Miss Aniela Photography

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’

Ahem, obviously not my work, but the work of Mr Guy Bourdin. (Refs for images: Top, middle, bottom). His fetishistic images tend to use legs and shoes and tights and made-up women alot, and often look like fashion shoots or advertising images. Other images look like movie scenes. Bourdin also loved the draw and paint, but photography, rather than being to ‘take a photo, was the way he ‘realized images’ from his mind. He revolutionised the use of colour in an era, in France, when mono imagery was predominant. He inspired Cindy Sherman, an artist who is frequently mentioned by viewers of my own work.

His images are a strange debatable mix of references to both feminine submission and to perhaps a feminist outcry. One image may show a woman throwing clothes at a man’s head or crushing his hand with her shoe as he reaches for his pistol; another may compartmentalise the woman’s body by having several stilettoed legs arranged like the petals of a flower. Another has a woman half hiding underneath a bed with only her bottom and stockings visible.

Bourdin’s work is inspirational to me because of its use of surrealism; hyperbolic airbrushed skin; a sense of parody of the consumerism and of the American Dream; its display of feminine accoutrements whether than is to satire gender or endorse it, and it occasional Nabokovian overtones as in the main middle image pictured.

I became aware of Bourdin’s work at Art A-Level and I feel he has been a subconscious influence in some of my work, for example The Deaths and the faceless Fragile

The famous video of Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, (2001) directed by Dawn Shadworth, which picked up 5 awards for Creative & Design. And my next artistic reference.

I remembered thinking there was something different about this video I was when I first saw it. And after realising it had artistic merit, I had to upload a mention on here. Definitely something about the body and eye movement in the video that is central to the surrealism I aim for in my photographic mind’s eye when I create my own work. Or at least, I will aim for after seeing this video again today.

From the car sequence, to the famous white dress, to the waving head of curls at the last scene, the video is fascinating in even just how it manages to present Kylie’s body as infinitely tall whilst maintaining her 5ft-3 impiness. Ms Minogue is a beautiful woman, but most pop stars are, and most pop star videos exaggerate their beauty mostly in banal or cliched ways, but this video is something a bit more experimentative. Futuristic, yes, but that wasn’t the main appeal to me - it was more the halo of light behind her head as she writhes high-angle above the camera in the white dress - the dress which seems to cover her up and yet allow her to be completely naked at the same time; the way in which she emerges into the frame with a head of bouncing ringlets two thirds through the song, backdropped by a new dark cityscape.

A little ironic influence could perhaps be seen in Ave Aniela!

References for the above images:
Image 1
Image 2
Image 3

NOT my work! Please read on.
Following my last post, which asked for people’s advice on publishing other people’s work on my blog in order to discuss my art inspirations and indeed other people’s inspiration as part of the (hopefully) stimulated subsequent discussion, I have decided to go ahead and upload a montage of images I recently came across which I found inspirational/relevant to my art pursuits.
The images above are retro postcards (purchased from a card/print/archive shop in Brighton centre - source and publisher of these particular images unknown - if anyone can help me on who the artist is, I would be grateful!) Their bright colours and 50s fantasy-ad feel enticed me at once to buy a few of them.

On first sight, all you see are Colgate smiles and trance-like stares. On second sight and third sight, however… well, that’s all you see again. Physically, the models’ use of make-up, costume, expression, pose, and hairstyle; and photographically, the use of DoF, colour, and framing are certainly striking. The hyperbolic happiness of the models’ moods can seem to some glib, drugged-up even! - but to me, pleasing - reminds me an awful lot of American Ads of the 40s and 50s.
I find the colour and loudness of retro patterns, colours and costume extremely appealing in an aesthetic sense. Example of where I have used bold and brash colour in my work can be seen in this piece for example, Hide & Seek. An examples of a taste for retro can be seen in my image I Have Finished That Long Thomas Hardy Novel. Also, the use of pearly white teeth, oozing the American Dream, and mannequin-like poses (for my use of the latter, see my image Memoirs of a Woman of Leisure) convey to me a sense of the surreal and the sublime.

The display of a traditional values via the use of the heterosexual couple in the image lower left may seem like a bit of a cliche, but I included it in the montage in order to show the images’ use of duo-model, and, the excellent effects with the snowflakes (just to confirm, is not dandruff) the latter being my motive for selecting and purchasing this particular postcard.

I did once feel directly inspired to create images that could hypothetically act as fantasy adverts. Camel is the main of these five images which use cigarettes - notably Camel Lights - in a over-saturated, feel-good ambience of brightness, airbrushedness and admittedly nudity, the latter which wasn’t necessarily intended but obviously mounts up the sexual connotation. I do intend to create more ‘advert’-like images in the future, and feel inspired to do so by my helpless fascination for the doll-like, hyper-real images in such images as those above, and those in American Ads.