5/18/2010

Somebody [Part VI]: Nape [continued]


Once all of the images had been shot the final stage in any project is editing the available images into a coherent form. I had to drop about half the images to make a possible book, which I had estimated would contain thirty images. When editing I think of so much: previous projects, other photographer's work, a running tone, poetic rhythm, etc. In this case all of the images were taped to the walls of my house for a few days to really enforce the consideration stages.

The thirty images for the book really came together quite quickly. Having the images on the walls for a few days allowed natural visual rhythms to formulate. The book stems from a perfect example of a nape and travels from all the various types and styles to end on the most banal example possible. This creates a simple structure that allows other rhythms to develop according to content, colour, tone, etc.

Once the thirty were selected I needed to proof this selection over another day. After the book is made for assessment I will have to further reduce the number for the exhibition, to ten. This will be more difficult again as I will be torn between favourites and succinct sequences.

5/12/2010

Somebody [Part V]: Nape

What can a nape reveal about a person?
The reductive processes of phrenology and physiognomy within social science and photography allowed Victorians to classify bodies based on visual details and firmly believed that a study of the exterior provided a revealing insight into someone’s character or nature.
As a result people, since the 1840s and 1850s, have been encouraged to read portraits using physiognomic information, which instigates the dangerous process of stereotyping. The procedure of making an object, or informative landscape, of the body created topological images that could be easily arranged into ‘types’. This style of deadpan photography was suited to, and subsequently used by, the police force to measure the physiognomic criminal body against that of an ‘average’ person.


By focusing on depersonalizing the nape, the back of the neck, rather than the face I have moved away from the historical and instilled methods of physiognomic documentation. The nape can be hidden with hair, bared, shaved, wrapped in clothes and even painted but when objectified can the borderland between body and brain also reveal insightful truths about a person’s nature?