Project 5: Portraiture
Portrait: Laura Wemple
My process for this piece was fairly simply, just slightly time consuming. Laura and I spent the afternoon taking pictures of each other, no posing really, just talking and laughing and snapping photos. The next day, I went through and found the photo that I thought showed who Laura was the most. She is in the center and the photo is very symmetrical, which I will give up some composition cues because I thought this was the very best, especially the symmetry. I used the sponge tool to desaturation almost all of the picture, leaving the splashes of color behind. I did saturate those slightly, because they seemed a little dull. Besides that, I did not change the photo. The reason I choose this one photo, this style really, is a little more difficult to explain, I was influenced by Hugh Mangum (the photographer I will show next week) because of his looseness and his willingness to show who the person was. This is Laura. Someone can take a photo of her smiling and think that is that, but I believe that a photo should capture something more complex. That it should show who she is, on the inside and out. Laura is silly, funny and full of joy. She is an artist who is messy and covered in her medium all of the time. She is bright and spontaneous all at once. I want my photo to speak for itself as to who she is, Laura Wemple.
Project 6: Social Commentary.
Young Marriage
My social commentary pieces are similar to the portrait. I did not change much, cropped a little, altered the angles, saturated and desaturated the photos. First I set up the props. They are paper lace doilies, my handmade crepe paper flower bouquet, my wedding cutlery, cake topper and my husbands ring and my own ring, all atop our marriage license and two other copies of my license. All of these items were at my wedding (copies came later I suppose). The social commentary is not something easily seen and is not an issue in most lives. What they mean for me though, is all of the people who did not know me or though that my husband and I were making a mistake by settling down so early or that we were doing it for the wrong reasons. I cant even count how many times I heard people taking about us being married because I was pregnant or all other rumors that spread in my hometown. To me, the reasons I got married are no one else's business but that does not mean they are bad or that we got married as to not have a child out of wedlock. It just amazed me at how many people think they have a right to stick their nose into my marriage. My sister got married young and they did the same thing to her, if not worse. I feel that it is problem in our society's way of thinking, that getting married young is a mistake or that there is a cover up for something else. And all of this gets put on the woman. They never said a thing to my husband or whispered about him. That is all I have to say on the matter.
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