Thomas Ruff and more alternative portrait ideas...

Thinking about more alternative portraiture I could work on I thought it would be worth it to take a look at Thomas Ruff's work.

We all know him, we've all seen them and to be honest, as stand alone images I never really appreciated these photographs. However, seeing the series as a whole and now understanding the workload that has gone into them has made me feel differently about them.

I admire how Thomas Ruff has perfected the way he photographed this series, at the beginning there were different background, different poses etc and then he narrowed it down to a uniform formula; same background, same pose, same lack of facial expression...

The only thing that gives us any insight to these people is the clothes that they have chosen/been given to wear.

For my portraits, I would like to shed light on some of the uncelebrated parts of the body, some parts we may forget about. Rather than focus on the face I would firstly like to take a series of images of the back of people's heads. Contradictory to Ruff's portraits, I would like to supply the clothing, I would like these images to be as uniform as possible, so why not have an actualy uniform. The subject/person will be given a black t-shirt to wear and stand infront of a white background, facing the wall, back to the camera. The use of black and white throughout will create a connection through the series and will also act as a positive aesthetic... hopefully.

I'm interested in doing this because when we view a portrait, our eyes automatically dart to a person's eyes, taking this out of the equation it would be interesting to see how an audience reacts with the 'portrait'. It is possible that the audience may feel uncomfortable, almost like a peeping tom as they do not have that visual connection with the person's eyes. The final photographs would be of a large scale, so that the audience is forced to view something that we would usually gloss over and not take too much care of interest over.

I have also been thinking more about the private/public aspect of portraiture and would like to transfer this idea to people. I like the idea that any orifice on a person's body can be a public and also a private place. For example one's ear is at most times on view and could be argued that it is a public space. However the inside of a person's ear is private, just like behind a front door of somebody's home.

SO! It would be great if I could get some volunteers for this. I have booked in a slot in the photographic studio for MONDAY 11TH APRIL at 3.00PM, any help would be greatly appreciated, and as always all images will be anonymous and efforts will be rewarded with a chocolatey treat!