Here are the results of my emulation project. As I mentioned on the previous post the style of portraits that Pierre et Gilles do are far from my personal style. However it was a great experience for me, trying to get the "kitsch" look was hard, also I have to accept that I am no painter at all. All that said I have to accept I am not happy with the results, I wanted to work more on the set, put more props in order to create the kind of frames Pierre et Gilles used on their 90's portraits. In the end my emulations were more like the 80's portraits of Pierre et Gilles, with simple light and not complicated compositions.
Discosalope, 2010
Assumption, 2010
Discosalope II, 2010
La vierge de l'espace, 2010
My favorite one, the only one where I think I captured the look and the expression Pierre et Gilles love to portray.
Pierre et Gilles are two french photographers who focus mainly on portraits. Rather than trying to show the personality of the people portrayed they use the people to create pieces of art. Their photographs often deal with the gay scene, war, old movie stars portraits and religion.
The photographs show the people portrayed like figurines and the images are full of glitter. Usually they portray the person in the middle of the image, not looking at the camera and on a "heroic" pose. The faces are perfectly lit. They use one or two lights to light the background and then a
Sur la plage abandonne, 94
Nuit de neige, 94
Le petit communiste, 90
Every photograph is unique and the process of creations consists of photographing a model on a set with props, making a high quality print (on canvas style paper) and then painting on the print. An example of the process can be seen on the video.
The reason I picked these photographers is because their style is really different from my style and I wanted to experiment on something completely new.
Diane Arbus was known for their portraits of outcasts looking well and normal people in strange situations, and their lighting done with in camera flash. Steichen on the other hand made portraits of superstars and a perfectly lit scenes. The two photographers I picked borrow from Diane Arbus the subjects as they both photograph outcasts in respecful ways and normal people in spooky ways, on the other hand they both take from steichen the controlled lighting.
Fernando y Gerardo Montiel Klint, Dr. Alderete
Bill Owens
Lourdes Grobet, La Familia Solar
Graciela Iturbide, Comitán
Daniele Tamigni, Cholitas
Daniele Tamagni, Sapeur
Peter Hugo, Abdullahi Mohammed with Mainasara, Ogere-Remo, Nigeria 2007
