Foiled Portraits
Sophia
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Harold
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Camille
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I’ve never felt comfortable working with a live model so I began this project as a way for me to explore an alternate idea of portraiture.
Utilizing tin foil and a mannequin, I try to exploit the material’s pliable and reflective qualities in creating an object that captures the likeness of the original. The resulting sculpture is fragile with a very short half-life. A soft breeze quickly and easily distorts the surface. As I work with the sculpture, moving it around into different positions, pushing and pulling the foil, I photograph the transformations the delicate sculpture transitioned through. I realized that at the end of the day, I will be left with nothing but a ball of crumpled foil and some portraits.
As it is pulled from the box, tin foil begins essentially as a large mirror. As the foil is shaped around an object, it fractures into smaller and smaller mirrors, each tiny mirror pointing in a different direction and reflecting the color from that direction. Working with this material, I learned to control the color and intensity of the light being reflected by the foil.
For me, a project is a journey and part of the appeal in making these images was in solving the challenges posed by getting the material and light to work together cohesively. The more I understand this interaction, the better I can create the expressions and emotions of the resulting portraits.
Utilizing tin foil and a mannequin, I try to exploit the material’s pliable and reflective qualities in creating an object that captures the likeness of the original. The resulting sculpture is fragile with a very short half-life. A soft breeze quickly and easily distorts the surface. As I work with the sculpture, moving it around into different positions, pushing and pulling the foil, I photograph the transformations the delicate sculpture transitioned through. I realized that at the end of the day, I will be left with nothing but a ball of crumpled foil and some portraits.
As it is pulled from the box, tin foil begins essentially as a large mirror. As the foil is shaped around an object, it fractures into smaller and smaller mirrors, each tiny mirror pointing in a different direction and reflecting the color from that direction. Working with this material, I learned to control the color and intensity of the light being reflected by the foil.
For me, a project is a journey and part of the appeal in making these images was in solving the challenges posed by getting the material and light to work together cohesively. The more I understand this interaction, the better I can create the expressions and emotions of the resulting portraits.