For my marriage of image and text, I planned to take self portraits and overlay them with dramatic text from movie promotional taglines. The self portraits were intended from the start to be low key depictions of mundane, unremarkable daily activities. After the previous project, I decided to shoot in black and white 35mm and add the text as a separate object on the photo.
Shooting the self portraits proved to be a bit of a challenge. Focus, exposure and composition of the self portraits took some time to get used to. It helped to use a studio light as a stand in for my person. After developing prints, I hand wrote text on white paper and taped it to the photo. The black ink on white paper seemed to blend in with the black and white print, and so I switched paper and instead used yellow post it notes to place the text as separate from the image.
I humbly submit the following images as inspirational:
These first 3 are representative of subjects I wanted to avoid when taking self portraits:
Slowly, by Monislawa
http://monislawa.deviantart.com/art/Slowly-147621665
This is a lovely photo, but it has a level of drama that would be totally inappropriate for the proposed subject of the image portion of this project.
http://larafairie.deviantart.com/art/Self-Portrait-Droplets-92891575
Self Portrait – Droplets by Lara Jade
Similarly, this photo is posed and lit in a way suggestive of dramatic narrative.
http://rebelliousamethyst.deviantart.com/art/canon-love-156518303
canon love by Neylan Yilmaz
I was consciously aware of the stereotypical “myspace portrait” – I’ll own up and admit to having taken photos similar to this, but I consciously avoided shots with cameras in them for this project.
The next 3 were emulated in various ways:
http://www.natelarson.com/charlatans5.htm
Nate Larson – Telepathy
Although I found this photo after I finished the project, the handwriting is similar to that of my own project. The effect is similar.
Barbara Kruger:
http://www.ismennt.is/vefir/ari/myndlist/kruger_you_are_not.jpg
http://www.maryboonegallery.com/artist_info/gfx/kruger/04189-%28BK%29.jpg
Barbara Kruger’s use of image and text was a direct inspiration for this project, although I did away with her feminist leanings.
And, the post-critique reflection:
Overall, the project seemed to be received as I intended it. The dissonance between the subject of the image and the text was effective. Before critique, I had to choose whether or not to try to arrange the text into a narrative. I chose against it, and I feel the the loose narrative formed by the group of images is preferable. As was pointed out, the images had a gray cast to them. Fortunately, this helped to accentuate how boring the activities depicted were. However, I cannot claim to have done this intentionally. I wish I had added a second or two of exposure to the toothbrushing portrait.
I was also unsure of the format of text – I had used transparent tape to attach the post-it cutouts to the image. Glare turned out to be a non-issue. I’m also satisfied that my use of small prints (5×7″) creates a more intimate experience, especially since viewers need to move in close in order to read the handwriting. Overall, the project met the goals I had set out to create – so much so that I regret not having created more images in the series.
