Bewilderness continues

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Early in 2015 I started a new branch of my Bewilderness photo series.

Previously Bewilderness had been a collaborative series shooting models doing something or wearing something entirely out of place to the “wilderness” setting in which they appeared. These included such things as roller derby girls on train wrecks and nudes in the thorny, inhspitable desert.

That initial series typically resulted in large panoramic images that raised about equal visual interest in the landscape and the peculiar action of the model within that landscape.

Laura-Meander-DSC_3457A-sw3k-dbaBut just after the beginning of 2015 I began a new experimental phase of mainly standard frame size images. Inspired by my musical compositions and an experimental film collarboration with performance artist Laura Milkins, these new images combined two or more photographs into a single image, and in essence using each semi-transparent image as a filter for the rest.

Laura-gated-community-DSC_3469B-sw3k-dbaThe series has been evolving steadily. At first the images were mainly textural studies. But of late the process has inpired some new surreal combinations.

In these recent studies I have used as the base material some nudes with model Laura Milkins shot in the desert a few years back, and we are about to embrak on some new sessions to add to that source material.

The nude is ideal to work with, both because the eye recognizes it instictively and because the skin becomes a canvas upon which the other layered images project. Moreover the curves and lines of the human form can be imitated, obscured and amlified in the layering process. And the combinations of images are often startling.

Laura-meander-SF-DSC_3465-multB-C1b-sw3k-dbaThe drama of the pose as well finds new narrative when combined with other images elements.

As someone whose photography has mainly been representational of landscapes, cityscapes, people and the sky, this experimental branch is again changing how I view the world around me.

It is suggesting new photographic studies, and sending me back to my Adobe Lightroom catalog of images to find new material to experiemnt with.

Laura-Rubble-DSC_3454-sw3k-dbaI expect that in the next few months this series will take on even more unexpected spins.

 

 

 

 

~ by Daniel Buckley on April 6, 2015.

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