I have a NEW BOOK available on BLURB!

Read more, sample a preview, and buy the book, on Blurb HERE. If you’d like to buy a personally signed copy just email me.

Miss Aniela: Multiplicity features nearly 100 multiplicity images, from the earliest ones to the latest ones – as seen in my multiplicity set on Flickr!

The book also has a detailed 6-page introduction describing my motivations and inspirations behind my multiplicity images. For those interested in the technique, unlike my previous book Self-gazing, this book has a 6-page ‘How to’ section describing how to ‘clone’. These pages also advise on hints and tips for further creative retouching, complete with breakdowns showing the processing stages of example images.

Special promotion!
Buy the book between now and 10th December and you could win a signed limited edition print…

The print (worth £250 -£300) will be the size 33 x 50cm, or thereabouts for different images. They are limited edition, meaning there will only ever be 10 of the image at this size. You will be able to choose from 20 different multiplicity images.

To be in with a chance of winning, this is all you have to do:

Buy Miss Aniela: Multiplicity through Blurb, or a signed copy from me directly (email me to find out how). If you buy the book through Blurb, BE SURE to forward me your Order Confirmation with your name and address otherwise I will NOT be able to add you into the competition. Forward it to: contact@missaniela.com

I will pick a name at random on 10th December. I will then get in touch with the winner to ask them to choose, from a given selection of 20 multiplicity images, their free limited edition print.

The print will be shipped to you, wherever you live, for free.

Terms and conditions
By entering the competition, participants agree to the following:
Winner will be drawn randomly from all purchases, made either through Blurb or directly through me, between 29th Oct and midnight on 9th Dec (London GMT) and whose details have been sent to me (contact@missaniela.com) One entry per book purchase – so it is possible to have more than one entry per person. Only those who have made payment for the book will be eligible in the competition. Winner will be announced on this blog and contacted by email. Winner will have choice from 20 different images chosen at my discretion, and will take the next limited edition print available for that image. Prize is print only, sent in tube. No cash alternative is given. Shipping (UK or international) is free and will include insurance. If print is found to be defective or damaged, the winner must notify the artist within 14 days with photos of the issue in question.

Thanks and good luck! Any questions, just contact me.

The deputy editor from DC magazine first got in touch with me in May to ask if I would like to be on the panel, and I was very pleased and surprised to have such an invitation.
There had been hundreds of thousands of entries (and naturally, a huge number in the last week before the closing date) whittled down to a shortlist of about 50 per category. I was on the panel with wildlife photographer Steve Bloom, Nick Galvin (Archive Director from Magnum Photos), Rosemary Wilman (President of the Royal Photographic Society), Hugh Pinney (Director of photography for news, Getty Images), Kate Day (Communities Editor for the Telegraph) and Martin Keene (Group Picture editor, Press Association) as well as Ben Brain from DC mag itself.

Through the day we managed to get through all ten categories, choosing a 1st, 2nd and 3rd, and a couple of commendations for each. Though we had our own tastes and a few disagreements as expected, it was surprisingly that alot of our choices were unanimous. I was particularly impressed with the quality of the photos in the Planet Earth, World in Motion, Landscapes and Black & White categories, whilst I was most excited by the newness of the Fashion and Digital Vision categories, in which I did see some photographers’ work I recognised from Flickr.

We managed to also choose an overall lucky winner who will receive £10,000.

By the end of the day I was quite exhausted (we got through about 500 photos in total) and yet also invigorated by viewing so much fantastic imagery – by the end of it all I felt as if I had a new awareness of the ’skill’ of photography as well as the ‘art’, in seeing so many images subjected to scrutiny: exposure, resolution, quality of their digital processing etc. I also felt as if I wanted to go out and shoot something other than myself!

Tips for next year’s contestants?:
- Think about what category you are submitting your images to, and try to fit the particular theme. I would certainly recommend shooting images especially for a particular theme/category, because even though the judges will never know anyway, I think it will make the message of the image have more impact, make it feel more sincerely ‘belonging’ to that theme.
- When submitting multiple entries, send in completely different images, so that if one image is rejected, the other image won’t so easily be rejected too. Cover more ground with diverse images.
- Pay attention to the quality of your images! If you are lucky enough to be shortlisted and asked for a high-res version of your image(s), your images could lose out when the judges scrutinise it up-close. Jpeg artifacts, banding, noise, bad resolution, dodging photoshopping etc, are all issues that affect the chances of your images winning, because a photography competition is about skill and quality as well as artistic intention. Even if the image gets through, it might not be good enough for the winners’ exhibition later.
- Submit something that is different, that will make the judges sit up in interest. Research who the judges are, so you can get a sense of the kind of images they are likely to be viewing every day, and the things that will likely bore them. Time was tight on the day, and the context dictated that images were given a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ within seconds of appearing on the projector. Also, it might be a good idea to give the filenames of your submitted images a bit of their title, so that a hint of ‘what the image is about’ will be evident even to the casual viewer who doesn’t have the caption to hand.

Of course, you will first have to find out if you have been successful this year or not!

It was the private view/launch of my first London exhibition last Thursday: Self gazing at Apartment C, Marylebone High Street.

The exhibition is in The Basement of the fashion concept store, in collaboration with Impure Art who hosted my summer Brighton exhibition. On my arrival that night, it was the first time I saw the venue, and I was impressed with the exhibiting space as well as the fantastic location. Thanks to all those who came along, especially those who travelled in from Brighton, Milton Keynes, etc.

The current display of my work hanging in the gallery spans images from 2006 through to present, and we expect that new images will be rotated throughout the course of the duration, so there is a chance to catch a varied selection.

The show is on until January 5th so there’s no excuse to miss it!

All pics below taken by Matthew (thanks) and some more by Juliet Greig (thanks!) where indicated.

Above: With Jamie McCartney from Impure Art

Above: With Kenya Cretegny of Apartment C, and Jamie McCartney. Taken by Juliet Greig

. Above: Mark Emery. Taken by Juliet Greig

Above: Taken by Juliet Greig

Above: Tristan from You Got Papped mag, Brighton. Taken by Juliet Greig

Above: Sevgi K

I am excited to be having my first London exhibition! A solo show of my work will be showing from mid-October through to the New Year at a unique fashion location, Apartment C, on Marylebone High Street in central London.

The show is curated by Impure Art, the Brighton gallery who exhibited my work this summer. Impure are taking the show up to London, to be hung at Apartment C, a quirky Art Deco-themed fashion and concept store, selling loungewear, Parisian perfumes, costume jewellery, and hand-picked vintage novels.

The show, entitled ‘Self-gazing’ will be hung in ‘The Basement’ area of the store nearly all winter-long, and will feature a number of my limited edition prints including ‘Stretch’, ‘The escape’, ‘A part’, ‘The smothering’ and more. My self-published book ‘Self gazing’ will also be available, and hopefully later, my second book.

As the show will be on throughout the Christmas period, there is plenty of chance to come along and see it.

The show officially opens on 16th October and will be running until 5th January 2010.

Thanks for reading!

Now I’ve just got to make my way up there, just as the chilly dark evenings draw in…

Address:
APARTMENT C
70 Marylebone High Street
London
W1U 5JL

Opening times:
Mon – Sat 10-6
Sun 12-5

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Any queries? Email me! x x

Here is the first spread of it, I’ll post the whole thing into my press clippings at a later date.

The images will first be displayed at Buenos Aires Photo, Argentina (below). They will then be exhibited at the gallery in Miami or Santo Domingo – stay tuned for dates.

Go along if you are in Buenos Aires!

N.B. If you are interested in buying limited edition prints, please email: contact@missaniela.com.

Make this text bigger by pressing ‘Ctrl +’ immediately!

My last status update on Facebook read ‘Had best day in Bradford with best family and best boyfriend’. And I was not kidding! On Saturday 5th September, I spoke at an event called Photocamp at the National Media Museum in Bradford. It has been running now for three years at different venues in West Yorkshire, but it was my first time at the event. It was quite random how I got involved – one of the organisers, Louise Miller – or kanpai girl on Flickr – funnily enough spotted me in a Japanese restaurant with sister in Leeds just before we saw Drag Me To Hell at the cinema, back in the summer. I did not know I’d been recognised till Louise emailed me the next day to say hi, and propose the idea that I speak at Photocamp!

Photocamp seems to be quite a popular event, this year it sold out its 150 tickets (£7.50 each) and rather quickly too. It aims to bring together a collection of workshops and sessions for people with/developing an interest in photography. I was there all Saturday and was astonished at how much people got for their ticket price. There was a great variety of topics through the sessions, from male portraiture through to strobism and building your own camera (too many to choose from!) and it also made use of the Museum venue with talks and tours around the various exhibitions and archives.

I had only been to the National Media Museum once before. That was back in 2004, when I had taken part in a local photography project called Leeds in the Picture, and my friend Hannah and I (who I met on the project, and is now a very close friend) volunteered to be interviewed on the radio on behalf of the project. That was one of my first experiences with photography, and here I was again, this time giving the keynote to a photography event. Nice!

The keynote was for 30 mins in the cinema of the museum, to all 150 attendees, and then later I did a 70 minute session in a conference room, themed on composites.

I have done several presentations to date now: Microsoft Pro Photo Summit, Photokina, live photoshoot in Seattle, Focus on Imaging and Palm Springs Photo Festival, over 20 presentations that have been slightly different each time but with similar general themes. In preparing my keynote for Photocamp, I wanted to give a rundown to my ‘story’ in the fashion I had previously introduced myself, with the usual references to Flickr, photo-sharing, and how digital technology had triggered everything for me, but I wanted to bring in some new topics following recent thoughts on art and photography. I was aware that the presentation, being a keynote, needed to touch upon issues that weren’t entirely personal and anecdotal, but which had some universal relevance to photography and were observational of a wider picture, not just of ‘Miss Aniela’ herself.

Now – what was very different about this event? The presence of all my family! My mum and two sisters were in the audience. Being so local to where my family home in Leeds (I travelled up from Brighton the day before), they could all join me.

It was really good to have them there, and made the whole day really fun. It was a first-time opportunity to have them watch me talk in-depth about my work, as it’s probably the most detail they’ve been subjected to, and offered a unique context as they were (at last) captive audience to my thoughts and opinions! Heh… Also, thanks to Matthew, who took most of the pics you see here on this blog.

Jon Eland opened the event, and amusingly started the intro to my keynote with the question, ‘do you have a set called 600 faves’?

After introducing myself, I described how the exhibitions started, how I was approached by Microsoft last year, and what opportunities with other companies and individuals have ensued, along with the surrealism of being on the cover of American Photo. I emphasised how my beginnings in photography had been unconventional and ‘off the cuff’. I started with little equipment, not even a tripod, did not formally study art, and have made my livelihood so far through impact made on the internet. I wanted to convey to the audience how it was simply my passion and curiosity for photography that got me started, and how I’d like to inspire them with that notion today: of the power of ’self’.

Regardless of people’s taste in photography, and whether or not the huge cinema-screen-sized self-portraits before them were their cup of tea, I wanted them to consider me an example of ‘someone who has utilised the tools afforded to us by modern technology’, basically a speaker-friendly way of saying what Louis Lesko said in a well-worded testimonial about me which appears in my book: ‘an example of what happens when an artist has the temerity to ignore established paths and create herself from nothing, by utilising all of her own assets in synchronicity with the opportunities afforded by a modern-day global network’.

I then proceeded to try and further break the ice by saying I don’t think I stand here giving the keynote necessarily because I have bags of talent – ‘that is for you to decide’, but because I have done things and got them out there. I proceeded to call the word ‘talent’ redundant, not just because it is thrown about so much on the telly at the moment to describe anything and everything, but because success in any field depends on skills and applying oneself, and that if such thing as inherent talent, or an ‘eye for photography’ exists, it’s not enough by itself to get you places, just as a state of the art DSLR doesn’t take great pictures by itself.
Whilst I do believe to some extent that being an ‘artist’ is inherent, maybe because I’ve seen several young photographers with a visual eye that could not yet have been ‘learnt’, and the notion of ‘learning’ art seems very problematic to me, what is more important is being resourceful.
To add here: there are photographers who I personally think have ‘talent’ insofar as they seem to have a magic appeal in their images, and there are some who also have great interpersonal skills, ambition and confidence, and those who don’t. The former are the ones who will be successful photographers. Likewise, I have seen photographers whose work I don’t personally think is good, or maybe just isn’t my cup of tea, but they have fantastic skills which may include excellent articulation, PR skills, business skills or simply confidence, and they will do better than the ones who don’t get themselves out there, however much talent they might (subjectively) have.

I continued to elaborate: when I first started on Flickr I didn’t have any goal, nor was I aware what it would lead to. At the start, I just created images because I enjoyed it, and wanted to create more and more, and because I was sharing it at the same time, and not keeping it hidden, it got out there, and had an impact. In that sense I do encourage the use of the internet to share your work. However, I also wanted to share with the audience some mixed feelings about the net. Recently I’ve become a little jaded with all the self-promotion from other photographers on the net: on Flickr, Facebook and Twitter, as it’s easy to put across a distorted and complacent image of oneself. That is why it’s great to physically talk to people as I did at Photocamp, and break through the often-misunderstood veneer of the internet!

I then went on to describe why I take self-portraits, and how it’s been a way for me to seize those ‘tools’ I had been previously harping on about: a way for me to jump up and take pictures without relying on anyone else, or having anyone else’s permission or interception. It’s also been a way to build my confidence with a camera, and to try and hone a style. I mentioned how a lot of people are taking self-portraits, from what I can see on the internet, and that the appeal of using oneself as a model must be an attraction for many; being cheap, easy, and not requiring confidence or know-how to get started.
As in previous presentations, I broke ‘Miss Aniela’ down into her component parts of ‘control’: digital camera, digital processing, photo-sharing and self-portraiture, I showed how we have easier access to creating art and going from amateur to ‘professional’.

This is where I wanted to make this presentation different, however. I wanted to question words like ‘photography’ and ‘photographer’; ‘art’ and the ‘artist’, and ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’. I wanted to argue that many of the labels we feel obligated to give ourselves are starting to defy meaning. Like the word ‘talent’, I want to question some words of which our pre-conceived notions are beginning to become outdated. I said to the audience that although I stand here introducing myself as a ‘professional full-time photographer’, I want to disect exactly that means, because the conventional notion of a full time photographer is something that is being challenged.

When I hear those words, I get an image of someone with lots of equipment, maybe even using and developing film, taking lots of pictures every day, verbally directing other subjects to his gaze. The word ‘photographer’ strikes an immediate image that I don’t fit.

In that sense, you could encourage me to use the label ‘artist’. I produce work that is made up of individualised pieces, to my own brief and whims, which I intend to then exhibit and sell. I don’t take pictures every day, and some days I even get fed up with photography. So, you could say it’s more like my chosen medium as an artist, for the moment, and is one of several media I could choose to express myself in.

On the other hand, I can be described as a ‘photographer’, because I also have a foot in the photography industry itself – speaking at events like Photocamp, about, specifically, my photography; promoting photography products, being featured in more photography magazines than general ‘art’ magazines.

We are all aware, however, that there are many different types of, and jobs in, photography. The two I am concerned with here are ‘art photographers’ and ‘commercial photographers’. The ‘art photographer’ we tend to know as someone who works on individual photos as ‘art’. The ‘commercial photographer’, be it fashion, advertising or catalog, tends to churn out a high quantity of images, to a specific brief, and generally with a focus more on aesthetics rather than concept.

So therefore I might want to describe myself as an ‘art photographer,’ and yet, I don’t fit all those qualities that one conventionally sees in accepted ‘art photographers’, as someone who has not studied art, and who embraces digital technology and the internet as a photo-sharing space. I’m usually mentioned with the word ‘flickr’ in the same breath, and like it or not, it’s sad to say that some galleries still have a somewhat snobby attitude toward the modern: toward artists who share their work on photo-sharing sites and who don’t have art degrees – or, who don’t have a certain kind of traditional style. This is where I went on to get specific about the type of images you normally see in galleries.
I gave a little brainstorm of the qualities I see in the work of a typical ‘art photographer’ and a ‘commercial photographer’, and the rules they are taught to adopt. I emphasised that these are just my observations and are a very general statement about either side of the spectrum, certainly nobody will follow one side only, there will be exceptions and overlaps and just intended to be a quick exercise.

I showed some examples of work I consider typical ‘art photography’.
The conventional ‘art photographer’ produces photography that is: often sober, sombre, subtle, very minimally processed, most often taken on film, not digital (or appearing to have been taken on film). They will follow fewer technical rules, maybe even be badly composed, blurred or strangely cropped, overall, not looking, on face value, to have been that ‘difficult’ to take. You will conventionally see images like this in art magazines like Foam and Photoworks. The focus seems to be more on the concept or narrative, which will often be given textually alongside – as in the work of Brighton artist Eva Kalpadaki, whose images in her series/exhibition ‘Empty Space’ are accompanied with a verbose explanation telling us what we should be seeing in the images of blank walls.

Then I went onto show some examples of work that I consider more akin to that of a ‘commercial photography’. The images are: dramatic, colourful, polished, staged (or are staged as candid), visually-led (with a varying degree of concept or narrative), have instant impact, have followed more technical ‘rules’ of photography, and often in celebration of beauty or colour. The images might well be taken using digital cameras and processed with high degree of post-production e.g. Photoshop.

I then expressed an excitement at the fact that work like mine, which has traits that people have previously labelled as ‘commercial’, ‘beautiful’, even ‘fashion-like’ is being accepted as ‘art’ by galleries who would normally accredit artists producing work in the former category as the norm. Since gaining interest from galleries in Madrid, Miami and Chicago, I feel more encouraged to believe that my exhibitions so far have not been novelty one offs. By sticking confidently to our own tastes and aesthetic style, we can hopefully pave the way for more modern digital creativiity to be accepted, but crucially, to be accepted as valid ‘photography’.

What we see on the web, on sites like Flickr, are lots of people becoming active in sharing work with similar qualities of an art/photography hybrid.
However, I wanted to construe exactly what role photo-sharing plays in the production of modern photography, because I think it is more than a ‘role’, but a shaping force. The new ways that people are sharing their work is having an effect on the nature of the work they produce.
I see my work more onscreen than I do in print, seeing it most often postcard-size on a screen. I would describe myself as a ‘web born artist’, someone whose work is different because of the medium through which I’ve shared it from day one.
When you look at people’s work on flickr, or any website, the most popular images are those which look good at small or thumbnail sizes. In fact, some people might specifically, maybe even subconsciously, gear their work to have a composition impactful enough to draw attention at thumbnail-size, to increase likelihood of internet hits. So, this new space, and the way this new space acts as a route into an art or photography livelihood, changes the art itself.
I don’t believe this is necessarily negative, or inferior to art as we know it, but simply indicative of a change.

As I’d done in my first presentation, at the Microsoft Pro Photo Summit, I cited the example of the Tate Britain collaborating with Flickr in 2007 to invite submissions from the photo-sharing public on the theme of Britain, in ‘How We Are Now’. One of my images was chosen for the final 40 that went on digital display in the gallery. This is interesting as it shows how the modern photo-sharing phenomenon is meeting the traditional art world and blurring the boundaries. The Tate showcased not just photography, but the photo-sharing public, suggesting a change of traditional routes into the art scene.

I went on further to describe commissions and projects that have come my way through building my persona on the web, and then also mentioned how the inundation of praise on the web can on one hand encourage complacency, but on the other hand, can reveal certain societal attitudes that people would not get such a chance to reveal in other contexts. One of the biggest issues raised is my sex.

I have often been asked whether I think my images would have caught so many people’s attention if I weren’t, as they claim me to be, a young female who comes across as attractive in the pictures. I was asked this recently in a magazine interview, and I gave the answer I am about to give here.

My answer is that most likely not, my pictures wouldn’t be so popular.

However, my response is that we all have the free choice of what subject to use in our picture, be it an appealing landscape or model, or a pretty cat.
The issue is that we are not used to those subjects being in control of their appropriation.

The more I see female self portrait artists like myself asked these questions, the more I am aware that the need to ask it tells us a lot about the place of women and men in society, what we are used to seeing and by whom. When other photographers use models in their images, especially appealing and beautiful models, the pictures grab people’s attention without the photographer being queried or probed about how much interest their images have roused.
A woman who takes pictures of herself gets the credit for the work, which some people are uncomfortable with, because usually women in images do not ‘speak’ or have any kind of presence beyond their superficiality. Moreover, self-portraiture is difficult, and not to be undermined, which is why it can be so rewarding, and why so many people (men and women) do it. In particular, I think it is good that more women seem to be taking it up. Whilst the content of women’s self-portraits can never meet feminist ideals (as there are so many ideals, but not to get into that minefield here), to produce images of oneself, I think as a woman, is particularly satisfying as we can single-handedly challenge the many images of women we see around us in the media who are usually photographed by a male-dominated industry.
In that sense, I like to think that my work can offer something to women, and to everybody, in terms of encouraging you to seize hold of your own image and represent yourself how you want.

And that was it. I was going to give a detailed rundown of what I did in my Composite session, but this post is long enough already! The session took some of what I mentioned in my Focus On Imaging presentations, in terms of the ‘categories’ into which my work falls according to its level of processing, and unpicked the process on how to do a clone or levitation image.

However, I then went onto describe all the different levels of compositing beyond those: the more subtle ways you can combine more than one image from one shoot, or images from different shoots, or using stock images (preferably one’s own), textures, and also talking about complex compositing jobs I’ve done: ‘knowing where to start’, as here, and ‘knowing when to stop!’ as here. I also cited some examples of great other compositing work: Quizz, Mattjin, Oladios, Brooke Shaden. Better to have been there, really.

Snaps round the building:

Above and below: With organisers Jon Eland and Louise Miller. Thanks Teresa for taking these snaps.

With the family:

Above: having a prolonged tea break after giving my keynote

Above: Joking to my sister that I was going to pose like this, to my mum’s disapproval

…then realising there was a class full of people behind the glass window just ahead

Thank you to the people who bought a signed copy of my book ‘Self gazing’ (which was available after each talk).

A big thank you to the organisers, and also to my family, Matthew (and Louise!) for putting up with me all day and for being my trusty assistants, helping to lug boxes of books about!

(Some you can click through to see on Flickr, others have been uploaded just for the blog.)

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We had discussed several ideas over email beforehand, themes/images of crystals, water and earth, and a kind of ‘organic’ and paganistic feel to the images. I decided to get stylist Rachel Holland of La Luminata involved for the first day of shooting round locations like Devil’s Dyke and a lake in Arundel. She did a fantastic job styling Jane with both Jane’s own costumes and her own materials.

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10 Above: Jane on her broomstick. I’d have loved to get Jane higher but it was hard to do! So I settled for a bit of hovering…

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The second day, Jane and I went to Beachy Head and shot in the sea, then later shot in a hotel in Eastbourne. The weather was great for both days, and resulted in a perfect blue sea for Beachy Head shots, which were my favourites.

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I had a Phase One P40+ to use in these shoots, which I’m not at all used to! I did enjoy using the lenses that came on loan with the camera, which were the main reason for the images looking better than with my usual camera (Canon 40D with 17-85mm lens). They were all shot in RAW, processed through Capture One Pro and then Photoshop.

Have an idea/proposal for a creative commission? Get in touch if you’re interested!

Here are some outtakes/behind the scenes:

Above: Rachel )

I have never had my body cast before, so that alone was an interesting experience. Only the previous month I had been naked (or at least topless) for another artist, Rossina Bossio. This time it was a little less dignified, I wore a shower cap and had Nivea smeared on my hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes, to have Jamie and his assistant Sophie pour a bucket of goo over my shivering torso which dripped over my face and become heavier and heavier as it set over my leaning body, convincing me that I’d have a subluxation before the 15 mins were out. It was strangely enjoyable though and put me out of my depressive mood that I was in earlier that day (maybe the chocolate that they fed me helped).I did get them to take pictures of the whole process, but I haven’t got hold of them yet, I’ll try to get them and post them here later…

We cast my hand separately, and attached it later.

I took the cast home to copy its pose and photograph myself. It wasn’t until I came into the gallery to hook my laptop up to the projector and see the image ‘live’ on the hanging cast that I could really start tweaking it to match its shape. It was a bit of a task, because as you can imagine, the surface of the cast (my body) needed a very different image from an onscreen ‘flat’ version. Hooray for the Warping transform tool… which I used individually on parts of my body after first cutting it up into several different layers so they could move independently of the others. The main mission was to get my nipples in the right place, then the outline of my body, then the face. Lots of stretching ensued, with some clone tool touch-ups later. I found that the projector didn’t pick up on certain parts in detail so I was free to just smudge my skin around so that my hand, for example, just needed a splash of vague skin colour to look right, rather than painstakingly manipulating each finger. I was also looking rather green so I changed the colour balance at the end too.

The result – startling! Very lifelife, ‘like a painting had jumped off the wall’, someone commented – a little ‘creepy’ even (in my own words), and certainly inspiring for me, in terms of working for the first time with something 3D.

The main problem seemed to be making the image stay as put, in a suitable display context for the exhibition itself. I switched on Full Screen Display mode on Photoshop, so the picture was on a black screen and painted black around the outline of my body, so the whole thing was ‘on black’. I got rid of all the toolboxes surrounding the image, and made sure my computer was set not to go to sleep. But annoyingly, the screen would still go black after about 20 minutes, and I’d need to twiddle the trackpad to wake it up again. The resolution and Hertz settings changed a couple of times, making the thing go tits up (literally), but I finally got it to stay the way it should look. I’ve had to take my laptop away now, so we’ll try and use another laptop or a DVD player instead.

Above: With Jamie on the launch night

Above: Taken by Martin Christie

Me – by Rossina!

I rarely get the chance to write in depth on my artistic endeavours here in my blog, so I am happy to sit down and give myself the chance to describe in some depth my adventure with another artist and the fruits of our weekend labour. It was by far my most enjoyable collaboration so far, because of the time we got to spend with each other, and the fact that the final products of our teamwork were truly ‘collaborative’; everything from the shooting itself through the processing and to the titling and captions with which we appropriated the images when uploading to Flickr.

The Female Self-Portrait Artists’ Support Group (argh!… FSPASG for short, but not an an acronym to be pronounced phonetically, as Rossina and I had a bit of a laugh about when we met) has zillions of members but within that large and ever-increasing community is a cluster of women who regularly engage in a dialogue with each other, and build such relationships, that physical meet-ups often ensue. A meet-up in Paris was being arranged between some ladies who were travelling to Europe from Canada: Mmaeb (Michelle) and Geekgirly (Sarah), and Rossina proposed to travel from Rennes, in turn I decided to splash out on a budget airline long weekend away and my first trip to Paris itself (bar the early teenage EuroDisney trip and the stopover on the way to Moscow in 2003).

The weird and wonderful thing about the internet is that despite its tendency to bring out the worst in people and act as a veneer to aid ill-intentioned anonymity and general arseholeishness, it can, to the contrary, be a great way to meet people and to actually get a quite accurate impression of them, even if you never hear their voice or see their live image. That was the case with Rossina. She met me at Charles de Gaulle airport looking just like one of her self-portraits, and we embarked on the journey onwards with the familarity of old friends (thanks Rossina… heh).

We knew we wanted to do several collaborative images and we had already discussed some of our ideas previously online. The initial ideas were mainly Rossina’s, which she’d roughly sketched out. I did mention the word ‘Balthussian’ somewhere in my contribution to the brainstorming, as I’d always imagined us shooting in a room something like what you see in her image ‘Red fur dream’. So that was on our list, alongside other ideas from phallic vegetables, to female nudity and censorship (Rossina had just had her account restricted on Flickr, and the issue of censorship – whether directly connected to the incident or not – was on our minds).

Booby traps
Inspired by Gabrielle d’Estrées and One of her Sisters, themed on Flickr censorship using the Flickr logo’s dots…

We did four main collaborative shoots each with one main outcome that we both uploaded to Flickr, with comments enabled/disabled on alternating streams. Thanks to Julie Seguinier, Rossina’s agent, we had a kitchen, a children’s room and an office to use as locations for our ideas. We also used her tripod – which was hugely needed, as I brought along a rather heavy Phase One P40+ medium format camera which I had on loan for two weeks, with two lenses, a 45mm and 80mm (I also had a fat 150mm which I left at home) to shoot our pics. The children’s room had plenty of toys in it which we took advantage of, including for the image Tough toys for tough boys:

For all images, we shot each other separately, and by keeping the camera in a fixed position, composited the other person in later. This was a great way to shoot because we could specifically direct each other the way we wanted the person to look (I have just realised that, for some reason, Rossina is to the right of me in all the images!)
Shooting ourselves in self-portraits, we are used to having to be a little unaware of how we look until we check the image afterwards. I found that we knew each other well enough to command a certain angle or pose. For example, I would ask Rossina to do her ‘trademark Rossina grumpy stare’, such as for Booby traps above, and Rossina would ask me to flickr my hair, as in Pathetic phallacy…

Shopping at the local store for the props for that image was fun!

Clothing-wise we let each other recommend what to wear: Rossina had previously asked me to bring along my hand mirror, white gown and By the lake outfit (bringing only hand baggage, I managed just the skirt, as seen in The artists’ sketch below) whilst I asked her to bring along her Sortie pants!

I had to wait till I got home first to convert all the IIQ files (Phase One raw files) using Capture One, so I posted the converted Tiffs (3 DVDs’ worth) through to Rossina as soon as possible so we could have both gander at the results of all the shoots and proceed to the processing collaboratively. (This was all bearing in mind that I was set to arrive back in the UK late on Sunday night to commence a 2-day commissioned photoshoot early Monday morning, on the largest scale I had yet done. Needless to say I felt a little nervous! Full blog post on that shoot to come soon too).

Rossina and I spent the next few weeks working on the images, by sending the files back and forth to do our own spot of processing, and being honest about things we agreed or disagreed on. I think we found that throughout the whole experience, we have a lot in common with our artistic direction, our thoughts and intentions, despite our differing styles in our individual work. More importantly, we are good at communicating and negotiating with each other, which is the essence of any good relationship!

The artists’ sketch (above) started out as a photo composite, which incorporated my new cat/kitten Ruby…but we wanted to give it an extra dimension. We did several ‘wallpapered’ versions, complete with skirting board, but then decided to develop the ‘drawing’ theme instead. Rossina did a drawing of the image which I found very appealing, and suggested incorporating the photograph and drawing into each other. The result took some tweaking but in the end we got to a result we both liked.

Titling and captioning the images was another stage in itself. We shared our ideas on title suggestions and how to ‘theme’ the images through language without trying to necessarily restrict the interpretations of the viewer. With the last of the four, Pathetic phallacy, we were particularly cautious about pinning down an exact meaning or sentiment. We wanted to keep the image tongue-in-cheek, as with Booby traps, but without simply dismissing our image as a joke. For me, the ideal way I would like someone to appreciate these images is somewhere halfway between the amusing and the serious; something humorous but within an intellectual, psychoanalytical context. But that is just me )

I enjoyed working with Rossina, and one thing that I have since mentioned to her (yesterday) is that through collaborating, especially when there is an element of intimacy involved (with the nude shots) one feels strengthened in their artistic endeavours as opposed to being ‘alone’ on Flickr showcasing and receiving comments on one’s work. In working with someone else, especially someone whose work you admire and whose opinions and thoughts you are very much in tune with, you are not ‘alone’ sharing the results. All artists inevitably have periods or even regular moments of self-doubt, but in collaborating with other artists, you’re evening out the highs and lows, and any of the ‘risks’ (if one thinks in terms of ‘risks’ with art) by being with someone else. It definitely can make the process of creation even more rewarding.

I also say this with another recent collaboration in mind: between sculpture and photography. I recently worked with a bodycaster/sculptor in Brighton to produce something we coined as ‘sculptography’, a bit of a an experiment (which we consider successful!) launched at my exhibition Neurotica at Impure Art Gallery last night (Friday 31st). More on that in my next blog post!

Rossina and I did find time to take some casual shots, especially when we went out to meet Michelle and Sarah (Mmaeb and Geekgirly) for a lovely afternoon and evening to take in, or, erm – crazily jump in front of, the infamous sights of the city….(processed by Rossina)

L-r: Michelle, me, Sarah

Thanks to Rossina, and to Julie and her family for being so very kind!
Hopefully there will be more collaborations to come!

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See Rossina’s blog post here