The house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer… the places where we experience daydreaming reconstitute themselves in a new daydream, and it is because our memories of former dwelling places are relived as daydreams that these dwelling places of the past remain in us for all of time.”
Gaston Bachelard,The Poetics of Space
With inspiration from Gaston Bachelard’s philosophies I visited the former childhood homes of a select group of people. In each house the former dweller would recount to me strong and engrained memories associated with the house. The resulting images depict a each of these memories; the area in focus indicates the exact site or object associated with the memory.
This series The Salvationists came about through my interest in a particular community, and a desire to clarify elements of their cultural and personal identities through the genre of portraiture. I decided to photograph both individuals and couples who are affiliated with The Salvation Army. Their uniform is a link to the organisation they are a part of, but the context they’re shown in is their home which contains indicators of their personal identity.
The images appear to be documentary in nature, however a shift in truth is evident in knowing that the role of the uniform is reserved for times when an individual is participating in the activities of the organisation. We then become aware that the photograph must have been set up and there must have been some process of establishing a relationship. It becomes clear that an element of their private life is on display. We then see that the individuals are not only a part of an organisation, there is more to it than that.
Through the act of portraiture the project explores where one locates one’s identity, and how that identity is perceived. In the case of those who are members of The Salvation Army, we are more likely to think of those in uniform as helping someone in need before we think of them as individuals. The Salvationists explores what more can be told about a person when photographed within a certain context. The nature of a photograph often tricks us into believing that it truthfully reflects the world, or that a portrait can reflect the truth of a person’s character. However, as Richard Avedon once said, “A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”
Having worked as fashion photographer for over a decade I have noticed first-hand that the age of models entering the industry keeps getting lower and lower. As a result I believe the average age of models appearing in fashion editorials, advertising campaigns and runway shows is also a lot younger than it was 10 or even 5 years ago. It is not unusual now for models as young as 15 and 16 to be put forward for a casting where the target audience for the resulting imagery is women in their 20s and 30s. I have even had a couple of 13 year olds and a 12 year old visit my studio recently on ‘go-sees’ (and I don’t have any children’s wear clients).
Fashion imagery itself is often highly provocative and sexually charged. Therefore it is standard practice for these high-school age girls to be transformed through the use of make-up, styling, photography and Photoshop so that they appear to be mature, sexually assertive women in the final images. I believe that the portrayal of very young models in this manner needs to be brought to people’s attention.
The aim of this particular series of images is simply to reveal the deception. By showing mock ‘school portraits’ of young models alongside highly stylized fashion images of the same subject I hope to better educate the viewer about this particular aspect of the fashion industry.
Our possessions are a major contributor to and reflection of our identities.”
R.W. Belk, Possessions and the Extended Self
Self is a project that aims to explore the way in which a person’s belongings are an extension of themselves. The intention of this series is to convey a sense of character and identity, and to communicate the idea that, to a degree, we are what we have and possess.
I wanted the objects I was shooting to be personal things that the subjects have a close relationship with: belongings they have a deep personal connection with or things they frequently use. For this reason I chose to focus on dressing tables and bedside tables, and by using the overhead shot, the viewer gets a sense of both the objects present and they way in which they are arranged. It is the combination of these things that help build up a sense of identity and character without the subject being present in the photograph.
In 1995 I embarked on a project photographing my mother at her dressing table – an image I was familiar with since I was a child. This was her ritual of putting on her make-up, curling her hair, smoking her cigarettes and now maintaining her beauty in its fading stages. I later extended the notion of women and make-up beyond my own family. So, during one of my visits to Iran, my country of birth, I started to photograph women in the process of putting on make-up.
After the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, strict restrictions were put upon both men and women; pop music was prohibited, boys and girls not related to each other were not allowed to be seen together in public, girls as young as the age of 9 had to wear the Islamic ‘hijab’ at school and the use of make-up was banned. After these new rules were established, women started to push back against the strict restrictions imposed upon them and heavy use of make-up became a reaction to living under the clerical rules of an Islamic regime. For some, it became a symbol of defiance and a means of empowerment.
Rules are more lenient now since the early days of the revolution, but the underlying law of covering one’s hair and modesty still apply. Make-up still plays a big part in daily life, and the image of the Iranian woman in a hijab, all made up, is embedded deeply into the country’s cultural psyche.