Shelter

When we were intially gave this project back in October, I was quite unsure about the whole concept. BUT I drew a mind map and then i got a few ideas that way- definately a way to approach a new project in the future. I thought about maybe basing it on homeless people, feral children or escapism- for example like the abuse of drugs & alchohol. However i came up with the theme of 'fear' and how that links into shelter just like opposites do; like for example how for some people a place may be where they take shelter, but for others it may be somewhere that they fear or connects with them to fear in some way. I thought about maybe doing a documentary of people walking outside, and inside unawares to show the difference in emotion between open spaces and closed off spaces, and the contrast between fear and safety, which definately varies from person to person.

However, after much thought, i decided to go for this idea of sheltering yourself from society, and how beauty is such a forced image down our throats and how we are supposed to look a certain way to be accepted. I looked into how we cover ourselves up; from the extremities of covering yourself head to toe in tattoos to making yourself unidentifiable from your past self, say from plastic surgery or sex changes. I eventually went with this idea of masks which led on from this idea of hiding ourselves from our true selves. I liked how masks vary from making a person look beautiful, if maybe haunting- for example venetian masks and then to ugly masks such as the ones we use on halloween. I went on to create my own versions of these contrasts. One beautfiul mask and one ugly mask. I did this by decorating typically pretty accesories on one mask and fake blood and tissue on the other. My results are the photos above. It was a lot easier to make the ugly mask scary by the light and the setting, rather than the beautiful mask was just worn on my face, and i couldn't really think of a way to edit it so it looked even more stunning. However I did layer the image up and made it look more refined, whereas the scary mask is blurred and dark. I'm quite pleased with the results afterall as it gave people the affect I was looking for.
I then went onto swapping the two by taking a photo of a model (who most would deem beautiful) and putting burn marks and blood over her using photoshop, and using a photo of a burns victim and putting the beautiful mask over her disfigured face. I wanted to see how they both worked for each other, and even though my photoshop skills on the photos aren't that great, you basically get the jist of what I was trying to do. I then did the same thing with my face, but instead got 2 of the same photos of myself and made each mask look a part of my face. I think the horror mask worked the best on my face as the colours blended better to my skin, whereas the pretty mask looked a bit overexposed.
I then created four photos of me wearing the masks but in different outfits. For example two were done of me wearing 2 different dresses wearing the 2 different masks, and then I wore 2 different scruffy hoodies and 2 of the masks again. I wanted to see how stupid and what looked good with each. My 2 favourites are of me wearing the pretty mask with the dress and the ugly mask in the hoody as it stands out as quite a powerful image as they both look quite suited to each outfit. The photos are pictured below.