Edgy Photos

Too bad photography requires those pesky cameras. My friend brought over the movie "Fur" a fictional biography of Diane Arbus, photographer of freaks and other normal people. Then she shared this biography:



http://www.amazon.com/Diane-Arbus-Biography-Patricia-Bosworth/dp/0393326616/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236783484&sr=1-1

Diane Arbus committed suicide in 1971 at the age of 48. Her photos are intense. I feel correspondences with her, being a mother, coming out of a very conventional life into an independent "alternative" life, struggling with depression, trying to live creatively. But she is far more courageous than I am. I think some of my poems are edgy like her work. Recently I've been experimenting with photographic collages set in shadow boxes. I use multiple images of a subject, cutting them out by hand and piecing them onto mats in the foreground or back ground and layering them. I am looking at the presented image of the person and the shadow form. I like to use photos taken when they are unaware or unposed or even resistant and layer these with more posed images, or with other objects like mushrooms and staircases. I think they are lovely. One disturbed my son. It showed my parents at their wedding and layered with them now at my niece's wedding. It was harsh. I rebuilt it with more friendly images, layering the old photo with images of my niece and her new husband. I still like the original. I want to do a study of sleeping people.
Here are a few interesting photos that may be a bit in the style of Arbus. These are digital and color so nothing like hers, but I will work on it. The first one, above, I took of me being very sad and mad. It was new year's day, happy fucking new year.
This next one at left is a mother of the bride and bride. I love the way the bride is moving away from mother and the mother watches with some anxiety on her face. Mother's hands are so tense. This one was used for the shadow box layered pieces, the first one of these I did. I removed all the background and used multiple images of the two figures. The final result appears to have four layers over gray silk fabric.

The next one below is more straightforward but I like the rejecting posture of the boy and the red spot on his hand like a wound. The flash was too much though. I used this in a complex layered piece with photos of another child, a total of four different images expressing a conflict between the children and between their individual presented selves. The last one is just fun. I am working in a layered piece with this one using a shadowed nude image of me as a "cake" on a cake plate in the foreground of this photo of a pastry case with reflections. It seems to be too complex though, especially in the small size.