Context and Background
The year is 2007. I'm in my second year of University. I am studying an Undergraduate Degree in Visual Art, and I'm taking a digital photography class. I am tasked with making a photo book. The theme is portraiture. These are those images.
An essay should accompany this body of work, I'm told. There should be a theme that ties it all together. I have no idea what, or who to use as a portrait subject; other than those surrounding me in my class. I'm interested in the imagery evoked by an enormous cohort of "Gothic Metal", and I use this as my basis, with my visual style leading more to Romanticism than Goya.
As we'll see throughout this series of images, however; there's a bit of obvious darkness throughout! Each image is inspired by a single song.
Image 10: Fair and 'Guiling and Copesmate Death
The winner for most complicated song name goes to Theatre of Tragedy. This is a complicated, long form song about mourning - death, and all the rituals associated with it. I decided to "flex" my then Photoshop skills for this image.
There's no less than 8 seperate images making up this composite image. It is focused "after the fact" of the ritual surrounding death, and designed to evoke the "after" - that is to say, all eternity.
I also felt this was pretty challenging, to share an image of just a hand as the "portrait", with the monument taking place of the main subject.
More About this image
Shot on various cameras, at various times, this image is a hodge-podge. The sky is taken from one shot, the monument in the foreground from another - the background cemetary a different shoot, again, and the trees above in the right hand corner are another image as well.
On top of that, the hand has been placed on the gravestone from a separate image. I had toyed with having the hand "pass through" the stone, and having some ethereal "energies" surround the monument, but figured this would detract from the rawness of the image.
Track that inspired this image
This is just a link to the song - this is not my video.