DISGUISEInge Morath collaborated with Saul Steinberg to produce a series of photographs in a book called 'Masquerade'. These were based on people wearing masks which had facial expressions drawn on them. Richard Burbridge has produced portraits for fashion magazines in which the model wears a surreal mask, often made from found materials. Photo manipulation using digital software can be used to alter features or to add to a person's appearance or identity |
I chose this topic because I'm interested in the way that photographs look like reality but are actually abstractions. The last topic we explored in class taught me to look harder at photographs because they might not be what they seem. Most people think that a photograph is just a copy of nature or the 'real' world. However, when you know more about photography you realise that all photographs are constructed in very specific ways. The photographer has to choose where to stand, what angle to point the camera (if s/he's is using one) and when to click the shutter. S/he also has to decide what to exclude from the picture. The picture s/he makes is then just a portion of 'reality', a tiny pocket of time (approx. 1/125th of a second). How can this be a reliable record of experience? Of course, some photographers have drawn attention to this idea of disguise in photography by making it difficult for us to identify the subject of the picture. Portrait photographers might cover up the sitter's face, for example. Masks are a recurring theme in photography. Some photographers have played with the settings on the camera (e.g. slow shutter speeds or lack of sharp focus). These effects can disguise the precise contours of the subject. Contemporary photographers are more likely to play these kinds of games with images, asking the viewer to work a bit harder to identify what is going on and drawing attention to the artificial nature of the image.
I decided to create a mindmap with some of my initial thoughts using an app called Mural. This is so that I can continue to add to it as my thinking changes.
Lucas Blalock
Lucas Blalock interests me because of the way he uses digital tools to manipulate objects and people he photographs in his studio. He combines photography, sculpture and drawing to create images that question what and how we see the world. Here are some examples of his digitally altered portraits:
The OccupantThis image by Lucas Blalock is curious. It looks like a photograph but also seems to have elements of digital drawing too. We seem to be looking at a wardrobe mirror in a bedroom (either a home or a hotel room). We might expect to see someone admiring their reflection in this mirror, perhaps checking how they look before going out. This is a common ritual that can be observed most days. There is nothing unusual about the scene. However, in this case, all we can see is the ghostly suggestion of a person made up of small brightly coloured digital squiggles in the approximate shape of a person.
There is a darker shape on the carpet. Is this a stain or a shadow. The biggest clue we have that we are looking at a portrait of some sort is the title of the image 'The Occupant'. An occupant is someone who lives somewhere. It's a word we might expect to use to describe someone who has taken residence somewhere temporarily - a prison or a hotel room, for example. This occupant is largely missing. Why? How? Lucas Blalock's practice involves making deliberately bad use of Photoshop. Normally, Photoshop is the tool that professional photographers and designers use to enhance or improve their images. Blalock is interested in Photoshop's array of tools and processes and what happens when these are used incorrectly. For example, what happens when you lay one image on top of another (Layers) and erase part of the image on top (Eraser). Similarly, what happens when you copy an area of pixels (Clone Stamp) and paste them back onto the image? Usually, these techniques are used to disguise blemishes in an image, making it seem less uneven or removing unsightly or unwanted elements. Blalock plays with these tools to create unusual and surreal effects. If this is a person standing in front of a mirror, why don't they have a reflection? Where is the majority of their body? The contrast between the very realistic and believable space of the room and the abstracted body is funny and also a bit disturbing. It's like a scene from a science fiction film. |
This film shows us Blalock's method of deliberately mis-using Photoshop. What I found interesting is that he begins his image-making by taking highly detailed photographs using a large format film camera. I was surprised that he didn't use a high resolution digital camera but it seems that he enjoys printing his final images very large. This means he needs as much information in the original image as possible so that, when it is scanned, he can work on it in Photoshop and not lose any of the detail for large scale printing. I really like the way he combines analogue and digital photography. I am interested in experimenting with this technique, layering images in Photoshop and experimenting with combining them by mis-using the various tools available.
My response to Lucas Blalock
Experiment #1
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I took a series of portraits and experimented with overlaying them in Photoshop and using the Eraser tool to cut through the top layer. I also remembered learning how to do Object Clipping using the custom shape tool. The second experiment is the result of repeating this process three times using the diagonal lines shape. I like the way the face is disguised by these processes and plan to continue to experiment with them.
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I realised in playing with these portraits that it would be interesting to have an image of the background (without the portrait) so that I could experiment with including some negative space like Lucas Blalock.
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Experiment #2
Experiment #3
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I decided to play with the idea of printed pictures being made up of four colours - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK). I remembered being shown how to create duotones in Photoshop so I made 3 of them - C, M and Y. I then layered them together (Experiment #2) and removed cut out various elements using the Lasso tool (Experiment #3). I tried not to be very accurate so that my cutting would be visible. I also experimented with a black and white layer and an inverted (negative) of this. I enjoyed playing with the combination of layering and cutting out. I particularly like the edges of each cut shape showing through in the final image.
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I will continue to experiment with this technique so need more portraits to play with. I should have taken more images so that I had more options. I need to remember to take a photograph of the background so that when I cut through the face or body I can create holes or spaces where the background shows through (like Lucas Blalock).
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Inge Morath & Saul Steinberg - the 'Mask' series
...by hiding the identity of their subjects behind these whimsical facades, they both reveal and exaggerate the sickly, sinister nature of the 1950s American Dream as it was peddled by the “Mad[ison Avenue] Men” [...] these grimacing figures distort and subvert the smugness of the era, in a sense anticipating the cutting street-photography that would define the same city during the following decade. This famous collaboration between a photographer (Inge Morath) and cartoonist (Saul Steinberg) uses the idea of masks to poke fun at traditional ideas about portraiture, particularly of the high society kind. Wealthy individuals have always been able to commission portraits (first paintings or sculptures and then, from the mid 19th century, photographs) so that their high status, wealth and power was confirmed. By removing the faces of these sitters and replacing them with quickly drawn sketches on paper bags, both photographer and cartoonist are playing with the conventions of portraiture (the portraitist's job is to create a recognisable and often flattering likeness of the client) and saying something interesting about the unreliability of photographs. Photographs pretend to present us with a truthful document - a facsimile of reality - but are actually much more complex and sophisticated types of images. This takes us back again to Threshold Concept #5 and the idea that all photographs are abstractions shaped by technology. There are two kinds of deception going on here:
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My response to the 'Mask' seriesI decided that I wanted to play with the idea of a family album. Morath and Steinberg's images reminded me of the kind of family albums that used to be kept before digital photography became more popular. Photographs would be printed and stuck in albums, sometimes with captions, and these would be taken out and shared with family and friends as reminders of how things used to be. Rather than create physical masks to place on top of the heads of real people (not very easy during a time of social distancing) I decided to work with old family photographs featuring pictures of me from a baby to about the age of 10. Other members of my family are also present in the pictures - my parents, my brother and my grandparents (plus my dog and the members of my primary school football team!) I decided to replace the faces in these pictures with coloured dots (created in Photoshop). I remembered seeing a video about the artist John Baldessari using coloured stickers to hide the faces of people in his collection of movie stills as a way to "level the playing field". I thought I would start with this and see where it took me. here are the pictures I chose:
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Experiment #1
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It was quite easy to create these images using the Ellipse Tool in Photoshop to simply draw circles (remembering to hold the Shift Key down whilst dragging the tool across the image) and filling these with colours. I'm relatively pleased with the results. My family pictures have been transformed (masked) so that the children and adults depicted in them (me and members of my family) are not easily identifiable. It's interesting that removing the faces immediately distances them and reminds us how much we rely on the information in faces to identify others.
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Although I like the effect of adding the dots, the resulting images are too similar to the work of John Baldessari. He didn't use his own family photos (he used movie stills instead) so the people he was disguising were not personally known to him. However, I feel as though this solution is a bit too easy and derivative. I want to have a go at making something more personal and meaningful in my next experiment.
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Using Layer Masks in PhotoshopI remembered that one of the processes you can use in Photoshop to create complex images with different layers is called 'Masking'. This is a way to combine the layers together without permanently destroying them by, for example, rubbing them out with the Eraser tool. I decided to watch a video on YouTube to remind me how the process works.
Once I'd watched the video a couple of times I felt confident enough to have a go myself. The challenge was to think of way to combine my family photographs using the Layer Masking process. |
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Experiment #2
I decided to 'mask' figures in one of my family photos to reveal the background of another image below.
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Experiment 3
After looking again at the Saul Steinberg masks I decided to try to combine my family pictures with cartoon-like illustrations - simple drawn faces. I asked my son to draw four faces as quickly as he could. I used the Notes app on my phone to 'scan' the images, reducing them to black and white line drawings. I opened the PDF files in Preview on my computer and exported them as Jpegs. I then opened one of the family portraits in Photoshop along with the drawings. I inverted the drawings (Cmd + I) so that they were white lines on a black background. I chose three of them to add as layers on top of the portrait of me, my mum and brother. I used the Screen blending mode to 'remove' the black background and increased the contrast so that the white lines were clearer. I used the Free Transform tool (Cmd + T) to change the size of each drawing so that it fitted the relevant face. I also used other Transform tools (Edit > Transform) such as Perspective and Distort to help make the drawings fit to the angle of each face. Finally, I decided to add a colour mask to each portrait. I selected the shape of the face and body using the Polygonal Marquee tool, added a new layer and filled this with colour. I clipped this layer to the selected shape and chose the Multiply blending mode, reducing the opacity to about 70%.
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I'm pleased with the variety of techniques I've been able to use in Photoshop. The drawings combine well with the photograph and help to transform a simple family image into something slightly surreal and sinister. The drawings upset the simplcity of the moment, perhaps hinting at some of the challenges and tensions of family life beneath the superficial happiness of the 'good times' photo album. The technique I've used is more closely related to Saul Steinberg and Inge Morath's masks series.
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I need to practice using more sophisticated selection techniques - the Polygonal Marquee tool is quick but, because it only selects in straight lines, the edges of the selections are a bit crude, especially the line of my (pink) brother's back.
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Richard Burbridge
Richard Burbridge is a fashion, editorial and advertising photographer. He creates striking images that often challenge our expectations of the genre in which he is working. His work seems to be inspired by the dreamlike qualities of Surrealism and the confrontational energy of Punk. Here are a selection of his mask pictures from a variety of sources and for a range of clients:
Experiment 1
I decided to make some very quick portraits featuring household objects as masks. I used a DSLR and a flash because I was photographing in relatively low light. My favourite image is the lampshade. I like the fact that the subject is off-centre, that he seems to be finding it amusing (his expression is quite stern in the other photos) and that we were both standing on chairs in order to make the picture (which is a bit ridiculous). Burbridge's pictures are also bizarre and humorous, although they're also a bit sinister (unlike mine). I think I'm going to continue to make a series of these lampshade pictures, asking members of my family (and maybe even friends) to hide inside the shade.
I decided to have a look at Burbridge's Instagram feed. It's useful to be able to see how living artists share their work online. It isn't always the finished article and it's possible to see evidence of their decision-making and ideas on social media. I was struck by these images which also explore ideas connected to disguise but are less literal than the masks above.
In addition to the lampshade portraits I plan to experiment with some of the strategies from the pictures above, most of which should be relatively straightforward in terms of materials.