Lizard Frenzy
4th of January 2009 (Sun), 02:04
I'm thinking of doing a series documenting my body and all of its surface details. I have a theme in mind, but I'm sort of perplexed as to where to begin, since I don't photograph people and I certainly don't photograph nudes. Anyway, here are a few key things.
1) I need to look ugly. But the pictures have to be aesthetically pleasing. I want to photograph everything, from the lice in my hair down to the fungus in my toemails. And every picture needs to look ugly. It needs to present my body (and by extension ALL bodies) as sagging and decaying bags of flesh. But there also needs to be beauty IN the ugliness. There needs to be a clear them of "this is what I am. This is ugly and nasty, but it is an extension of life, and that is the most beautiful and precious thing there is."
2) All ultra closeups. I'm not a brave man, and I try to avoid having people seeing me in awkward positions. I am fine with them seeing my NIPPLE in awkward positions, but as long as there is no context showing that that nipple belongs to me, I can still show people the ugly parts of me without having them see me as being ugly. This is non-negotiable. Maybe I'll be able to reveal myself more through art in the future, but this will be my first series, and I've never done body photography before. So I think it's understandable that I want to give ita try before I start to truly reveal the real me.
3) I tried a few test shots and they came out worthless. I think I know the general direction I want to take. I think I want this to be a black and white high ISO low light series. I want the images of the body to be ugly, and I think it fits to have there be a lot of noise. And I think that doing black and white helps the theme. Who is it that said that "when you take a picture of a scene in black and white, you capture its soul"? That's what I want to get here. I want ugly imagery, but I want it simplified. Boiled down to its essence. For example, I once saw a picture by the awesome James Nactwey. I forget where it was, but it was like a simple shot of a dude with a gun walking through the grass, and in the grass he was stepping over a single human skull. That's what I'm going for. I don't think that picture would have worked as well in color. I think that in addition to interfering with the stark contrast, that color would have diluted the theme. He simplified the image, and doing so probably amplified the emotional impact. That's what I want to do, in a way. I plan on taking pictures of my ugliest features, but I don't want color getting in the way of the message. I want the message to be that I am you, and that even at my ugliest I am like you just a bag of skin. This is not a personality series, it is a body series, and I want to simplify it. No (or at least reduced) distinctions between black or white, just the body simplified.
4) I think that a large reason why my test shots turned out crap was because they were boring. Sure, the lighting was all wrong. Out of focus, etc. But that can be fixed. I was more concerned with the potential of mere composition. I want to work with lines, wrinkles, curves, and the distinction between lightand dark. My test shots enabled me to believe that I can work through those issues. But the big problem was lack of a compelling subject. I was just taking pictures of my bdy. Wrinkles, hair, etc. I was able to get intersting composition in the folds of my skin, but I lacked anything to provide context. There was no real subject, they were basically just like pictures of the desert. At most, shape studies. But the problem is that my body BECOMES the landscape. And without anything IN the landscape, the test pics just sort of seemed barren. They just didn't seem to have the right "pop" that would have resulted from having a tick or something crawl over my body. But the REAL problem is that having a tick crawl over my body would have added some pop to the the pictures, but also would have compromised the theme. A tick would have made the tick the SUBJECT, and that would have compted with the entire purpose of doing the series in the first place. I do not WANT to take pictures of ticks, I want to take pictures of the human body. A tick (or a skittle, or a lima bean) would have been distracting and I think would have betrayed the entire point of doing this. But I'm still left with a real problem. And this is a BIG problem. And it's the same problem that I often encounter when doing REAL landscapes. Often I see a scene that looks pleasing to my eye. But when I photograph it, it comes out boring. And I don't mean from a lighting perspective, I mean from a standpoint of general composition. I wasn't looking at a specific subject. The ENTIRE LANDSCAPE was the subject. But the pictures just don't work without something in or on the landscape that stands out. But the problem is that having something stand out like that often changes the entire emotional or thematic tone of what I was trying to accomplish. And that is a BIG problem here, because that could render this entire project moot.
So I'd appreciate any advice on how to proceed here. Anyt ideas on how I could make my pictures stand out without introducing anything that just doesn't fit. Becausereally all I'm gonna be shooting is closeups of flesh and hair. And I really have no experience with close-up macro work, and a lot of my landscapes turn out boring simply for lack of that "pop". So I am really treading into new territory here.
1) I need to look ugly. But the pictures have to be aesthetically pleasing. I want to photograph everything, from the lice in my hair down to the fungus in my toemails. And every picture needs to look ugly. It needs to present my body (and by extension ALL bodies) as sagging and decaying bags of flesh. But there also needs to be beauty IN the ugliness. There needs to be a clear them of "this is what I am. This is ugly and nasty, but it is an extension of life, and that is the most beautiful and precious thing there is."
2) All ultra closeups. I'm not a brave man, and I try to avoid having people seeing me in awkward positions. I am fine with them seeing my NIPPLE in awkward positions, but as long as there is no context showing that that nipple belongs to me, I can still show people the ugly parts of me without having them see me as being ugly. This is non-negotiable. Maybe I'll be able to reveal myself more through art in the future, but this will be my first series, and I've never done body photography before. So I think it's understandable that I want to give ita try before I start to truly reveal the real me.
3) I tried a few test shots and they came out worthless. I think I know the general direction I want to take. I think I want this to be a black and white high ISO low light series. I want the images of the body to be ugly, and I think it fits to have there be a lot of noise. And I think that doing black and white helps the theme. Who is it that said that "when you take a picture of a scene in black and white, you capture its soul"? That's what I want to get here. I want ugly imagery, but I want it simplified. Boiled down to its essence. For example, I once saw a picture by the awesome James Nactwey. I forget where it was, but it was like a simple shot of a dude with a gun walking through the grass, and in the grass he was stepping over a single human skull. That's what I'm going for. I don't think that picture would have worked as well in color. I think that in addition to interfering with the stark contrast, that color would have diluted the theme. He simplified the image, and doing so probably amplified the emotional impact. That's what I want to do, in a way. I plan on taking pictures of my ugliest features, but I don't want color getting in the way of the message. I want the message to be that I am you, and that even at my ugliest I am like you just a bag of skin. This is not a personality series, it is a body series, and I want to simplify it. No (or at least reduced) distinctions between black or white, just the body simplified.
4) I think that a large reason why my test shots turned out crap was because they were boring. Sure, the lighting was all wrong. Out of focus, etc. But that can be fixed. I was more concerned with the potential of mere composition. I want to work with lines, wrinkles, curves, and the distinction between lightand dark. My test shots enabled me to believe that I can work through those issues. But the big problem was lack of a compelling subject. I was just taking pictures of my bdy. Wrinkles, hair, etc. I was able to get intersting composition in the folds of my skin, but I lacked anything to provide context. There was no real subject, they were basically just like pictures of the desert. At most, shape studies. But the problem is that my body BECOMES the landscape. And without anything IN the landscape, the test pics just sort of seemed barren. They just didn't seem to have the right "pop" that would have resulted from having a tick or something crawl over my body. But the REAL problem is that having a tick crawl over my body would have added some pop to the the pictures, but also would have compromised the theme. A tick would have made the tick the SUBJECT, and that would have compted with the entire purpose of doing the series in the first place. I do not WANT to take pictures of ticks, I want to take pictures of the human body. A tick (or a skittle, or a lima bean) would have been distracting and I think would have betrayed the entire point of doing this. But I'm still left with a real problem. And this is a BIG problem. And it's the same problem that I often encounter when doing REAL landscapes. Often I see a scene that looks pleasing to my eye. But when I photograph it, it comes out boring. And I don't mean from a lighting perspective, I mean from a standpoint of general composition. I wasn't looking at a specific subject. The ENTIRE LANDSCAPE was the subject. But the pictures just don't work without something in or on the landscape that stands out. But the problem is that having something stand out like that often changes the entire emotional or thematic tone of what I was trying to accomplish. And that is a BIG problem here, because that could render this entire project moot.
So I'd appreciate any advice on how to proceed here. Anyt ideas on how I could make my pictures stand out without introducing anything that just doesn't fit. Becausereally all I'm gonna be shooting is closeups of flesh and hair. And I really have no experience with close-up macro work, and a lot of my landscapes turn out boring simply for lack of that "pop". So I am really treading into new territory here.