Miles Aldridge: Photographer

Moira mentioned in our meeting a couple of days ago the photographer, Miles Aldridge. Aldridge's website is stunning, although his subject matter for his images have hints of darkness.

The immediate imagery in the editorial section on Aldridge's web-page, the images taken for Numero in 2009, named 'May Fair Lady', is a great reference for my group to look at in my opinion, the lighting and the colouring of the images highlights a more sinister look and feel to the imagery. The poses of the models are almost doll-like in a way, their look is quite rigid and artificial. The actual location's in the imagery look carefully constructed.

The shoot for Vogue Italia, named 'Columbia Road', shot in 2009, seems to challenge the idea of a woman. The images have a certain irony to them.

Aldridge's 'Kiss of Death' shoot, shot for Vogue Nippon in 2008, really reminded me of the film 'The Cell', starring Jennifer Lopez and Vincent D'Onofrio. The movie is about a young boy, who we see as an adult, and he has a very psychotic mind: he kills women, and he plays out his fantasies of making them look like a doll, he bleaches their skin and their hair to evoke this doll-like innocence. This may be a film that could help my group and our project, although I'm not too sure that we want our message to be this sinister.



Aldridge shoots editorial, portraits, beauty, menswear, accessories, still life and advertising. The theme of the ideas surrounding the female seems to be questioned in most of his shoots. His colourful images and constructed shots are quite beautiful to look at and understand.

Following Consumers.

We had our group meeting yesterday to discuss everyones initial ideas and decide on a path to go down for the new project.

Our idea at the minute came from simply the word, 'Match'. Moira had an idea to base a shoot around the idea of consumerism and mass reproduction, which from a stylist view and my personal view I really like, as I like to question the ideas behind brands and peoples behaviour. The definition for the word match includes the idea of 'similarity' and the connotations of a 'unit' of specifics. So with this in mind, and the idea of consumerism, specially at the minute, we have agreed on focusing the shoot on a 'uniform of people', in this case a model, alongside mannequins.

The meeting itself went really well: we work well together and it shows. We each had initial ideas for a shoot, but drew everyones ideas together, as they seem to work well.

This is my list of notes from the meeting;

-match- definition? in terms of fashion- an army of women
-warriors, army, militant (regarding style-the fall collections referenced heavily the military)
-look at fashion shows/designers that have meaning about the portrayal of women (hussein chalayan)
-Jeff Walls picture, Insomnia, colouring of image-photography format
-consumerism and mass reproduction
-using materials to change its purpose -resemble fire-chiffon, hot colours (lucinda chambers)
-army, on the street (early morning-light)
-smoke/mist over images
-cinematic style shots
-research any connections with smoking and the military(rationing of cigarrettes)
-playing with proportions -do one shoot the size of a barbie- use barbie as a model (ideas of mass reproduction/consumerism/similar/the same) and another shoot life size
-when sequencing and editing- have a strong visable narrative (put images in certain order)
-in shoot -model- odd one out, mannequins (they are very similar as they are mass produced, more so than a person) as the consumer society- wanting to look the same
-film stills
-mannequins lit up???
-research barbie- her portrayal/meaning/connotations

People to research-

Fashion:
-Helmut Newton- naked women, lined up
-Hussein Chalayan-how he portrays ideas of consumerism
-Lucinda Chambers (vogue stylist) who uses clothes in a shoot to change its use i.e trousers as a head piece

Photography:
-Glen Luchford-cinematic style
-Miles Aldrige constructive set ups
-Cindy Sherman (portrayal of women)
-Finley Mckay