Ex 1.2: Through the Digital Lens

This is a genre about which I know very little. I would normally have a queasy feeling about this type of work. I remember attending a dinner in Chile where there was a number of young people. It was some sort of celebration which I cannot now recall. One of the young women guests dressed as Frieda Kahlo. I found the experience unnerving.

But on researching the area I was introduced to many interesting photographers and their work. It was hard to choose a special favourite in this genre. I found the self portraits by Laura Hofstadter(1) interesting up to a point. In this blog a number of photographers contributed to a request from the blogger to recreated famous portraits (2). The following I found extraordinary.

Another interesting, not simple to recreate painting by Casper David Friedrich, was the following by Spencer harding (3)

But I was totally blown away by the work of Sandro Millar(4) working with John Malkovich. It was almost impossible to choose one from this series of images . But I finally settled on this image of Marlyn Munro originally by Bert Stern. This has to be my favourite of all the images I looked at.

The reason I chose this one was because I knew the original image and I found the fact that John Malkovich could dress (or undress) to resemble a woman and above all a woman so beautiful as Marlyn Munro, amazing and very convincing. There a couple of small ‘differences’ besides the major one of Malkovich being a man and Munro a woman! The appendix (?) scar is shorter and the end less puckered, Malkovich has a small gap in his front teeth while Marlyn’s are perfect. Malkovich’s wig could have been better coiffed to more closely resemble Marlyn’s beautiful hair. But although one could not say that Malkovich is beautiful or even good looking  with the make up and the props Stern managed, with the photographic expertise of Sandro Millar, to recreate a very passable resemblance. Miller’s lighting is beautifully soft making Malkovich’s body look almost feminine. Everything about the recreation makes me smile.

Next, re-make an existing work of art using photography. This can be a simple re-staging – using photography – of an existing painting, drawing or print (see, for example, Sam Taylor-Wood’s Dutch still life-inspired Still Life video portrait at Link 4) or a more elaborate figurative tableau (like that of Hara).

For this part of the exercise I felt I had to choose a Cezanne painting since I live for half of each year in Provence. I chose the following painting.

I did not go to the village of Gardanne to recreate the image as it is a little too far away from where I live and in addition it certainly does not look like the above painting today. It is the centre of cement works between Aix en Provence and Marseille.

I decided instead to ‘recreate’ the painting using my own village. This had to be done in sections in Photoshop.

I used the actual painting as the base.

I created several images of my village.

I used the magnetic lasso tool to cut out certain sections from the image. I pasted each on to a transparent background. Then using ctrl c, ctrl a, I cut and pasted these on to various parts of the Cezanne painting. I feathered the edges so they would not be too sharp. I then found a sky in my image files and altered the colours to a greenish blue to ‘match’ the Cezanne sky. I juggled the layers to get the best fit I could. The final PSD file consisted of nine layers.

Then I flattened the layers and saved the image as a JPG. I then took it into Photomatrix and tone mapped it. I then took it back to PS and blurred it.

I am reasonable happy with the result.

 

1. PetaPixel. 2018. This 65-Year-Old Photographer is Recreating Famous Paintings as Self-Portraits. [ONLINE] Available at: https://petapixel.com/2016/01/13/this-65-year-old-photographer-is-recreating-famous-paintings-as-self-portraits/. [Accessed 30 November 2018].
2. EMGN. 2018. 25 Famous Paintings Recreated In A Whole New Light By Amateur Photographers. [ONLINE] Available at: http://emgn.com/entertainment/25-famous-paintings-recreated-in-a-whole-new-light-by-amateur-photographers/. [Accessed 30 November 2018]
3. Bored Panda. 2018. 20 Modern Remakes Of Famous Paintings | Bored Panda. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.boredpanda.com/famous-painting-remakes/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic. [Accessed 30 November 2018].
4. Bored Panda. 2018. Photographer Recreates Famous Portraits With John Malkovich As His Model | Bored Panda. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.boredpanda.com/portrait-remakes-malkovich-homage-to-photographic-masters-sandro-miller/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic. [Accessed 30 November 2018]