The above image is from a recent shoot, it was a test shot while I was adjusting my lighting halfway through the shoot. I had at the time been using slow shutter speeds and decided to try and use the modelling lamp on my flash as a light source, while setting it up and testing shots I was shooting with the trigger in my hand, and remembered as I was doing so how I had created multiple exposures in a previous project by manually triggering my flash multiple times during a shot and decided to give it a try here. The resulting image is fascinating, beautiful, and will most definitely end up in my Portfolio for this module. The multiple exposure blends the two bodies into a mass of flesh, skin on skin and movement. Where one body ends and the other begins is almost indecipherable, and in this way it echos the work of Stephen Barkers "Nightswimming" and even "The Park" by Yoshiyuki. However here there is more texture and definition, and the roundness of body parts, the hair and texture draw you in and encourage you to touch, to be complicit in the image.
The red tone of the image is part warmth of the tungsten modelling light and part processing. Having viewed the image in camera with an incorrect white balance, the red called out to me, so in Photoshop I decided to render it in a deeper red, though I do wander how this would appear in monotone as well. In my next shoot with the boys I will be using this technique only and plan to render the images in monotone in reference to the works of Barker and Brandt.
As I view this image, I am reminded of cubist artworks by Picasso and Braque such as the piece above "Still life with a bottle of rum" by Picasso (1911). As a general overview, cubism seeks to deconstruct the subject matter so that one might view it from all angles at once, as such a lot of cubist work is highly distorted and often difficult to disseminate. The movement inspired many work, and multiple other movements, and there are still many artists today who work within this genre. But beyond painting Cubism even made its way into the real of photography through the likes of David Hockney.
"Pearlblossom HWY" (1986) by David Hockney could be misconstrued for a cubist painting, but it is in fact a collage of photographs, or a "Joiner" as Hockney would call them. While it is not technically speaking a painting, I believe it is without a doubt cubist, as Hockney says himself in an interview for Getty Museum "Your looking down on the road, your looking up, your looking every direction" at once, "Every photograph here is taken close to something, which is why you the viewer feel involved in it... your moving around it", it is clear from these comments that Hockney intention is to deconstruct the scene in order for each part of it to be consumed by the viewer, and allow them to see every detail of the scene at once. "The Skater" (1984) by Hockney shows how cubism can not only capture multiple angles and space, but also the movement in time, as we see the figure skater move through the dance across the page, similar to by models in the image above. I am resolved to explore this further in my next shoot.
Getty Museum (2019). David Hockney's Pearblossom Hwy. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD123svCFHQ [Accessed 12 Nov. 2019].
Hodsdon, C. (2014). Juxtapoz Magazine - David Hockney’s “Joiners”. [online] Juxtapoz.com. Available at: https://www.juxtapoz.com/news/photography/david-hockney-s-joiners/ [Accessed 1 Dec. 2019].
Richman-Abdou, K. (2018). Cubism: How Picasso and Others Broke From Tradition to Transform Modern Art. [online] My Modern Met. Available at: https://mymodernmet.com/what-is-cubism-art/ [Accessed 1 Dec. 2019].