Valedictory Final

At the start of this shoot, I dressed her in a suit because she is someone who doesn't display herself as very masculine, and it's not something you see every day. Then, I placed her in the forest to contrast the suit decision because usually you don't see women in suits in the woods. I wanted to play with the idea of the absurd, and have surreal situations with realistic and artistic photos. In addition, the three different settings are supposed to tell a story; this forest setting has her very uptight, with her hair in the tight ponytail and the suit fully intact to represent oppression and being alone in the woods is to represent a feeling of isolation. They are a progression of relaxation, these two being the before images.

Here, she has let her hair down and is in a homey setting. She is starting to relax and to rid of her worries, even though the serious face implies that they will always stay with her, and the suit is still in tact. The no smile is also to make them more artistic looking and less commercial, though. She is also still alone showing continuing and isolated feeling. Also, I'm really glad I did the purple suit because it has worked into my color scheme for all three settings very well.

I didn't originally plan to take the milk photos, but after discussing Annie Leibovitz and some of her work with my sister and some friends, they said that they would help me recreate Annie's famous picture of Whoopie Goldberg in a bathtub of milk. What I did; however, was took Annie's concept and incorporated it into my own series of pictures. These pictures represent the final stage of relaxation that the woman lacked in the first setting. She submerses herself in the milk as a figurative baptism, freeing her of her worries for the moment. Also, another person shows up in this set of photos to show that she is no longer isolate--no longer alone. The suit is undone and ruined, her hair is all over the place or submersed in the milk with her.

My valedictory project was loosely based on Annie Leibovitz's photography, which is mostly fashion portraits of celebrities for magazines like Rolling Stone, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. However, Annie's style of photography is iconic, and different from the normal portrait photographer because she takes photos that display celebrities in an interesting way. Whether she is putting them in a setting that corresponds to whatever work they are doing, or making an artistic statement by taking a familiar face and showcasing it in a rather absurd and intimate way, her portraits always make you stop and think about them, and you can always tell that she has a connection with her subjects. That is what I aimed to do with this project. I wanted to do fashion portraits that were also very artistic, and that made people stop and notice them. I wanted to make them look real, but on the edge of surreal, and I wanted, most of all, to make people think. I think this project was a great way to end the year for me. This type of more fashion-based and strange portraits is something we didn't really get to do this year, and I feel like I was able to experiment with editing and photographing in a way which I came to really like. I feel like I learned a lot about myself as a photographer with this project. Before, I was a lot more comfortable and felt a lot stronger with documentary-style photos, and to some extent I do still feel like I am better at that, but I know I definitely have broadened my horizons. I am very pleased with these photos, particularly the ones in the milk. 

Valedictory Project Explanation

For my valedictory project, I want to take a series of fashion portraits showcasing people I know in a way that they wouldn't outwardly showcase themselves. I want to take Annie Leibovitz inspired portraits combining portraiture, a little bit of surrealism, general strangeness, and most importantly intimacy. I want people to look at them and see that the subject of the photo would need to have at least a small amount of trust in the photographer to even consider being in the portraits. I want to take portraits that are artistic and intimate, where someone would look at them and have something to contemplate. I don't want people to be able to figure them out right away, because although I do believe that one can produce very beautiful shots without much of a conceptual idea or meaning behind it, that seems easy to me. I want that sense of complexity, confusion, intimacy, and general absurdity in my portraits that Leibovitz displays in many of her most famous works.

Annie Leibovitz Research

• She started out only shooting black and white, and photographed for Rolling Stone magazine from 1970 to 1983.
• Her Rolling Stone cover featuring Yoko Ono and John Lennon in 1980 is considered by some the best magazine cover in the last 50 years.
• Published a book, Annie Leibovits: Photographs in 1983
• She toured with the Rolling Stones for a long time and has said that she often got lost in that work. She doesn't regret it, but wishes she would have been more aware and done more
• Joined Vanity Fair magazine in 1983, and was made first contributing photographer
• She became known for her wildly lit, staged, and provocative portraits of celebrities at Vanity Fair. 
• Some of her most famous shots there were Whoopi Goldberg submerged in a bath of milk, and Demi Moore naked and holding her pregnant belly, which stirred controversy, but is also a renowned cover. 
• Leibovitz has photographed celebrities such as Brad Pitt, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Ellen DeGeneres, the George W. Bush cabinet, Michael Moore, Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton, Scarlett Johannson, Keira Knightley, Tom Ford, Nicole Kidman, Suri Cruise with parents Tom and Katie, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, Beyoncé, Cate Blanchett, and countless others.
• Her portraits have appeared in Vogue, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker, and in ad campaigns for American Express, the Gap, and the Milk Board.
• She has been made a Commandeur des Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, and a designated living legend by the Library of Congress
• Wrote the book, Women, with Susan Sontag in 1999
• Wrote, A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005, which she called a memoir of photographs.
• Shot a series of surreally lit, disney themed photographs featuring celebrities as Disney characters called Disney Dream Portraits, which Disney has featured.

Valedictory 48 Shot Contact Sheets

Surrealism Final

•  For this picture, the studio pose is a type of juxtaposition to represent the juxtapositions in my outward personality. I have a very strange, awkward, and sort of erosive pose with a contrasting strong, calm face. The secondary photos add an element of mystery and darkness. It is also a photo of the woods behind my house, showing a part of me that I don't display outwardly. I added the birds for the symbol of flight or freedom, which represents a state of freedom and consciousness that that I hope to one day achieve.I have never felt more emotionally attached a photo of myself than I am to this one. I don't think I can exactly say why, but I feel this picture is a perfect representation of who I am at this point in my life. 

•  For this photo, I wanted to use the studio photo to show the ambition and brightness that I see in Angela outwardly with a sharp downward angle showing her smiling up at the face of her future. I also added a fading effect toward the top of the photo to represent the future as well. I used the theme of flowers for her inward self photos to show growth, life, and vitality that she has inside her. Her inward and outward self are very similar, I think.

•  Out of all of my pictures, this one was probably the most thought out, conceptually and mechanically. I wanted to represent my own ambition in this one, and my desire to rise above where I am now. That is why I am pictured larger than, and stepping over my house. In addition, I used contrasting skies to show the bright, colorful potential in me compared to the, not exactly stormy, but duller skies around me, and that I have already experienced. 

• For this one, I wanted to show growth again with the flowers, but this time, they are larger, and fully bloomed. The pose is more stoic and mysterious than the picture of Angela before, showing more confidence in herself. This picture would sort of be the continuation of the story in the picture of her before. Perhaps, it is what she is looking at in the first one.

I think my work reflects the nature of both individuals pretty well. I started off knowing I wanted to use flowers for Angela because she is a very lively, and generally happy person, which I see symbolized in the flowers. Her pictures are a bit more bright, optimistic looking, and have more serene coloring because that is how she is. For myself, I am the subject that I know best, so I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted to represent myself conceptually. I captured the sense of ambiguity about myself that I think a lot of people feel, the uncertainty of who I am exactly and the mystery and thrill that comes with it. I also think I captured a lot of not just who I am now, but where I want to be, which I explained above.

I really love this type of abstraction. This was by far my favorite project that we have done this year. Telling a story within pictures, making people think, and putting a really figurative sense of self  and underlying meaning into my work is something that I really enjoy. It is very artistic and contemporary as well which I liked, and I think I got to showcase my photoshop skills more in this project than any other. If I could change anything, I would have liked to get more shots in the studio and taken more shots of the inner self just to have more variety, and I would have liked for them to be even more thought out than they already are, especially for the pictures of Angela. However, I still am very pleased, and loved this project.