I decided to create my portrait using real images and integrate a collage of objects on top. After interviewing my partner Eric, I thought we had several things in common I could work with to represent both of us in the portrait. After having a really long conversation about food, we realized it was one of the things we had most in common. This gave me the idea of using food as my objects on top of the images. Also, another thing both of us shared in common was our great sense of humour and charismatic personality. We are really fun and foolish people, therefore, I decided that my images had to be funny poses of the two of us. After taking the pictures, I realized that I could use the food to represent our transition from our homes to NY. As both of us are international, we had a hard time moving into the city, thus, the food would be used in a way that shows the chaos and thoughts we had in our minds. Using this idea, I thought it would be better to make the images black and white so that the food will stand out better. This would help the overall pictures look better and not so chaotic.

 These are some of the pictures Eric and I took for the portraits. We had a series of different poses and I choose the ones that I thought represented both of us better.

This are some pictures of food I took by myself from food in my kitchen. The other images from food were taken from the Internet and edited using photoshop.

The images that have popcorn and pasta represent how everything was very chaotic the first time we got here. Everything was very overwhelming and new. The images with the fruit on our heads, represent all our thoughts after getting here and how we tried our best to concentrate in the best and forget all the hard things. And last, the two pictures with the masks (the cheesecake and the hamburger) represent how we became “heros” and learned to overcome all of our problems. After a while, we got used to the city and had a really nice time.

While doing this project I learned how to use Photoshop. I was really hard at the beginning but after some time and practice I learned to master it correctly. Also, I learned that by moving the objects around and playing with their size you can convey totally different messages. It was really fun experimenting with all the different possibilities. I decided to use Photoshop because I wanted to learn new techniques and because it was the clearest way to represent all I needed to show from our personalities.

This portrait relates to our Seminar class because by using the same notes I took while interviewing Eric, I had to write a journalistic profile about him. In this journal I had to show his shift as an artist before arriving to Parsons and after. Both class relate to each other because we had to learn how to portray a person’s characteristic in different ways and show the shift between people in different places or stages.

I learned from this project how to put myself into another person’s perspective and think both as a designer and a journalist. I had to use Photoshop to portray Eric’s characteristics but also know how to write them.

These are the final pictures for the peer to peer portraits. I believe each picture is unique in its one way because in a kind of minimalistic and metaphorical way I am able to portray our characteristics clearly.