 When I was about seven or eight there was a book in the tiny library nestled in the corner of the village school that I attended. Amongst the masterpieces of children's literature like Don't Forget the Bacon and the Lighthouse Keeper's Sandwiches was a weird and quirky book whose name, alas, is lost to my memory. On these pages were these fantastical illustrations of what appeared to be a world placed in the restoration period of England or the Grand Court of Louis XIV. However, what sticks in my mind, even at this distant remove, is the fact that all the characters were composed of fruit. Not fun cartoonish looking fruit characters but bizarrely real human looking figures made of fruit. I forget where I first discovered Desiree Doloran's photography but it invoked in me that same feeling of displacement, that vague unease and yet intense attraction. These images seem to be from another world, that same world the childhood book suggested lay somewhere outside just on the corner of my own reality. Her haunting photography will no doubt leave its own ghost-like impression on your senses. How's it, how's it? Desiree Doloran is a Dutch photographer and I must apologize to any native Dutch speakers out there as I'm probably butchering the pronunciation of her name. I've been a fan of her images for quite some time now and I was stupidly excited when I got a copy of her book Exteriors a few years ago and this is what I'd like to share with you today. It's no secret that the portraits in this book are the result of digital manipulation. It's no big deal and I only mention it because whenever I've managed to find out anything online trying to look for Desiree Doloran in the forums and the conversations around her work it always comes back to how to replicate her look. Like a lot of artists she hasn't divulged her exact processes and that's perfectly fine because we're not really interested in what lenses she use and how she tones things and how she lights things and what have you. What we are interested in is letting these haunting images work their magic on us. Exteriors is an absolutely beautiful book. It's large enough that the images can breathe but it's not so heavy that it's a danger to small children if it's going to fall off of a bookshelf. To give context these portraits I feel it is important to touch albeit briefly on her previous photography. There's a series called Exaltation which focuses on images of religious ceremonies and death from around the world and these photographs have an almost archival sort of feel to them because they have this this grainy black and white tones. They seem to quiet and tone down this kind of somewhat over-the-top-friendly nature of the of the scenes that their subjects find themselves in. Indeed when I think about it stillness and quiet are it's a theme that runs throughout Doloran's photography and perhaps this is at the very core of why I find it so intriguing. Again you can see this at play in the gaze series of portraits which are equally as quiet and ethereal. The subject of suspended is water but it looks like it could be a half dream-like state or a somewhat half-remembered memory. Not everybody will enjoy this photography and that's that's perfectly okay. Nothing on this channel is presented as a requirement. Sometimes we discover photography that we don't as I did with Doloran's work a few years back and occasionally it just feels cold or even repellent to us. In this community I'm trying to help foster a sense of discovery not a doctrine of photography one must like. Sharing these photographers with you I hope to simply broaden your horizons and help you discover a new favourite to add to your own personal list of photographers. At the end of the video I'll put up a playlist on the screen with other art photographers who I think you might be interested in. Aside from the lovely photographs that are included in this book one of the things that I enjoy most about this is that each image is presented by itself. There's no facing page photograph to interfere with the way that you read this portrait that you're looking at. You know this idea of juxtaposition or what Ralph Gibson called overtones where the two images work together they're all just sort of by themselves and given space to breathe. On the face of it these photographs are fairly simplistic there's not too much going on but one of the joys of looking at a physical book is that you can see lots of little details that somehow get missed when you look at a picture on screen and here's a good example. You may not be able to see it because as I mentioned these these images are quite dark but there's this lovely sort of wrapping of the hair with sort of these tiny braids and what have you and the subtle folds of this what looks like a silk outfit they all give the photograph a really beautiful textural feel that feels very soft and very welcoming in sort of contrast with these sort of alabaster skins that the the subjects have. This otherworldly feel to Desiree Doloran's photographs for me is achieved quite subtly and it's in things like this where we look at this window here which is sort of a very dramatic sort of rectangle of light sort of silhouetting the the subject that's extremely exaggerated in terms of a window obviously there are windows like that exist in the real world but for most of us a window is never that high so in addition to being an extremely strong compositional element and gives a picture a real striking and strong feel it lends it this this odd vibe within our minds that puts us slightly off. You can see this echoed again within this this picture here where we have this long blank frame with this lovely light sort of sweeping in from the side all the lines in the the composition are quite long they're quite stretched out and that's echoed also within the the figure of of the lady here who's looking at the window it's it these subtle things that I think a lot of us miss when we are looking at photography especially online these days where it's all about sort of shouting and somehow that it doesn't feel right to express ourselves subtly and and Desiree especially these portraits do that masterfully they have such a subtlety to them that I think makes them even more beguiling this particular portrait I find extremely fascinating it is absolutely beautiful I would love to have this on my wall it's the sort of thing that I would go yep that's I would put that pride of place in my lounge or somewhere like that and you can't say that about all art photography but I think this this particular portrait is absolutely stunning I hope it comes across well in the in the camera obviously it's unfortunate that these are quite muted images and it's tricky to portray them with any sort of sense of reality through through the camera but in here there's this lovely sort of tonal quality again he's got this alabaster skin the red hair is absolutely gorgeous against the the the greeny blue background tones it's a wonderful color contrast and it draws our attention to his face without again shouting it's not like a shocking red hair it works in harmony with everything else the lady in the background just ever so slightly you know she's there but she's not there and again these little details like for example you may not be able to see this but she has a a belly ring there and that's obviously intentional it's been left in rather than being taken out in the post and there must be a reason for that and we can only sort of sort of guess at why Desiree has chosen to leave that in perhaps it's a way of saying that while this has a very sort of classic sort of medieval renaissance he kind of you know a sort of religious feel to it it's in it's in the modern world or is in at least the world that is not welded in history because of the the belly ring and why have you but I think it's just an absolutely stunning stunning portrait it would be quite easy to draw the obvious conclusions about where Dolrin is getting her inspiration from only some of it after all she is Dutch and you know there were one or two reasonably proficient Dutch painters once upon a time on on whom she could draw something else that lends Dolrin's portraits especially in in the exterior's book a displacement is time and this is again one of the joys of having the book to look at is that within these photographs there are little modern elements a lip ring here a belly piercing there that feature and it's so often the little details like this that are overlooked when you simply look at a photograph or a painting reproduced on the screen you know having this physical thing in your hand it almost forces you to spend time with each image perhaps because you're also financially invested in it you know after all this book wasn't free but but more importantly at least for me it makes the images more real just just like the way that I find images created on film have a more organic feel and a flavor to them what do you think of Dolrin's photography you know does it invite you to explore its world or does it leave you cold let me know in the comments below at the end of the video I'll put up a playlist on screen with other art photographers for you to discover this is probably one of my favorite photographs certainly from this book of Dolrin's it is I think absolutely stunning I've been trying to think about how I could possibly describe what this this photograph means to me and how it how it affects me and and I'm struggling to come up with any real great insight it's just it's one of those photographs that I think rather than trying to analyze it and pick and go apart just to say this this moves me in a way that I hope there are other photographs not just of Desiree's but of anybody's who's who's you look at and you go oh my god that just it takes me to another place and it and it speaks to me on some sort of visceral level again I'm sorry if these are not being displayed fantastically well obviously given the nature of of the book and the lighting and what have you it is it's tricky to get a real sense of how gorgeously lush these these prints are and that's of course this is the joy of having you know a physical book where you can pick it up and you can enjoy the pictures you can feel that they have a more of an organic feel than they ever do online some of you may be familiar with Yolundi Fissa from Diantford which is a kind of art band from from South Africa and I know that Desiree Dolrin has photographed Yolundi in this style more recently but I'm looking at this this portrait here and she reminds me of Yolundi now given that this has got them out about 10 years ago maybe 15 years ago it's entirely possible that she is if anybody knows if this is this is Yolundi Fissa I'd be extremely grateful to know because it's starting to to really eat eat in my mind and I can't quite figure it out but anyway it is it is absolutely beautiful beautiful portrait and I love just the look and the style of all of these in a previous video I talked about speaking in your photography with your own voice about standing out from the crowd not through shouting but being true to yourself it's a cliche to say that the work should speak for itself and in the case of Dolrin's photography it certainly does but it does so quietly gently and almost imperceptibly it reminds me of an old beer commercial from the 1990s had the tagline strong words softly spoken nowhere in this book is there anything that screams or shoves an exaggerated emotion at you the way the photography is presented the mood of the images the expressions or the suggestions shared by the figures within the frame they invite me to lean into the scene straining to hear what is being whispered to me for me this isn't a world of reaction photography of social commentary or the freezing of a moment in time the way that I interpret these images is that they're not really portraits there aren't really any suggestions about the people behind the faces there's no character on display just in passiveness a blank canvas on which whilst leaning in to hear those words that are being softly whispered to us we can then imprint our own emotions the photography that resonates with me the most is is capable of transporting me to another time and a place or or voking in a feeling you know much like those bizarre images in that children's book which have stayed with me in the 40 something years since I first saw them sharing these photographers with you I simply hope to broaden your horizons and help you discover a new personal favorite to add to your list exterior is is a fantastic book and if you want to treat yourself to a copy it is still in print and I've linked to it in the description box underneath the video to discover some more great art photography I've created a playlist for you which I'll put up on screen right here for you now simply click on that and it'll take you to the next photographer thanks for joining me here today and I'll see you soon