Author: stay-subtle

“PORCHTRAITS” Series

Puzzles. Hand sanitizer. Masks. Take-out food. Movie marathons.

This is what our world looks like now. Staying at home with our loved ones watching the news to stay informed, disinfecting groceries, washing our hands over and over again… This is COVID-19. Although some people have been hit harder by the coronavirus’ effects than others, every person on our planet has been influenced somehow by this deadly pandemic. Everyone is facing their own struggles, getting laid-off, coming home from college, cancelling vacations, and not getting to walk across the graduation stage. As we are all collectively struggling, we are all collectively learning. Learning how to check in on friends and family. How to properly wash our hands. How the world can be such a better place when we come together as one human race.

I decided to create a series that embodies the emotional turmoil of what it is like to be living in 2020. Everyone has seen photos of the empty shelves, the long Costco lines of shopping carts, and children learning through Zoom meetings. I wanted the idea of family to be the core of my series. Many photographers across the nation are running with the idea of taking portraits of families, oftentimes in color and full of forced-smiles, other times in masks and wearing gloves. While both representations of families are important, I chose to take a more direct approach. 

People are scared. People are concerned.

And that is exactly what I chose to depict throughout this series. It did not take much directing to have people express the emotions evident through these photos. The instinctual smiles were replaced by reaffirming touch from mother to daughters and spouse to spouse. I asked these families to dress up to help portray the look of old studio-type daguerreotype photographs, as well as giving them an excuse to get out of the sweatpants we all find ourselves pulling on each morning. 

This series was partially inspired by some of the first photographers we looked at in this class. Family portraits, and the way that the depth of field provided a wide angle of perspective into the standing person’s life, telling a story about them without any story.

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For this assignment, I chose to go with option #1 and photograph my domestic life in response to the pandemic. I was very inspired after watching Crewdson’s documentary, so I tried to emulate that as much as I could. I knew that I would need as wide of a lens as I had, which happened to be my Sigma 35 (which I love and use all the time), to try and show as wide of a narrative as I could. I also intentionally used artificial light to highlight more of my subjects much like Crewdson would with his stage lights. I wanted this to be as natural as possible, so I had my parents positioned in a way that they almost always are. CNN is always on in the house during these times, my mom watches while she makes dinner, and my dad watches alongside his desktop while he works in his office. This isn’t usual, as my parents hardly watch the news and like to have it on during the day. Since the coronavirus, though, it is always on, keeping them informed on the newest updates and reports. I also decided to include a self portrait that encapsulates what it has been like to now live at home instead of at State College. I struggled a lot my senior year, and needed to get out of not only the house but my small town as quickly as possible. I’ve grown a ton being away at school, it was definitely something that needed to happen to push me in my life. Coming back, I can’t help but feel those same insecurities and issues arise in the bedroom I spent my whole life in. Doing school work that I was doing just under a month ago in my dorm now in my house is a really odd mix that I’m still getting adjusted to.

For my photos responding to the virus, I decided to go to my local grocery store and photograph. I’ve had a lot of problems with my camera during this whole process, including waiting for my packaged up camera to get to me in Oregon, and then realizing that my roommate grabbed the wrong battery charger, and my camera was dead when it got here… SO yeah. Lots of unfortunate things on top of another considering I’ve been itching to leave my house and photograph. I wanted to get this project done because I’m already behind on the due date, so I had to take the photos with my phone, which was alright. I told my mom that having to photograph on a phone is like giving a painter a set of Crayola water colors, but it’ll have to do for now. I hid my phone in the sleeve of my sweatshirt and used the side buttons to take the photos, which was kind of fun. I edited them to purposely be more underexposed than usual to give that eerie effect that everyone had been talking about for this series. Going into the shoot I thought a lot about what I could do to make these photos relate to everything that is going on now. Because, yes, I could take a picture of a street that’s usually busy, but anyone could look at that in 10 years and not correlate it to the Coronavirus. Once I find somewhere that is selling extra camera batteries, I have another shoot planned that I’m really excited for. I’ll probably post them on here once it happens, just because I’ve been so frustrated with just wanting to shoot photos on my camera SO BAD, and damn it I WILL!!

The artist I chose to imitate was Imogen Cunningham, a female artist who specialized in abstracting things like the body and nature. Her work has always inspired me, especially in the way female photographers portray other women in nude photos compared to male photographers.

My Imitation

Imogen Cunningham inspired me to start exploring the nude form and ways to abstract it starting my Junior year of high school, which later became the base of my senior project. She handled all of her photos with such delicacy, and all of her images were so beautiful that I often turn to her work in both digital and manual work. For my best attempted photo, I wanted to challenge myself in recreating her image, because something about abstracting two different bodies in the same way seemed interesting.

Although we did not learn about the process in class, I chose to imitate the style of the famous Daguerreotype for my project. This is a process that has always caught my attention and I have a huge appreciation for the process.

I love Photoshop and being able to use the software as a tool to manipulate images. I enjoy challenging myself as a photographer and photo editor to emulate the feeling through my own pictures. I knew going into the shoot that I wanted a portrait that I could make dramatic through local dodge and burn techniques, so my initial goal was to get that through my model. To imitate the feeling of the silver plate process I took a daguerreotype layer and multiplied it through onto my portrait, as well as multiplying through different scratches and speckled vectors.