"there is no exquisite beauty‌ without some strangeness in the proportion," Edgar Allan Poe, 1838
In this project I was required, in a team, to produce images on the theme, "what is beauty," these images are part of the all walks project and should be inspired by an appropriate tastemaker. In teams we started our research by thinking what we consider beautiful, and the people we, personally consider to be beautiful, and we all came up with a large variety of different people, mostly actresses and models. The only thing that we could agree on was that we thought that a confidence in a person makes them more beautiful, for example people like Heidi Montag who had such issues with the way she looked had "ten plastic surgery procedures in one day,"( Streiber, 2011: Online) only to regret it and to have scars left all over her body. We decided that we thought that people that are comfortable in their own skin were more beautiful than people that tried to change who they naturally are. This statement really got me thinking about how people expire to be something that they consider perfection, and what was the actual measurements for beauty. We are constantly being measured, clothe size, body weight, height, BMI and more, all these measurements will place us on a scale in comparison with others. I went in to a variety of high-street shops and noted that smaller items of clothing are placed at the front, and that these items were placed on a mannequin that is a poor interpretation of a realistic human body and then photographed on a model that has then been photo shopped. We disused this as a team and then decided that body proportion and measurements were to our inspiration for the shot.
Tastemaker
This research then lead me to think about body proportions and their reality, and I felt that Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian man is the original image of body proportion. An image created in 1487 shows a man in two combined positions enclosed in a square and circle, it is said that, "each separate part was a simple fraction of the whole," (BBC, 2005: Online). Having Leonardo da Vinci as our taste maker gives more depth to the photo shoot as the image is so well known and recreating it will invoke a reaction due to its modern take. Da Vinci’s theory of each body part is a fraction of a whole really appealed to me for the shoot as showing that even though everyone is different you are exactly in proportion to yourself and as a result your dimensions are perfectly suited to you. Also taking inspiration from this image was already giving a bold strong stance to work with, which tied in with the message that we want to send.
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Fig #1 Vitruvian Man (1487) By Leonardo Da Vinci
Fig# 2 Size Sassy (2012) Special K Other Research Due to the fact our inspirational image is so historic I wanted to gain some modern perspective to the images I wanted to create. There was a advert for Special K the diet cereal with the slogan, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could focus less on the number and more on how the fit makes us feel,” (Special K, size sassy, 2012: TV) and they showed how instead of jean sizes they have words describing how great they fit, like sassy and radiant. I think that this is a reference to how sometimes sizes can be intimidating to people. Also to do with sizing in stores, an article in the Sunday Telegraph, really addressed the changes in sizes that stores give their clothes. There has been a lot of issue with the fact you can be one size in a store and then a completely different size in another, for example ,“ a size eight bust is 31.5 inches at John Lewis, but 38 inches at Gap” (Gorden, 2010: Online) “Attractiveness is really about what looks good on your body, so being a size 10 is pretty irrelevant. To me, it's nothing more than a number,” (Alexandra Miro, 2012: online)
The Shoot For our shoot we really wanted take time to really organise our shoot and make sure we took the photos. We booked our own session, we asked all the models to come in form fitting black clothes with minimal accessories, even though we didn’t want them to wear anything that distracted from the message that we were trying to convey, we wanted to see how they interpreted this, as we still wanted aspects of their personality to come through. As I have studied photography before I knew that we needed to get a clear clean shot that would be easy to lift from the raw image in order to do post production. We achieved this by using a clean white background and used lighting to make sure that the bright focus was on the model and turned the main lights off to avoid multiple shadows . We took pictures of the models in two different poses, instead of trying to get the models poses to match with each other’s we showed them the poses and photographed their instinctual poses in order to really gain their personal dimensions. I took at least three of each pose on each model to have more raw material to work with.
The Final Image This is out final image, our three models in pose inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. I think that this image a success and really captured the theme perfectly. I think that the strongest part of this project was research and the photography, our tastemaker was so influential and shows that you can keep getting inspiration from even the oldest art works and it’s still relevant in this day and age. I think that the message that we should set so much buy our size and measurements really comes through in this image.
List Of Citations Edgar Allan Poe, 1838 Streiber, 2011:
Online BBC,
2005: Online Special K, Size Sassy, 2012: TV Gorden, 2010: Online Alexandra Miro, 2012: online
List of Illustrations Fig# 2 Size Sassy (2012) by Special K Fig #1 Vitruvian Man (1487) By Leonardo Da Vinci
Bibliography Tv Special K, Size Sassy Advert, 2012. BBC1, [09/09/12] Online Unknown. 2005. BBC Science. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/leonardo/gallery/vitruvian.shtml [accessed 24/09/12] Gordon, B. 2012. The Telegraph. Available at: http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG7607901/Our-dress-size-continues-to-matter.html [accessed 24/09/12]
Miro, A. 2012. The Telegraph. Available at: http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG9459148/Is-size-10-the-magic-number.html [accessed 24/09/12] Streiber, 2011. ABC News. Available at: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/slideshow/heidi-montags-plastic-surgery-transformation-12175653 [accessed 20/09/12]