More Media - Absence Makes..., Drift, In Progress
Three pieces this evening, or four depending on how you see it.
This one got more and more interesting as I worked on it. At first glimpse, I saw very strong geometry in the image, no background, just these shapes of fabric and skin in close juxtaposition. I started out by removing the girl from her context, then ended up with all these funny puzzle piece images of the guy, with this negative image left on the white paper by her absence.
Reassembling the puzzle piece images creates an interesting sense of isolation that seems present even in the unaltered image: this tension of closeness but distance, anonymity within that. In a sense, these two images perfectly accentuate the feeling for me of the original image, by "separating" the two subjects. A more perfect expression would be to remove the liquor bottle as it's own third page. You'll see that no subject is left completely whole in isolation, a variation on the "God shaped hole" construct--each person left with an "other shaped hole." This idea would be taken to it's full expression by removing the bottle as well, leaving a "bottle shaped hole" in the girl, and a "hand shaped hole" in even the bottle itself. Mutually using an used.
I also think that separating the images makes the suggestive element of his grasping hand more explicit. It seems like he is really groping her, something only lightly framed in the source image.
This all sounds cynical and negative about Madison Avenue, but I prefer the term...perceptive. ;)
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This next one is unedited. Just a lovely juxtaposition of image and text. Something about it is very dreamlike to me, I couldn't really cut it up. It has three very clear layers, at least, to me--surface text, deeper plane, then deepest patchwork fields below it. The text provides very strong background noise to the image, almost like a cloud formation, with the plane visible through a "glimpse" in the middle of it. In fact, drawing marker "could" curves around the image would be a cool way to frame this effect.
It works better as a full sheet magazine page, but clicking through twice with make this image its maximum size.
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Lastly, a work in progress. I ran out of time to work in this, but I like the start, basically two images added to the base text and black and white. The page itself was quite elegant, with crisp contrast between image and text on top and bottom halves. It's fun to take a leap from that elegant source with the QE2 image, and the Monacon royal family, as well of thinking about design over design, reformatting what was already very carefully and intentionally laid out.
This is also the first image where I've starting waiting to glue the images down. The ship came well before the portrait. Looking to continue this further, see if I like the flexibility in crafting foreground and background.
:)
