Miss Aniela Photography

Above: l-r, 10-6!

On a recent post there was a little discussion about whose inspirations people could see in my work. I slightly disagreed on their choice. I thought therefore it might be interesting for me to sit down and analyse the most powerful inspirations I have encountered on Flickr.

I try not to be someone who hides ‘what’ or ‘who’ inspires me. All art, you could say, is a recreation of what the artist has seen before. A philosopher once famously spoke of ‘the death of the author’, ie. once a piece has been made, the author ceases to be the owner of it, no piece of art is unique, it is merely a remix of everything in culture the artist has absorbed prior to making his/her piece.

I haven’t seen alot of other artists be completely open about who inspires them. Being inspired by something, as opposed to copying, isn’t shameful, is an absolutely normal part of ‘creating’ art. In fact, to deny inspiration from others would simply be lying. Better to openly announce if something has directly inspired you, because then the viewers can clearly see how you have made the piece your own, and thus have more respect for you. Being hush about it can look suspicious, however, I understand that not everyone has to lay claim to other artists when they make a piece. People argue that art doesn’t have to be explained, the artist doesn’t necessarily have to say anything. I just personally find it healthy to celebrate the work of someone else whose work you admire, and once in a while, to show how a work of yours might be directly inspired by someone else’s work. (You could say that not all pics are directly inspired by anyone or anything, some pics of any one artist’s are more ‘unique’ than others in their portfolios).

I will give two lists of artists (too many for one blog upload so I’ve divided it up!) The first list is a countdown of ten (1 being strongest) of the artists who inspired me the most in the early days of Flickr, when I first came onto the site in April 2006.

After that I will give a ‘top 5′ of the artists who have a way of knocking my socks off nowadays. I find there is a difference between who first inspired me, and who inspires me now - obviously artists’ tastes change, adapt and develop - also, tastes of the person being inspired also change and develop over time.

All artists have inspired me indirectly, ‘vaguely’ across my work; but I have also given examples of where they have directly inspired a piece.

So, here’s the countdown, 10-6, of the artists who inspired me in the earlier days. (see photo montage above, which corresponds to the artists).

10. Dr Joanne
Dr Joanne’s images are quirky, questioning and really quite unique. I remember feeling very intrigued by this picture of hers, but never quite making a piece inspired by it. Her self portraits are remarkably diverse in style, some weird and even ‘ugly’, and some soft and feminine, such as this one, in which I love the movement. The same sense of movement withint a flowing feminine gown can be seen in my recent image An impromptu performance, although that one was more consciously inspired by Quizz, whom I mention later.

9. Rimbaudian (Gianluca)
Pity he doesn’t upload much - his last picture was back in June. One of those Flickrers with a life outside Flickr… lol. His work is definitely worth checking out. I loved the surreal one with the playing cards which may well have led to my Photoshoppery with my own deck and my pic ‘Strip solitaire’. He’s also the only male self portrait artist in my list! I do have more than one male self-portrait artist in my contact list nowadays though, including Federico Erra, but there simply aren’t as many as male than female SP artists on Flickr.

8. Maryanne B
Maryanne’s restarted afresh a few times since I first came across her work, but her gems mostly still appear on her stream. Maryanne does lots of duo portraits, with her partner, which are gorgeous, never cringey or cheesy, but actually quite tender scenes, especially the last one of this set. I think her shots in the bathroom may have been part of my inspiration to start taking pics in there too.

7. Maggie le chat
Maggie Le Chat’s placing of her nude self round interiors has generally inspired me to be confident about self portraiture itself, and the use of the nude female body. As with Lara above, her photostream has been edited int he last two years and not all work that originally inspired me appears on there now. Her use of detached limbs may have inspired this pic of mine.

6. Agnieszka
Agnieszka does pics of all kinds of things, including a smattering of divine, delicate self portraits, never nude, always ‘clean’, innocent and almost puritan, but with an undercurrent of sexiness, if that’s ok to say. ;)) Her self portrait set is varied; the pics that have had the most impact on me include this one which uses fabrics beautifully.

5-1 coming soon, followed by Top 5 current Flickr inspirations!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 9:07 pm and is filed under Inspirations - References to other artists, Links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.