Miss Aniela Photography

Above: l-r, 5-1!

Ok, here’s my current ‘Top 5 flickr inspirations’. It comes as an odd time to write this, because at the moment I’m kind of pissed off with the Flickr community.
I fully appreciate my Flickr viewership, exemplified by the 170+ comments on my latest pic, ‘Their evening banter’. I consider this one of my best works and so to have so much feedback at least shows some promise that Flickr viewership can be trusted ;)) Most of those comments are meaningful and substantial, but the one that means the most to me by far is the one I received from the manager who let me use that hotel room. Therefore the comments mean more on a quality over quantity basis. I think Federico Erra came along and faved it. That means more than ten comments like “so beautiful !” that actually make me feel a little ill. What do they mean? I see that comment written on crappy pics all over Flickr, should I be flattered to receive it myself? Have you actually looked at the pic? Or do you just see a naked/’pretty’ woman and decide blindly that the highest superlative is needed?
Someone recently said that there’s none of that ’so beautiful’ nonsense on my blog. So this is the best place to write my critique.

I want to withdraw myself from Flickr a little bit because I’m bored of the childish behaviour coming from those who feel is necessary to sit down like a saddo and judge everyone, unfairly stereotyping and incriminating users for being snobby or untalented or any other derogatory term these bored-minded people can come up with.

However, I also want to withdraw myself from Flickr a bit precisely because there is some truth in what these people say. I just wish their vitriol was better aimed, or at least not so sweeping. Not everyone is an attention-seeking talentless poo round which sycophantic flies gather. However, I feel as if I am at the end of my tether with people on Flickr blatantly ripping me off, who don’t even realise it. They and their sycophants make me feel like the word ‘artist’ is being thrown around far too much in this, yes democratic, but ever so naive, cyberspace community where anyone can ‘make it’.
As I said in my first Inspirations post, I count a real artist as one who is honest about his or her inspirations, who makes no effort to hide them, in fact, who makes a special effort every now and then to highlight them, to name them and link to them so that viewers can put their work, and thus their originality, into context.
There are so-called ‘artists’ on Flickr who simplistically recycle the images they have previously seen and admired, taking praise for having created a great piece of ‘art’. It bothers me twice as much because I feel I am the only one who can recognise that I am amongst those being plagiarised.
Obviously all photographers/artists will have to put up with copycats for some time, or even all of the time. But this is why I have a problem with Flickr, because so many viewers and users, blind to where plagiarism has occurred, are eager to plant virtual kisses all over the arses of the amateurs spawned by the internet phenomenon. It seems to make it easier for them to make a unoriginal image and get away with it, to even get praised for it.

Here are the current inspirations.

5. Ilina S

NY-based Ilina has a great popping processed style that is right up my street. I think her most recent work is the mst impressive - I was bewitched by her Valentine’s post. Her face, skin and eyes come out wonderfully in her work, as in this pic. Her Flickr portfolio is quite small so I’d love to see more from her. I haven’t yet been directly inspired by one of her pieces, but her and Vaneska Thomz (further below) generally maintain my confidence to be brave and bold with post-processing.

4. Lara Swift
She’s in my first list too. Had to add her into both lists because she’s produced some corkers recently - like this one and this mermaid one. Her work is quite deathly and gothic even, but that doesn’t put me off because she seems more nonchalantly original than alot of similarly death-loving artists. I have also heard her mention she has depression, which makes her artistic intentions a little more meaningful.

3. Vaneska Thomz
Vanessa, like Ilina above, has a stream full of square-cropped boldly colour-paletted images that offer me courage as a digital photographer. ‘Air’ is amazing and I was directly inspired by this one of hers but never quite produced anything close to it. Her work uses alot of textures and can get quite surreal. I do prefer the simpler ones which I find more effective (same goes for my No. 1 below). Pictures with floaty garments like this one was part of my inspiration to do more with interesting clothing. I also love the soft processing, hair, setup and composition of her pic ‘elegantly wasted’.
A pic I did recently, ‘Party piece(s)’ was made with Vanessa in mind (I was flattered when she faved it) but I did not mention her because it was not directly inspired by any particular pic of hers.

2. Oladios
I’ll write her what I wrote in my testimonial for Oladios.
“I came across Ola’s weird and wonderful work one day through the Female Self Portrait Artists’ group and was immediately struck by how well she photographs her cats. What’s more, she captures them perfectly within the difficult feat of self portraiture! She becomes her own character within the quaint comic strip world of her images; a mysterious girl interacting with the animals who are placed as if by a paintbrush. This play between human and cat Oladios tells us is very much in the style of Balthus’ paintings, but Ola takes his nubile nude and replaces it with her clothed - and masked - self.

“Ola is one of the very few people on Flickr for whom I feel art is a special vocation, almost a divine power that comes from above, rather than from the influence of her peers such as on Flickr. Artists like Ola don’t worry about fitting in, they don’t try to master a certain level of photography in order to be accepted. They just get on with creating magic through what they are naturally good at - employing their superior sense of the visual.

“Whilst she may take inspiration from other artists, artists like Ola never seem to be copying an image or rendering photographic cliches as if there were a limited supply of ideas in self-portraiture. Instead, they take inspiration from selected diverse and obscure sources, in Ola’s case, those inspirations go from Balthus’ paintings to Nirvana lyrics.”

I haven’t been directly inspired by any of her pics as yet, but her work just generally fills me with a good feeling about photography. It’s weird when you realise that most of her pics on Flickr are taken in the same room, from the same angle, with the same subjects, and yet she can create a different surreal narrative every time, using some props and a crazy imagination!
My faves of her work are Jozin z basin and this one.

When I did my pic ‘Self portrait with Sally’ I mentioned the work of Ola with regards to keeping animals still and obedient during photoshoots. She not only seems to have control over them, but seems to have the power of a circus ringleader to even get them to do roll over and jump up!

1. Quizz
Bogna’s work impresses and excites me more than anything I’ve seen inside or even outside of Flickr.
Her work is like a modern-day classic art museum, a girl who uses her digital camera and Photoshop to create painting-like masterpieces that look more like photorealistic paintings.
My favourites of her work are most usually the ones with least use of ‘texture’ - that is, the ones that allude to paintings, with the subject unobscured by the addition of textured layers. My favourites include ‘Pillow book’, ‘Publications feel good’, ‘Read my lips’, and ‘Balancing on the edge of light’. I was lucky to do a collaboration with her - see her image here, mine here, though I’ve never met her (the collaboration was done digitally).
Quizz always inspires me but usually, when inspired, I end up creating something completely different, which is a good thing!
You can see the influence of Quizz in images of mine such as An impromptu performance and Bless this mess. She’s inspired me to try harder with motion and expression - a poetry of the body. As a result, I often look theatrical, as noticeable in They found themselves on stage.

Out of her recent work in my opinion the astounding image water, exceeds the level of most of the other more ‘popular’ images.

And that’s my 5.

Some more ones to watch:
Brady
What Milk
Sophie Charlotte (only young! some fantastic inspirational spritely work that inspired me recently)

Above: l-r, 5-1!

My Top ten of early inspirations on Flickr, continued, 5 -1. (No. 1 strongest)
For 10-6, click here.

5. Jaime Bley
When I was first around on Flickr I was looking at all the work of people who ‘cloned’ themselves. Jaime was into multiplicity and I liked her work. However, not until recently, when I reacquainted myself with those images, did I truly feel awed by them. That’s because I think I have a bigger appreciation for finely-constructed, minutely-detailed work nowadays. It’s rare that I would like a clone pic where the clones are so distant from the camera. But when I look at Jaime’s intricate images I don’t feel like I am on Flickr, but standing in an art gallery. Really! I chose to put Jaime into this first list rather than my list of current inspirations, because although I am most in love with her work now, those images were created quite a while back, and I saw them when I first came onto Flickr nearly two years ago.

4. Lara Swift
Lara’s photostream currently no longer contains all the pictures I first saw 2 years ago, but there’s a comprehensive enough display of her ’self’ work here. Funnily enough Lara doesn’t want to do photography professionally (she is studying medicine) but she does have a fine talent for creating self portraits. Photos like this one have inspired my use of mirrors and old looking objects wherever I can get hold of them…

3. Lara Jade Coton
Lara Jade at a remarkably young age has a fantastic talent for photography, she was a professional in my eyes right back at the age of 16!
Of all Lara’s work I most enjoy her self portraits (just my own taste, there’s nothing like seeing ‘the star herself’) and her self portraits came in by the hundreds when I was first on Flickr. You can check out her self portrait set here. The interesting thing about her self portraits is that I don’t think I’ve seen such a diverse set of images that are mostly taken ‘close up’ to her face. Keeping close up to one’s face I find can often be extremely limiting and even unflattering, but Lara’s knack for CUs is unbeatable.
Images that particularly inspired me include this one where she is throwing a strawberry, which led to the creation of my image ‘Strawberry tossing’.
She did a fecking ace one with an umbrella too. I’ve yet to try something with an umbrella, when I do, her image will be in my head as the benchmark!

2. Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir
Rebekka is probably the most popular artist on Flickr, or has been at one point, her work ranging from self portraits to landscapes, to horses, to pics of her sons, celebrities and much more. I was most inspired by her early clone images, I know that this one most definitely had a direct effect on the creation of my clone pic ‘By the lake’. Nowadays Rebekka has a busy schedule hence doesn’t upload as often, but has never really been fully active in the Flickr community as much as I admire of my other fave Flickrers. She also seems to avoid doing too many self portraits. For these reasons she is not a top inspiration, but she’s No. 2 in this list because her body of work over the past three years since she began photography is simply fantastic. Her successes are encouraging to anyone who starts out as an amateur on the web. She’s achieved some pretty amazing feats outside of Flickr, including an ad campaign for Toyota, and use of her images by an Icelandic airline.

1. Solea (Carmen Gonzalez)
At first I found Solea’s work too delicate and mystical for my taste - I was into big brash colourful processing and close-up subjects. But over time, works like this one became my personal benchmark and encouraged me to insert the ’self portrait’ into the landscape, such as for example, in my image ‘The approach’ and just landscapes alone too, titled, like her set, ‘Around where I live’. I loved the minutely constructed painterly quality to Solea’s images. Her openness about her preference for self portraits, ‘I am a self portrait artist, that is my way’, encouraged and motivated me to create more myself, and not be ashamed. Solea is openly sensual and evocative. I can’t see that intricacy in Solea’s recent work that I so admired a year or so ago, but that is not a criticism, she is as hardworking as ever and has also deservedly started to exhibit her work in print.

Next: my Top 5 current Flickr inspirations…

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!

Here are some images from the artist BALTHUS (1908-2001).

This selection of his work I have put together is characterised by cats, dark rooms, chairs, tables and girls, and are my favourites of his pieces. By ‘girls’, that is to say, barely pubescent girls, whom he found more interesting than grown women for the mysteriousness of their adolescence. His trademark young nude form offended many an eye. I don’t feel particularly shocked by them, my energy goes on admiring them. Lolita is my favourite book. ‘Therese’ (accents omitted because they show up funny) which is image no. 9 on the montage (numbering left to right from top to bottom row) was used as the cover of a Penguin edition of Nabokov’s novel.

Something about the girls’ poses that fascinated Balthus as he sat with paintbrish in hand, also fascinates me. I like the knee high socks, petite jackets, thrown back skirts (the slightly more risque component to a few of his images) and the presence of the odd cat or dog in the painting - Balthus loved cats and put a few Cheshires here and there to accompany his immortalised Alices. Amongst Balthus’ inspirations was the work, including photography, of Lewis Carroll.

I won’t deny however that ‘Guitar Lesson’ (No. 6) is slightly disturbing to say the least, mainly due to the proximity of the woman’s hand to the girl’s genitalia which causes the scene to verge on actual sexual (and thus paedophilic) activity. The scene, commandeered by the woman’s creepy scowl, is almost frightening, especially to the first-time viewer.
The most inspiring pics for me are ‘Nude with a cat (nude with basin)’ (that is no. 2 on the montage) and this pic, ‘The Room’:

I love the way light is painted in these images; employed to stream through a window onto an outspread nubile nude. In the above painting, the troll-like character provides a slightly disturbing function of exposing the sleeping girl.
My knowledge of Balthus, as of any artist, isn’t comprehensive and there is much of his work that I have not seen and/or is not to my taste. This blogging reference to him is meant only to be brief and whimsical. However, based what I have seen and been moved by, I did a self portrait photoshoot in a Balthus-like setting. See Girl dreaming here

Also, Girl awoken, here
And Girl in red shoes, here

References:
In the montage of Balthus pics (l-r in in rows from top to bottom)
Image No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

‘The Room’

Neret, Gilles, ‘Balthus’. Taschen, 2005

A subconscious patchwork of inspirations operate inside the mind of any artist… in fact, some theorists argue that art is never original because it is an amalgamation of cultural references to texts they have already seen.

For me, that patchwork quilt has many Flickr artists included. For instance, the ones in this montage. Elements of each of them can be found in my new image, this image which you will see further below.

The montage above shows (clockwise from top left):

Mad Dog and Basket Case
By Allure F
(the three sedimentary layers working within the composition)

the token bikini shot
By _rebekka
(inspiration to use bikini/lingerie even in an unusual location/composition)

Tarah - Sofa
By ???Merkley
(this artist’s trademark is to place his skimpy-clothed subjects here, there and everywhere, and a little bit of subconscious inspiration took place when creating my image! This pic of Tarah is used as one example of Merkley’s use of sofas/the domestic space in general.)

De Verleiding
By Solea
(fruity surrealism…. the object is charged with weirdness by being placed in the foreground. The presence of a woman behind it insinuates most prominently the biblical narrative of the garden of Eden)

So - put all these inspirations into a pot, mix ‘em together and what do you get?
‘Self portrait with Lichtenstein and a thorned basket of fruit’