Faceless

Its non conventional to photograph yourself without your face, as it generally hides your identity. However some photographers have explored this option within self portrait. John Coplans is known for his series of black and white self portraits of his naked body. He captured detailed images of specific body parts but never his face, focusing on the physical and human qualities of the body and nothing more. The interesting things were the shapes his made with his body, twisting it in ways to experiment with composition.

I wanted to take a different approach to a faceless image, and make it still personal but also still hiding identity. I took a photo of myself covering my face with another photograph, technically I am not showing my physical face but a photograph of my younger face. I didn't like the outcome, I think the photograph I was holding wasn't big enough to make a good image. It started out as a decent idea but I won't be continuing with it.

Mirror

Lots of photographers use mirrors to take their self portraits. Using a mirror enables you to set up the shot as apposed to trail and error using self timer. It also however means that the camera will be in the photograph as well. Photographers chose to do this in order to show off their equipment, but also to use a different perspective. Playing around with refection can sometimes confuse the audience and make you have to look twice about where the mirror is in relation to the photographer/ camera. Here is a self portrait by Sally Mann, I like it because she has made the large camera and equipment the main point of focus in the image.

Using mirrors in self portrait is used everyday on social networking sites. People are constantly taking images of themselves for profile uses, in some ways this can be seen as a form of vanity, yet it is still a form of self portrait. The difference is they are not as personal, often edited and displayed to show you at your best.

Heres a quick one I took of myself in the mirror. My mirror is surrounded in photographs which makes it more interesting as I'm not only in it once. It also takes the main attention away from me, like in the Sally Mann self portrait, my physical self is not where the eye is drawn to straight away.

Shadow

This project focuses on the relationship between the photographer and their images. Reflecting personal experiences, responses or opinions within the photographs. This can be conveyed in a simple self portrait or a more in depth series of images. I am going to first be reflecting on lectures and doing research into how different photographers approach self portrait. Im going to start with a painting by Joseph Wright. He painted this scenario while in greece. The image shows a woman drawing the outline of her lovers shadow before he goes off to war. This image arguably dictates the creation of portrait. She is drawing his shadow as representation; she wants part of him to be left behind. To me it makes sense for a shadow to represent a portrait as its personal and unique to everyone. More recently photographers have used shadow to represent their self-portrait. Looking at a range of different shadow work I think it’s not only the shadow itself that makes the photograph personal, but also what it is cast on. Ansel Adams is iconic for his landscape photography, which he reflects in his self-portrait. Here he has cast a shadow over what could be a desert floor, or a mountainside. Wherever it is, its different and its because of the location that you still get the sense who he is. I will remember this when creating my own self-portrait work, that the location is just as important and the context.

A Short History of the Shadow by Victor I. Stoichita After reading a couple of passages from this book I have taken down some memorable and interesting points and quotes. "At the age of five a child can already understand that the shadow is the shadow of an object (the hand) and that this is attributable to the hands opaqueness (to the bones)" "However from around the age of eight the child can even predict where a shadow will fall, going as far as to state that the shadow is produced when light is absent" "Children as young as six months can recognise themselves in the mirror" "The mirror stage involves primarily the identification if the I, whereas the shadow stage involves mainly the identification of the other"