Kuinex's acetone swirl portraits
The shoot is to represent the loss of identity which occurs when you end a relationship. When a long tern relationship ends there is a sense of loss, when it comes to losing a part of you as this person has been a part of your life and part of your identity for so long. Leaving you with a hole you need to fill... your identity. Kuinex's shoots are a good representation of the message I'm trying portray. Kuinex uses acetone to displace the ink on the surface of the image, this gives the blurred effect yet leaves representation of some facial features. When I tried to replicate Kuinex's images the acetone and print combination didn't work and none of the ink was displaced on the pictures so I decided to create a similar image rather than an exact replica. I used ink to create the first few images (reds, blues, greens) this achieved a similar look to the original. For the other images I used a range of digital editing techniques and physical coverage this successfully hid the face of the models. The point of this is to hide the identity yet leave the surrounding areas such as hair and shoulders. I decided after trying to create edits similar to Kuinex's images that I would use the same principle which I interpreted from his images and apply it with different techniques, this lead to edits 4-9 which all have a different look. Edit 4 is black paint simply applied over the face. For edit 5 I removed the eyes and mouth from the face as these are the two most recognisable features so hides identity well. For edit 6 I used electrician tape to cover up the key facial features. For the final 3 edits I used blur options on photoshop; motion blur, pixel blur and radial blur.
I usually use a black and white filter for my images in my projects so that it flows, however I decided against this as the artist I was replicating uses colour and since most of the focus in some images is the red, I left them all in colour. Completed edits are shown below (click to enlarge).
I usually use a black and white filter for my images in my projects so that it flows, however I decided against this as the artist I was replicating uses colour and since most of the focus in some images is the red, I left them all in colour. Completed edits are shown below (click to enlarge).
For my development I decided to continue with the same idea I used for the edits above, when you go through a break up, part of your identity is lost I therefore tried to think of ways I could physically remove sections of the face to hide the identity in a way. The images below were my way of doing so. I used well lit portrait images from different angles. To take these images I used a fast shutter speed, wide aperture and a low ISO. I made the images black and white so they fit into my project this also made the final look better. I then printed the images off and used a craft knife to cut out the face. When scanning my images in I placed a black piece of card behind the hole as I felt this made the edges look more defined due to the contrast. Completed edit shown below (click to enlarge).
The images below are of a tunnel book. I decided that I didn't like the first set of development edits as they where too similar to the actual edits, so I further developed these into the tunnel book below. I used images of people's faces added a black and white filter to fit with my project then I printed them off. To create the holes I used a small cigarette lighter and held it under the facial features on each image letting the fire spread wherever before blowing it out. This technique left me with a varied set of images which were all particularly unique. I then used some sturdy card and created folds doing this twice over I then stuck each image two folds apart and went from biggest hole to smallest. It didn't look how planned due to the fire taking its course however still looks effective.