Part I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8ssntuwMm8
Part II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RotMVGhKwFU
All photos: © Copyright Ben Lariviere 2011
Photography Facebook Page: http://facebook.com/BenLarivierePhotography
Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/BenLariviere
Twitter: http://twitter.com/loser078
Tumblr: http://loser078.tumblr.com
My Photography Portfolio: http://BenLariviere.com
Proposal:
I will be creating a photographic series that explores portraiture in an style visually similar to that of drawn caricatures. A number of in-camera and post-production techniques will be utilized to exaggerate certain features of the subjects. The resulting images will look like a combination of a photograph and a cartoon. The constructed, unrealistic aesthetic of the images will emphasize the way in which the viewers are meant to read into the portrayal of the subjects' identities.
As I chose the subjects to photograph for this body of work, I will ask them a number of questions regarding their identity and how their peers perceive their identity. It seems that everybody is perceived and described as a simplification of their identity. For example, "John is athletic" and "Nicole is a party girl." These statements may (or may not) be true about these individuals, but there is a lot more to John and Nicole's identities than the one-word descriptors their peers have attributed to them. During the conversations I will have with each of my subjects, we'll discuss the various ways in which they are identified (by themselves and others). Together, we will choose respective aspects of each subject to be portrayed in their portrait. I will photograph each of them looking and acting as an exaggerated version of their respective personas, using simplified compositions, vivid colours and artificial-looking lighting. In essence, the portraits will look as constructed and unnatural as possible to emphasize the fabricated and simplified nature of the personas portrayed through the photos.
This topic is important for me to explore because I feel that although it's human nature to stereotype and group people into "types," I feel that we'll have a better understanding and ability to empathize with others if we can remember that nobody can be summed up in a sentence. Furthermore, I'm interested in exploring photography's inability to capture more than a brief, subjective glimpse into the characters and identities of those photographed.
I plan to shoot the heads of the subjects in separate exposures from that of the body and environment. They will be composited, with the heads scaled disproportionately. Shooting digital makes most sense due to the extent of post-processing necessary to achieve the desired look. They will be printed on either glossy or metallic paper, at a scale of 11x14" or larger.
I will seek inspiration from political cartoonists, such as Aislin and celebrity caricaturists like Hermann Mejia and Joan Vizcarra. I will take conceptual inspiration from August Sander's Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (Citizens of the Twentieth Century) series, in which Sander photographed various "types" of people in German society and organized them by their respective category.
This series is meant to illustrate the complexity of identity and to show how common it is to simplify our own and each others' identities. I believe it an impossible task to create a truly accurate representation of one's identity through photography, so I am forced to take another approach. By simplifying and exaggerating various identities, I will be creating a visualization of the ridiculously basic one-word identities we attribute to each other and ourselves. These portraits will act as a surface-view of an identity that is far too complex to represent visually. The overall goal is to provoke thought and discourse around the subject of identity, the ways in which we perceive it and how to accurately represent it.
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Caricatures I (Thesis Series)by loser078163 views
@Cramlyris thanks crystal! :)
loser078 2 months ago
the links are all in your PANTS!
in all seriousness I'm looking forward to seeing your caricature interviews, I've really enjoyed seeing the pictures!
Cramlyris 2 months ago
whoa, I fully forgot to put the end logo thing in.
whoops.
loser078 2 months ago in playlist Uploaded videos