In the Twilight Between Art and Life
In mid-2018, I worked on a project to promote a fashion show, the theme of which was fashion as fine art. During the show, the runway models would be presented as works of art. They would wear abstract art makeup coordinating with the styles they wore and -- in a general sense -- reflecting the art lining the walls of the gallery in which the show was held. To publicize the show, the promoter wanted photos of models with "paint" on their faces, paintbrushes in hand, as if they had just been very careless artists. I viewed the idea as weak and inconsistent with the notion a that the models were, themselves, works of art, not sloppy artists. After shooting one of the requested images, I redirected the project to portray these living models as creatures existing in the boundary between life and art.
In the first image, Page Parkes model, Jessica Patterson, wears a mermaid inspired nightclub dress by designer Adrienne Yunger. I asked Jessica to sit in front of a minimalist marine-themed painting by Houston artist Kyong Burke. The painting depicted childrens' paper boats floating in a pond . I used a blue gelled light on camera left to connect the model with the blue water behind her.
The second image crosses a step deeper into the frontier between art and life. Here, independent Houston model Savannah Martinez, wearing an abstract print silk dress by Anne-Joelle Designs seems partially emerged from an abstract painting by Houston artist Valentina Atkinson.
In the third image, Revalushion Managment model Gerlice Horton, wearing a gown by Mysterious by NPN, is immersed in a hallucinatory adaptation of a painting of a female face by Houston artist Nergis Mustafa.
The fourth image features the same model, designer, and painter as the third image. However, it explores a very different territory in the art-life boundary zone. The most ambitious work in the set, this composite places a the model in an impressionistic abstract painting that evokes a fantasy garden. To create the illusion that the model is in this garden, I duplicated part of the image, including the model, converted it to a reflection, then added effects to create the illusion of water and depth. The final touch was fine detail to believably place the model's bare feet in the water. That effect is visible in the last frame.
--GH