Critical Appraisal: Object and Body

OBJECT

Lost and Found Still-life

In my project, I focused on the issue which is bothering millions of people but obviously it is those millions people fault – pollution.

People throwing away things which are still useful and not broken. It happens because of that we are living in post consumption generation, where we are not paying much attention to objects. If it is something broken we just throw it away and buy new one instead of trying to repair it somehow. In some situations we can call it laziness.

I found something very interesting in Edward Westons photographs of peppers. They are quite sexual but at the same time really soft and so normal because it's just a vegetable..,

In the picture ‘Pepper No.30’  way how the lighting and shape of the object are working together shows that it’s not just a random vegetable bought in the market place. 

Chris Jordan’s series 'Running the Numebrs: An American Self-Portrait' is good perfect responding to my project. 

This series is based on massive production and pollution. How one 'small' invention change 
to massive dump.

Metz+Racine

Inspired me with tea cups. Simple but strong enough; as a sculpture, and as a good material to photograph.

I started to collecting thrown away tea cups 2 years ago.

First approach to this project was totally off the mark. I was just taken picture, looking like really poor still-life photograph.

I've changed everything. I decided to focus only on one object from the picture.

So I’ve choosen tea cups, because I’ve found a big amount of them thrown away on the streets - still ready to use.

Reshooting

My main inspiration is taken from the cartoons. Where landfills are shown as a massive hills or even skyscrapers. Or from just simple scrap-heap.  

Final image focusing on broken cup, which is an very clear example of uselessness. Cups in the shade according to landfills/scrap-heaps. As a small mountains of them they will grow up with the time, if people won’t stop throwing them away.

BODY

PORTRAIT

Martin Scheller

He fascinated me by his close-ups. Not to mention that there are 'so' famous people in his portfolio. Thing is that by dealing with subjects, lighting, production and styling he got portraits about totally different person, which people can't know from cinema, newspapers. 

For example portrait of Angelina Jolie

This 'brutal' close-up captures the actress and her legendary beauty.  Through her focused eyes and firm expression, the energy and determination in her private life.

Color Awards 2010

I took some inspiration from few portraits from Color Awards 2010. Is about the lighting and softness accompanied by white color.

My model is a healer, so I wanted to represent his softness and spirituality.

For me spirituality is something about religion. In my research I went through some pictures of soulful people such a Mother Teresa and Mahatma Ghandi. There were plenty pictures of them helping people or praying. But the strongest ones, which were showing everything about their spirituality and in the same time hiding something, were pictures with their eyes closed.

Final Image

Firstly I wanted to focus on my models eyes. I’ve used 5x4 camera, to have really shallow depth of field.

When I finished my shooting and went through my contact sheet I saw only one picture which meet my expectations.

It was taken between scenes. My model was getting ready that time, and it was his time and the my moment to take a picture.

In the near future I would like to take more pictures of him.