'Robert Doisneau: Palm Springs 1960' collection

I read in an article, a couple of weeks back, a small piece on the photographer Robert Doisneau.

I realised whilst reading the article that I had come across this photographers work in the past, when I was in Paris in fact on my foundation year , I think I had been to a museum that had an exhibition for his work at the time, as I have in my gigantic collection of inspirational books, a book on Doisneau with the front image being the famous, ‘The Kiss’.

The images however that accompanied the article were very different in terms of format and concept to that of ‘The Kiss’ which was taken in the 50’s. The collection of images shown were from Doisneau’s new book, ‘Robert Doisneau: Palm Springs 1960’. Being a more visual minded person, the images caught my attention prior to the article itself: the bright Californian colours in the imagery, the fashions of the women lounging by the pool and the location for the images are stunning.

If only I had enough money to grab a plane to Paris and see the exhibition showcasing this work, one can always dream :)

'I Am Love'

Today I saw the film ‘I am Love’, I know I’m very late, but like they say better late than never.

I loved the film: the style was so chic and effortlessly beautiful. The setting, of course, Milan, a sumptuous Italian city, with plenty of coffee yum, and the main actress Tilda Swinton, what more can be asked?

The story centres around the ideas of ‘love’, in this case a tragic love story between an Italian husband and an originally Russian, wife. The opening scene really highlights Italian culture and family beliefs and helps in setting the scene for the remainder of the movie. I wont give too much away for those who haven’t seen the film, but I will share with you guys some lovely imagery from the film. Swinton’s style throughout is so naturally chic, her style and sometimes her being, epitomises the Italian wealthy wife/woman.

A Constructive Summer

As I have now more or less finished for summer I am now busying myself with plenty of cultural ‘to dos’ yesterday for instance I caught up on a couple of errands then I went to one of my local charity shops and decided to do some volunteer work until I get another job (I was made redundant 2 weeks ago :( ) So this is exciting.

But today however, I visited one of the biggest local galleries I live near, to see the new exhibition showcasing Robbie Coopers work surrounding the idea of peoples behaviour in terms of when they are on a computer game, watching a film or the TV. I read a couple of weeks ago an article in the Sunday times magazine discussing his work and since then I have been fascinated to see the exhibition, ‘Immersion’ to see the imagery and a VT showing, mainly children, during their time of ‘leisure’. The VT I watched was quite creepy really, the emotions of the kids are so placid considering the games they were on (Call of Duty, Grand Theft auto) and the films they were watching (Saw, Peppa Pig). Also when watching the VT you yourself feel quite exposed. It’s a strange experience. The images at the exhibition, physically, were huge also, again really bringing in the onlooker into the world of the subject. I’m quite mesmerized with people, I like to understand them, I’m a big people watcher so this exhibition I really enjoyed.



Another exhibition I saw whilst at the museum was Simon Roberts, ‘We English’.

An exhibition of the ‘investigation of the English at leisure’. It was quite ironic really I had just come out of the Pictureville cinema after watching ‘I am Love’ a hugely Italian film, then onto ‘We English’: the exhibition brought me back to my ‘English-ness’. The images in the exhibition were a mixture of Roberts’ alongside images from the Nation Media Museum collections and a few Martin Parr images which is obviously very fitting considering Roberts’ concept. Roberts shot his images using a Ebony 45S camera (a large format camera) to create these immensely large images. This is what caught my attention firstly the shear size of the images adds that little extra for the viewer, you almost become part of the photograph. With Roberts’ images placed alongside images dating right back to the early 1990’s you realise that English leisure hasn’t changed massively: the exhibition although somewhat voyeuristic celebrates English-ness in an amusing way.




If you have time to visit the Museum do so, because being a student it’s great to get things for free, and both these exhibitions were free entry. It’s obviously free to sit and home and relax but its much more entertaining seeing some lovely, inspiring work than sat at home watching a screen, why not watch peoples expressions whilst they do the TV watching for you: it's much more interesting.

Final narrative

This is our final imagery set into a narrative. We believed the imagery to have a narrative to really help tell the story. With the final image showing the element in its natural state.

Photography: Moira

'Look' Trend

When looking through this weeks issue of Look magazine I came across some trend pages which link nicely with our shoot. The tribal earrings especially and the embellished warrior shoulder which we tried to create with the use of bundled necklaces over laying Lucy’s shoulder.

Fashion styling

In ‘The Home is where the Heart is’ issue of I.D magazine I came across a photo shoot that really reminded me of our matchbox photoshoot..

The fashion story is about a traveller, globe trotting around the world, and the fashion shoot showcases her clothing. Although the photoshoot wasn’t portraiture as our photoshoot became, the reference to the idea was uncanny. The styling and the make up choices were very similar to ours. The stylist, Havana Laffitte chose a customised headpiece for the photoshoot and the make up artist, Tyron, had applied what looks like white paint to the models face again to reiterate the look of a tribe. The styling kinda gives the model a warrior look, and with this the poses help to get this image across, in our photoshoot we only had to play with the head and neck of our model so as stylists we had more of a challenge as to try and portray a specific mood through very little, physically of the model, but I think we achieved this with our direction, make up and simple but effective styling.

The headpiece in both shoots, ours and I.D’s, I believe to be very striking and aids our concept further adding a ‘helmet’ almost, showcases this tribal/warrior sense derived from the four elements we were thinking about: earth, air, water and fire.

In the same issue of I.D and literally immediately after the shoot just mentioned, the magazine has looked at ‘The Eco warrior’ in a much more ‘fashiony’ way than that from ‘The Global Traveller’ shoot. The model’s look is much more pretty and more ‘clichéd’. Also the shoot is on location so it immediately adds a different sense to that of a studio shoot. The styling has a much more ‘hippy’ feel to it rather than a strong, natural sense. If I had to describe this shoot in comparison to the last; this one is ‘air’ and the first shoot would definitely be ‘fire’. The lighting is also much softer than the Global traveller shoot.

Final Images for 'Matchbox' Photo-shoot

These are our final 7 images.









Images taken by our photographer, Moira

The photoshoot

During the photoshoot we decided to take some shots of us at work. I took some photos of Marie when we were styling up different looks for the shoot. We set up our space for all our jewelry and make up ready for the model coming at 4pm.

We knew we wanted to create 5 definate images as we were photographing the model and mannequin at every possible angle; front, left side, right side, back and one where we wanted to capture the model looking upwards. When organising the looks small changes occured for instance, we realised if we photograph the model looking up, when we super imposed the mannequin on to the model the whole look would be very odd because obviously the mannequins neck didn't move so we had to change this look: so we decided to photograph the model at a side angle and then when super imposing the mannequin and model this time rather than overlapping them both immediatly on top of one another have both mannequin and model looking opposite ways then super impose them just touching heads, and in terms of where this would be placed in the narrative it would look best at the end.

However, before the model came at 4pm, Moira and Adam took photos of our mannequin to get every angle and myself and Marie began to style our ideas on the mannequin to get a better visual of the looks, although once we realised our ideas coming together we thought that the mannequins look on top of the models very organic, natural look would look unsuccessfull also taking into account the lighting that we used because it was so fresh and clean the difference between mannequin and model would have been too harsh. So from this our idea developed and once we took shots of Lucy dressed and styled we realised that the images work really strongly as portraiture pieces alone.

Make-up looks

When looking for make up looks for our photo shoot we wanted to have has a focus the headpieces and the jewellery more so than the make up, although referring back to the 'Above' magazine photo shoot, the model had an almost tribal like make up and yet her look seemed quite natural which we wanted to recreate, so the headpiece would become the focus. Myself and Marie wanted to attempt the make up to add a more natural feel to the shoot, we thought it may have looked odd the models make up being perfect and yet our theme was perfect imperfections-in terms of nature and the four elements: when is nature perfect?

The Topshop unique catwalk show, for A/W 2010 was a must as a reference when thinking about natural make up and our theme. During the shoot, when we were applying make up to our model, we had printed Topshop catwalk make up ideas off for us for reference. Both myself and Marie attempted with the make up and hair. Marie plaited Lucy’s hair as we had seen something from the catwalk and thought that the plaited hair look gave the concept that little extra something and I tried doing some artwork/painting onto Lucy’s forehead to create a tribal look.

Above Magazine

Today me and Marie discussed ideas for styling for our group matchbox photo shoot. Marie had found some beautiful imagery in Above magazine: a fashion story based around the idea of eco friendly concern. The styling in the images took me straight back to my idea of looking at the four elements-earth, air, fire and water. From this shoot me and Marie spoke about our concept and maybe using the eco styling as an ironic hit at consumerism and commercial styling and fashion.

We decided that we would make natural twig headpieces as in the found imagery, the model wore an amazing and very striking headpiece which we wanted to try and recreate. In terms of linking this with the mannequin idea, Moira had the idea of superimposing the mannequin (acting as the consumer society) over the model styled with natural ‘products’ (our ironic hit towards consumerism). In the shoot from Above magazine, the model had been styled with very little clothing: just some simple jersey stretch leggings, some jewellery and customised headpieces, both myself and Marie liked the look of the jewellery in the shoot, the contrast of the metal circular shapes against the naturally formed headpiece is interesting so we also thought about bringing in jewellery into the shoot but mostly natural jewellery.

'Avant toi'

I was flicking through some magazines the other day thinking about ideas for our photoshoot whether that be with styling, make up, hair, anything really just something to inspire and I came across the advert ‘avant toi’ a company promoting cashmere products and the female model especially in the advert had an interesting look.

Her hair was white and resembled a nest which looked quite cool and her pale skin and fair eyebrows and hair added an almost unnatural natural look. This is something we should think about in terms of make up for our photo shoot.

Model look

(images taken by Moira)

For our shoot, we wanted to get a model that had a somewhat different look rather than a cliché model. Moira’s friend, who Moira has worked with in the past has an interesting look, and from Moira’s blog you can see she takes on different characters very well. In terms of having Lucy model for our shoot, Lucy’s hair will be perfect to sit in our twig headpiece and even her lip piercing adds to the more tribal/natural sense that we are wanting to evoke.

We want to do, as Barbara does...

...through our fashion story.