with me, which is why I used a torch as an additional light source to draw focus to it.
As modern societies attitudes towards how we dress is so judgemental and so conforming, it is awkward to dress completely how one would want to. As we are raised being told what to wear, and are not fully comfortable with ourselves to break free from these constraints. Which is why, whether I am dressed completely as I wish and free from societies constraints, or simply dressed to blend in for the simplicity of a mask, I at least always have the pocket watch, as it is an external item that represents my internal self.
