For this module we were advised to something that genuinely interests us. For a while now, my favourite area of photography has been fantasy portraiture; I find I engage in the visual so much more than other areas of photography, and I am fascinated by the fictional worlds my favourite artists can create.
However, while attempting to make this kind of work would be challenging enough, I needed a meaning and reasoning and clear plan behind my work, so I made a mindmap which I have translated into a digital form below.
It was surprising how fast these ideas came to me, and it really makes me think this is an area of photography I will connect to.
IDEA 1.
The first idea I had was the princesses idea - with artists such as Linda Blacker and Kirsty Mitchell in my mind, princesses were an obvious choice. They're what perhaps most people think of when you hear 'fantasy portraiture'.
The princesses with modern day problems / more realistic problems was interesting to me, because the selling point for these Disney princess movies is perfection. The princesses are perfect, kids want to be them, the company can sell merchandise so the children feel as valid as these princesses and then they create more people. However if these princesses were real, on Earth in 2019, things would be incredibly different and the things they're going through would change their stories quite a lot.
As examples, I have put;
1. Cinderella (Could also work with Rapunzel) has social anxiety from being locked away for years and runs out of her own wedding.
It's likely that these two princesses would not be able to cope as well as the average person after being locked up and isolated for so many years; to understand this further i'd have to look into cases where people have gone through just this - criminal cases where women have been kidnapped and locked up and how they coped. The princesses likely wouldn't be able to interact as well as they're presented in the films due to lack of interaction and no exposure to different personality types.
2. Snow White is given Universal Credit under Tory Britain but has to wait months for it to roll in, she cannot afford food and so is forced to eat her winged friends.
This is a rather political and dark idea. It expresses my views clearly, and so perhaps wouldn't be seen in a positive light by everybody as political views will vary. The idea is that in 2018 and continuing into 2019, the Conservatives have been rolling out 'universal credit', meaning struggling families on benefits now have all of their benefits rolled into one payment. The issue with this, is that before getting this one payment, all benefits will stop for months before getting paid again. Families are having to go to food banks just to survive. Snow, who has no job and lives in the middle of nowhere has very little options but to eat her friends who are commonly seen with her in her film.
This may not have worked in retrospect, as the seven dwarfs mine for gems and would probably be able to pay for some food.
3. Ariel gets her neck stuck in a plastic drinks wrapper in the sea and is suffocated, and washes ashore.
Again, rather dark but this has far less room for debate in terms of views, as you simply cannot deny that plastic polution in our seas is killing marine life. We have been warned about this for years, with even David Attenborough creating hit wildlife series 'Blue Planet II' to bring attention to the efforts needed to conserve our marine life, how amazing the animals are that we're killing and the state we have left our seas in. This image would be playing along the same message - bringing awareness that despite Ariel isn't real, the most beautiful and admired sealife is threatened.
I then thought about challenging the 'perfection' of the Disney princess in another way; their appearance. They are known for having ridiculous body types that nobody can actually achieve. There has been a lot of discussion about their anatomy, with an artist named Loryn Brandz illustrating film stills to make the characters look more realistic in terms of their bodies.
It must be noted, however that in the 2016 film 'Moana', there was a lot of progress over the protagonist's body; she has muscle and looks physically fit rather than just slim. She looks healthy.
However, body type isn't the only problem. All princesses have luxurious long hair, are completely abled, all identify as cisgender women, they have perfect skin etc. While these things of course aren't bad traits to have, when every single protagonist have these qualities it means they offer little diversity overall. Luckily, there are a good range of ethnicities represented in these women.
To combat this lack of diversity, I would challenge these typical traits of protagonists; i'd have women who are bald, with acne, trans women and women in wheelchairs, with IV drips, with amputations etc dressed as famous disney characters. This would celebrate diversity and allow for women who aren't the stereotypical disney princess to relate to the princesses for the first time.
IDEA 2
My next idea was strongly inspired by the artist 'Linda Blacker'. Prominent on instagram for her 'Youtuber Fairytales' series, she has quickly become an artist that inspires me most. She writes a story of mythical and magical tales, packed with emotion and beauty, and turns them into images. She then leaves the story in a caption below the final images.
For example;
This image, titled 'The Girl on the Moon' (2018) was accompanied with the below story;
"At the stroke of midnight, a ladder made of rope and wooden rungs falls from the clouds above, unravelling as it draws closer to the earth.
It gently comes to a stop at her feet. Moonlight looks down to her cat companion and scoops her into her arms and up onto her shoulders.
Moonlight begins her climb.
The ladder remains still and stable, unchallenged by the winds that grow ever stronger the higher she reaches.
Finally, Moonlight breaks through a cloud and reaches the top of the ladder. Before her the moon hangs brightly in a seemingly infinite night sky.
With a smile and a flick of her wrist, chains begin to form around the moon and beneath them a seat materialises.
Moonlight pulls herself up onto the swing. 'Our job is done for the night, little friend.' Moonlight whispers to Luna, and together they swing beneath the moon and watch as the silent night goes by."
The story helps bring the image even more to life. By giving more context to the image it helps bring more wonder to the characters within.
I then progressed this idea, and thought of using other people's stories. When I was a child Roald Dahl's fairytales were a favourite of mine; they challenged very famous stories and make them a bit more dark; in Little Red Riding Hood, Red shoots the wold and turns him into a wolfskin scarf, to go with her pigskin handbag she made out of the three little pigs.
Using these twisted well known stories and turning them into imagery would have undoubtedly been fun, however for what purpose would I be doing it for? It's important for this module to not just make things for the sake of it, but have meaning within the work. To challenge the accepted?
It's not quite clear to me yet and so perhaps this idea is best left.
IDEA 3
I then thought about turning the fantasy towards the mythology side of things. I have a brief knowledge of norse and greek mythology as I was into fictional books about the gods and goddesses when I was younger. Because of this it would be like exploring parts of my childhood. However, I again needed a reason for doing this, and to create an interesting message i'd have to alter the idea a little. So I thought about my other ideas and how I had planned for a modern twist, and thought I could do the same for this. Having these godly people in 2019. Times of course are extremely different from when people believed in the Greek Gods, and so the different may be interesting in a visual form. For example, I could have Aphrodite (pictured below), the Greek God of love in her Greek robe, but on an iphone on Tinder, a popular dating app. Or Ares, Greek God of War playing fruit ninja or a kingdom app on a phone. Hermes, God of deliveries, travel and communication watching news about Brexit.
I think it would be interesting to see these extremely famous figures in a different way; they're usually presented in statues or paintings.
This would, however be quite the challenge to visually tell the author who the character is. It could be done in a caption however I think it would have to be strong visually too, or the god or goddesses interaction with the modern day wouldn't have as big of an impact on an audience, it would be like having to explain a joke; after you have to say it it's not quite as effective. This would be hard because as they're often known for their statue forms, they all kind of look alike. When we envision these gods we may simply think of a white statue and so when converted into colour and actual people it could be hard to tell who they are. It makes it especially harder that most men are depicted as naked, and that alone would cause distraction, confusion and would be hard to organise.
So what would the purpose be? It would be rather lighthearted, and would simply show how times have changed. Mixing timelines to make a viewer aware of how things have progressed, to mix fiction with non-fiction.
I then found these images by Dean Alexander, who took images for a dress company that I cannot find the name of (Perhaps 'Matthew Christopher') The project was called 'Goddress', and was to highlight these dresses designed under the influence of greek mythology.
These images help me envision how i'd present the gods and goddesses, but I am mostly inspired by how the model is the same for every character. It gives it the feeling that the characters are interchangeable of identity and does make them seem more fictional. While if I were to do this idea, I wouldn't do it this way, it could help me for my next idea.
IDEA 4
This idea stemmed from my own state of mind. Recently, I have been struggling with my mental health and I often feel very self destructive, and I thought I could show that in imagery. To make this more person, I certainly want to have the images as self portraits. I want to show that it's me in this situation and put myself out there, no hiding behind the face of another person.I think only then will the work be successful in my eyes.
I first thought about representing this as creating a world or environment in which I go to when my mind goes to a bad place. I want to create this bad place and have other people see it and feel it, I want it to no longer be a fictional place but a place I sometimes have no choice but to go to and find my way out. Perhaps a dark forest to show feeling lost, animal's eyes to represent feeling judged, my heart in a cage to show how I push people away. It's important to me that I show this in a fantasy kind of way as these are of course imaginary worlds. I'd have a big dress on, which could perhaps represent me as a damsel in distress. I don't want to necessarily be seen like that but it is how I feel; sometimes i'm not strong enough to rescue myself and I have to wait for something else to perk me up again. I also think that by producing something visually beautiful it will touch upon the issue of glorifying mental illness. It seems to have become trending, cute and cool to have a mental illness on the internet now, and the reality is it's so far from those things when you genuinely have something like that. The other parts in the image will be the reality of it.
While I understand I could create nothing as close to this within my timeframe, Kirsty Mitchell will always be one of my biggest influences when I experiment with fantasy portraiture. I adore how many parts there are to it and how it helps create a narrative that will be read differently by each person.
I then thought of perhaps creating characters that represent my mental health, rather than the environment represent it. I feel this would be harder as I'd have to rely a lot on costume. However, if it were to work I would have me dressed as various emotions that I feel strongly. I'd need for find a way to represent the emotions on my figure, and I haven't quite thought of how yet. Because this isn't developed enough I probably won't use this idea.
Lastly, I thought about having different environments to show different segments of me and my brain. This largely plays on the first plan for this idea, however instead of just focusing on the dark areas of my mind, being a bit more specific, and also have something lighter. I am aware that this work won't be easy, and so I have come up with three areas to represent; Frustration, Isolation and Hopes. These can of course be interchanged at any point, however these are things I feel extremely often.
This idea was actually inspired by the film 'Inside Out' where the main character has different lands inside her head that are parts of her personality.
While mine won't be so cartoonish and obviously fake, the concept is similar. They're large parts of the person's life - my emotions are large parts of my mental attitude and my life.
I have brief ideas for the three emotions below;
Frustration;
However, while attempting to make this kind of work would be challenging enough, I needed a meaning and reasoning and clear plan behind my work, so I made a mindmap which I have translated into a digital form below.
IDEA 1.
The first idea I had was the princesses idea - with artists such as Linda Blacker and Kirsty Mitchell in my mind, princesses were an obvious choice. They're what perhaps most people think of when you hear 'fantasy portraiture'.
The princesses with modern day problems / more realistic problems was interesting to me, because the selling point for these Disney princess movies is perfection. The princesses are perfect, kids want to be them, the company can sell merchandise so the children feel as valid as these princesses and then they create more people. However if these princesses were real, on Earth in 2019, things would be incredibly different and the things they're going through would change their stories quite a lot.
As examples, I have put;
1. Cinderella (Could also work with Rapunzel) has social anxiety from being locked away for years and runs out of her own wedding.
It's likely that these two princesses would not be able to cope as well as the average person after being locked up and isolated for so many years; to understand this further i'd have to look into cases where people have gone through just this - criminal cases where women have been kidnapped and locked up and how they coped. The princesses likely wouldn't be able to interact as well as they're presented in the films due to lack of interaction and no exposure to different personality types.
2. Snow White is given Universal Credit under Tory Britain but has to wait months for it to roll in, she cannot afford food and so is forced to eat her winged friends.
This is a rather political and dark idea. It expresses my views clearly, and so perhaps wouldn't be seen in a positive light by everybody as political views will vary. The idea is that in 2018 and continuing into 2019, the Conservatives have been rolling out 'universal credit', meaning struggling families on benefits now have all of their benefits rolled into one payment. The issue with this, is that before getting this one payment, all benefits will stop for months before getting paid again. Families are having to go to food banks just to survive. Snow, who has no job and lives in the middle of nowhere has very little options but to eat her friends who are commonly seen with her in her film.
This may not have worked in retrospect, as the seven dwarfs mine for gems and would probably be able to pay for some food.
3. Ariel gets her neck stuck in a plastic drinks wrapper in the sea and is suffocated, and washes ashore.
Again, rather dark but this has far less room for debate in terms of views, as you simply cannot deny that plastic polution in our seas is killing marine life. We have been warned about this for years, with even David Attenborough creating hit wildlife series 'Blue Planet II' to bring attention to the efforts needed to conserve our marine life, how amazing the animals are that we're killing and the state we have left our seas in. This image would be playing along the same message - bringing awareness that despite Ariel isn't real, the most beautiful and admired sealife is threatened.
I then thought about challenging the 'perfection' of the Disney princess in another way; their appearance. They are known for having ridiculous body types that nobody can actually achieve. There has been a lot of discussion about their anatomy, with an artist named Loryn Brandz illustrating film stills to make the characters look more realistic in terms of their bodies.
It must be noted, however that in the 2016 film 'Moana', there was a lot of progress over the protagonist's body; she has muscle and looks physically fit rather than just slim. She looks healthy.
However, body type isn't the only problem. All princesses have luxurious long hair, are completely abled, all identify as cisgender women, they have perfect skin etc. While these things of course aren't bad traits to have, when every single protagonist have these qualities it means they offer little diversity overall. Luckily, there are a good range of ethnicities represented in these women.
To combat this lack of diversity, I would challenge these typical traits of protagonists; i'd have women who are bald, with acne, trans women and women in wheelchairs, with IV drips, with amputations etc dressed as famous disney characters. This would celebrate diversity and allow for women who aren't the stereotypical disney princess to relate to the princesses for the first time.
IDEA 2
My next idea was strongly inspired by the artist 'Linda Blacker'. Prominent on instagram for her 'Youtuber Fairytales' series, she has quickly become an artist that inspires me most. She writes a story of mythical and magical tales, packed with emotion and beauty, and turns them into images. She then leaves the story in a caption below the final images.
For example;
This image, titled 'The Girl on the Moon' (2018) was accompanied with the below story;
"At the stroke of midnight, a ladder made of rope and wooden rungs falls from the clouds above, unravelling as it draws closer to the earth.
It gently comes to a stop at her feet. Moonlight looks down to her cat companion and scoops her into her arms and up onto her shoulders.
Moonlight begins her climb.
The ladder remains still and stable, unchallenged by the winds that grow ever stronger the higher she reaches.
Finally, Moonlight breaks through a cloud and reaches the top of the ladder. Before her the moon hangs brightly in a seemingly infinite night sky.
With a smile and a flick of her wrist, chains begin to form around the moon and beneath them a seat materialises.
Moonlight pulls herself up onto the swing. 'Our job is done for the night, little friend.' Moonlight whispers to Luna, and together they swing beneath the moon and watch as the silent night goes by."
The story helps bring the image even more to life. By giving more context to the image it helps bring more wonder to the characters within.
I then progressed this idea, and thought of using other people's stories. When I was a child Roald Dahl's fairytales were a favourite of mine; they challenged very famous stories and make them a bit more dark; in Little Red Riding Hood, Red shoots the wold and turns him into a wolfskin scarf, to go with her pigskin handbag she made out of the three little pigs.
Using these twisted well known stories and turning them into imagery would have undoubtedly been fun, however for what purpose would I be doing it for? It's important for this module to not just make things for the sake of it, but have meaning within the work. To challenge the accepted?
It's not quite clear to me yet and so perhaps this idea is best left.
IDEA 3
I then thought about turning the fantasy towards the mythology side of things. I have a brief knowledge of norse and greek mythology as I was into fictional books about the gods and goddesses when I was younger. Because of this it would be like exploring parts of my childhood. However, I again needed a reason for doing this, and to create an interesting message i'd have to alter the idea a little. So I thought about my other ideas and how I had planned for a modern twist, and thought I could do the same for this. Having these godly people in 2019. Times of course are extremely different from when people believed in the Greek Gods, and so the different may be interesting in a visual form. For example, I could have Aphrodite (pictured below), the Greek God of love in her Greek robe, but on an iphone on Tinder, a popular dating app. Or Ares, Greek God of War playing fruit ninja or a kingdom app on a phone. Hermes, God of deliveries, travel and communication watching news about Brexit.
I think it would be interesting to see these extremely famous figures in a different way; they're usually presented in statues or paintings.
This would, however be quite the challenge to visually tell the author who the character is. It could be done in a caption however I think it would have to be strong visually too, or the god or goddesses interaction with the modern day wouldn't have as big of an impact on an audience, it would be like having to explain a joke; after you have to say it it's not quite as effective. This would be hard because as they're often known for their statue forms, they all kind of look alike. When we envision these gods we may simply think of a white statue and so when converted into colour and actual people it could be hard to tell who they are. It makes it especially harder that most men are depicted as naked, and that alone would cause distraction, confusion and would be hard to organise.
So what would the purpose be? It would be rather lighthearted, and would simply show how times have changed. Mixing timelines to make a viewer aware of how things have progressed, to mix fiction with non-fiction.
I then found these images by Dean Alexander, who took images for a dress company that I cannot find the name of (Perhaps 'Matthew Christopher') The project was called 'Goddress', and was to highlight these dresses designed under the influence of greek mythology.
These images help me envision how i'd present the gods and goddesses, but I am mostly inspired by how the model is the same for every character. It gives it the feeling that the characters are interchangeable of identity and does make them seem more fictional. While if I were to do this idea, I wouldn't do it this way, it could help me for my next idea.
IDEA 4
This idea stemmed from my own state of mind. Recently, I have been struggling with my mental health and I often feel very self destructive, and I thought I could show that in imagery. To make this more person, I certainly want to have the images as self portraits. I want to show that it's me in this situation and put myself out there, no hiding behind the face of another person.I think only then will the work be successful in my eyes.
I first thought about representing this as creating a world or environment in which I go to when my mind goes to a bad place. I want to create this bad place and have other people see it and feel it, I want it to no longer be a fictional place but a place I sometimes have no choice but to go to and find my way out. Perhaps a dark forest to show feeling lost, animal's eyes to represent feeling judged, my heart in a cage to show how I push people away. It's important to me that I show this in a fantasy kind of way as these are of course imaginary worlds. I'd have a big dress on, which could perhaps represent me as a damsel in distress. I don't want to necessarily be seen like that but it is how I feel; sometimes i'm not strong enough to rescue myself and I have to wait for something else to perk me up again. I also think that by producing something visually beautiful it will touch upon the issue of glorifying mental illness. It seems to have become trending, cute and cool to have a mental illness on the internet now, and the reality is it's so far from those things when you genuinely have something like that. The other parts in the image will be the reality of it.
While I understand I could create nothing as close to this within my timeframe, Kirsty Mitchell will always be one of my biggest influences when I experiment with fantasy portraiture. I adore how many parts there are to it and how it helps create a narrative that will be read differently by each person.
I then thought of perhaps creating characters that represent my mental health, rather than the environment represent it. I feel this would be harder as I'd have to rely a lot on costume. However, if it were to work I would have me dressed as various emotions that I feel strongly. I'd need for find a way to represent the emotions on my figure, and I haven't quite thought of how yet. Because this isn't developed enough I probably won't use this idea.
Lastly, I thought about having different environments to show different segments of me and my brain. This largely plays on the first plan for this idea, however instead of just focusing on the dark areas of my mind, being a bit more specific, and also have something lighter. I am aware that this work won't be easy, and so I have come up with three areas to represent; Frustration, Isolation and Hopes. These can of course be interchanged at any point, however these are things I feel extremely often.
This idea was actually inspired by the film 'Inside Out' where the main character has different lands inside her head that are parts of her personality.
While mine won't be so cartoonish and obviously fake, the concept is similar. They're large parts of the person's life - my emotions are large parts of my mental attitude and my life.
I have brief ideas for the three emotions below;
Frustration;
- Red ball gown (already owned) - anger, lust, blood etc
- burning rose in hand - destroying something beautiful on purpose, touches upon my self destruction
- messy hair - lack of self care when i'm mad at myself
- face turned away - no eye contact?
- Glaring into the camera?
- red setting - studio?
- sitting inside the burning rose?
- black background?
Isolation;
- purple, green or black dress - isolation, jealousy, mystery
- in a field with nothing around?
- laying in grass - only me in the frame.
- desaturated
- blue tones - twilight? - cold feeling
Hopes;
- Wedding dress - represents successful relationship
- camera on the floor - career hopes
- White colour theme - purity, clean, fresh
While these are clearly just the beginnings of ideas, I feel that they could end up strong.
Overall, I think i'm going to go with idea 4. I will start with just one of the emotions and if I have time, branch out, It will be challenge of my post production skills, organisation and prop work, however I am willing to teach myself in order to make this a successful project.
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