Project Proposal

Unconventional portraiture

Dismorfobina by Natalia Pereira

Environmental Portraiture 

Surreal Portraiture

Illustrated Project Proposal

Concept Idea and Issue

I want to do surreal and unconventional portraiture to display peoples insecurities to do with body image, and the idea of "body dysmorphia", either turning people into what they want to be or how they think they are. It can also show different attitudes to things such as gender identity. 

Background

I have decided to focus on body image within portraiture, using surrealism, physical and digital editing to change the way the people in the photographs look. I want to do this concept as it is an interesting look into unconventional portraiture photography. I can also find out about other peoples insecurities and it can help people to feel less alone and trapped about what they perceive to be wrong with them. I would like to first take a picture of them normally and then take the second picture with the physical distortions which I can then edit to show the differences between reality and fiction.

Photographers Research

I knew I wanted to do portraiture but I was inspired specifically by the project "Dismorfobina" by Natalia Pereira. Where she had taken rubber bands and used them to distort the face. She did this to explore the standard of beauty set out by the mainstream media and how that affects people's self-esteem. This is very similar to what I'm doing about peoples insecurities. Another photographer I researched is Giuseppe Mastromatteo who does surrealistic photography, specifically "Indepensense", I looked at him because of the way it seems like the models are hiding in his photos. The last artist I looked at was Justine Kharmara, she did the photos where the man's face is swirled around. Nicolas Bruno is another photographer that has inspired me for this project, he does photography based on what he sees during sleep paralysis, this kind of photography would require lots of editing to do.

Illustrations

These images have influenced me, the first because its like the woman is wearing a mask to hide her true identity, and the second as you cannot see the mans face because of the way it is edited into a swirl.

This image by Guiseppe Mastramattto shows the woman wearing a mask to hide who she really is, this may have connotations to women putting on a "mask" of makeup before leaving as a shield against personal insecurities about the flaws within their face. This also has connotations to hiding your real identity behind a fake persona both online and in reality.













This image shows a man whose face is obscured by a swirl, the swirl covers the eyes and the mouth which could connotate lying as you can tell from the eyes and mouth if someone is lying, as a smile is the best way to tell if someone is lying.

This image shows multiple pictures of the same man overlayed with slits cut out so you can see the other layers. This creates a distorted effect on the photos.

Techniques

The techniques i hope to explore during this project are sequencing and wide angle and close up and slow sync. My photos will also include a lot of physical and computer editing including layering multiple pictures within photoshop.

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