GRANDEUR VIA LOCATION, PROPS & FASHION - PORTRAITS

When wandering around galleries I noticed how the contrast between locations had such an impact on both how you viewed the work and the type of viewers that were present.

For instance, The National Portrait Gallery has jewel toned walls, shiny floors and golden frames. The ostentatious aura draws a certain type of crowd where tourists and the middle-aged are the norm and students like myself are the outcasts. Being the outcast is taken in two ways, either negatively, leaving you feeling incredibly isolated or positively, seeing it as an opportunity to be seen - it's fun. The setting also gives the work added value. If the piece is respected by this institution it should be automatically granted respect by everyone.

On the other hand, galleries like 180 The Strand host work in a Brutalist, cold, industrial building. The crowd is a lot younger and edgier which again has positives and negatives. Encounters with other students could result in marvellous ideas being bounced off each other but equally, makes it harder to stand out because the unexpected is expected.

These reasons just confirm that grand and excessive is the way forward as it gives everyone the opportunity to view my work whilst still giving me the space to stand out because I wont be coming at it from the expected angle.

Nan Goldin is notorious for her brash and gaudy locations.

Goldin is heavily inspired by Diane Arbus.

Diane Arbus.

Elderly woman whispering to her dinner partner, Grand Opera Ball, NYC, 1959

 

The Backwards Man in his hotel room, NYC, 1961

 

Female impersonator holding long gloves, 1959

It’s easy to dislike Arbus’s photographs with crude representations of outcasts and controversial types but it begs the question, who is provoking whom? Is the photographer challenging the viewer? Is the subject confronting the photographer? Is there a victim?

"New documentarians were not recording the world with

a view to changing it but simply in order to know it."

But I think I do want to change the meaning slightly. I want to exaggerate and guide my ideals into the photographs. I want to make sure the way I think I portray myself is what comes across and not a watered down version.

Wood, G. (2016). Incest, suicide – and the real reason we should remember Diane Arbus. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/photography/what-to-see/incest-suicide--and-the-real-reason-we-should-remember-diane-arb/ [Accessed 23 Nov. 2017].