Tuesday, 20 March 2012

Guest-Speaker Marcio Mascarenhas

We were lucky to have Brazilian photographer Marcio Mascarenhas visit Solent today, who gave a presentation on his portraiture work. 
In his project "I is an Other", Mascarenhas attempts to depict the different pieces of someone's personality, the many aspects of their character - we are never just one person; we are changeable. 


As he stated "You don't exist if no one is there to see you", I realised how the dependence upon another to reveal your own self is important in our society. 




Mascarenhas goes down a similar route with another of his projects, entitled "The Bodies I Live In". This too outlines his ideas on identity, but now places an emphasis on gender and race in each frame.

 

For instance, in this image, the female subject is shot firstly in a way that highlights her feminine figure, with directional lighting picking out the curved shapes of her body. However, her lower body has been interjected by a far more masculine frame.
Although the parts of this piece do not necessarily match up, our subject remains consistent, as does her sense of vulnerability, with her hands folded across her body in each part of the photograph. This could reflect the fragility of the human personality, as well as the way in which we are all so susceptible to change. 
The way these large-scale photographs are presented - each of them cut up and placed against further images of the same subject but from a different perspective - refers, again, to the many personas we adopt throughout our lives. 

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