ON SEEING, #485

Who They Really Are

July 12, 2022

By the time I or other photographers create commercial or editorial images of professional models, hair stylists and make-up artists have heightened their beauty to a degree that defies reality. They are decorated and glamorized to appear other-worldly and adorned and embellished into impossible “creatures.”

I have been recently making portraits of models without any such enhancement. For this project I attempt to reveal these young women as they really are, to show them as they naturally appear in their real lives. I want to create portraits of reality without the fantasy produced by the “costume” fabricated by hair and make-up artists and stylists. The images in this project are made, essentially, of models who come to the studio “off the street” as if for a casting . There are no other artists present to enhance their natural beauty.

Some of the “portraits” thus far:

Victoria Britt, Elite Models.

Son Carlin, Bella Agency.

Sakura Remsen, Elite Models.

Lauren Graves, Bella Agency.

Svetlana Zakharova, EMG Models.

Crystal van Commenee, Elite Models.

I have other plans for this project beyond these simple portraits with the hope of creating editorial work for 71Magazine, a magazine that I feel has “world-class” artistic design capability.