Description/reflection
Yagmur Yildiz and I worked together on the creation of our merged portrait in which we explored both of our personalities and experiences. The size of the piece is 36 x 48 inches. The portrait took the form of a clock, which is a metaphor of how time creates who we become. Each number of the clock has a photograph that represents a part of ourselves. 1 and 11 illustrate home, 2 and 10 politics, 3 and 9 love life, 4 and 8 our weaknesses, 5 and 7 our love for art, and the number 6 is a photo that is made out of both of our faces. This last one represents how we both connect that we want to be considered as strong women. To make these representations be possible we used symbols, accessories, and facial expressions. The background of our conceptual piece is both of our faces with some of the symbols used in the smaller photographs.
Process
- The Interview: we first interviewed each other. We prepared each a list of ten questions that we wanted our partner to respond. Those questions helped us get each other better, and to learn in which aspects we were very similar, and in which not as much.
- List of Similarities and Differences:
In this step we figured that we both: come from politically turbulent backgrounds (Venezuela and Turkey), are passionate about art and design, and want to show a strong image of women to the world.
We also learned the ways in which we differ: our love life, and what we consider to be our weaknesses. - Brainstorming Process:
Here we came up with different ideas shown on the image below. To do so, we looked for inspiration in Pinterest where we created a moodboard. We also got inspired by Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin’s work with merged portraits. After brainstorming for a long time, we decided to stick with the idea of the clock. - Trial photoshoot:
The trial photoshoot was done in class, where we took photos of each other in the different angles and poses that we thought could work for each of the small photographs on the clock. We printed those photos and placed them on a table to analyze what we wanted to keep and change. - Real photoshoot
We created our own studio with lights that we rented from the New School in a white wall at Kerrey Hall. After preparing the lights, we shot different versions of every photograph. - Digital step: Photoshop
After the photographs were ready, Yagmur edited some of the photographs to add final digital details such as the penguin earring, the glasses with the Turkish pattern, and the face with the 3d colors.
Then I edited the shadows, and the sizing of each photo making them small circles. When I had the small circles ready, I used the image of a clock as a layer, and positioned every photo on top of their corresponding number. Consequently, I introduced a texture behind that layer. Then, I created the background of the piece by separately editing two different photos of each of us, and adding in photoshop different parts of the small photos to this. Then I layered both of our faces together, and that became the background accompanied with the layer of the texture. We printed this image and brought it to class.Then, we had the opportunity to make final edits to our image. In this step we: deleted some distracting lines that were outside of the clock, and some shadows from the small images. Finally, we printed in a bigger format (36×48 inches) in Glossy photographic paper.
Images
