And we’re back to portraits… sure
TLDR;
A secret Story, A hidden message all within an image
- Personal Note for Future Students
- What is it?
- Karen Navarro
- NSFW – Terry Hastings
- Unknown Student, Circa 2014
- Alice Poyzer
- Final Thoughts
Personal Note for Future Students
Don’t be a martyr. If you’re not well, take the time you need to recover. You’re not going to get any better if you keep pushing yourself.
I fell ill this last week, quite badly. A viral infection wiped me out and the aftermath wasn’t great fun either. This left me useless for around 10 days. A few weeks later, I’m still not back to 100%
Yes, this meant I’d fall behind but health is always more important.
Take time, heal and use the supports systems around you for help. That is what they’re there for.
Wise words over – Onto this weeks topic:
What is it?
Deconstructing Portraiture, as I understand it, is portraiture that holds another message beneath it. Where you need to break it down a bit to see the bigger picture. Something that requires you to think to see.
As someone who loves code breaking and always hunts for the hidden message within, This style of portraiture is one I’ve massively fallen in love with. It’s let me find some fantastic pieces of work and some wonderfully creative people!
Karen Navarro
I ended up down a weird research rabbit hole and came across an article in The Guardian Archive from 2020. The Best of Photo London 2020. In this article I came across one image that piqued my interest:
A photograph, twisted and warped to make this statement piece. From this, I delved into her works a bit more. I feel that it toes the line between Photography and Fine Art. That was when I came across her collection called The Constructive Self:
I’ve always struggled understanding artistic pieces like these, I don’t always understand the messages that are being made or even the reason why. But then I also know people look at my work and think the same things.
Karen speaks of self-identity and perspective and using physical methods of Resin and Wood to create detailed expressions. Knowing this, whereas I still don’t understand the perspectives, I can understand the method. Taking something that would have been simple on paper, a literal reflection of someone, and twisting it’s reality. Like a personality, it’s so simple on paper but in reality it’s messy, it’s cryptic and it’s unique.
NSFW – Terry Hastings
There will be no images for this section. Links will be supplied where necessary.
I came across Terry Hastings when trying to find a LGBTQ+ specific photographer. I loved his work for the raw imagery it uses. After taking my own nude shoots, I know how powerful they can be and how brutal their messages can be.
Terry focuses on the male body and the statements of Gay men across time, culture and identity. Each collection comes with a brief statement expressing his thoughts and his overall depiction.
I absolutely fell in love with his Four Elements collections. Wind, Water, Fire and Earth. Each one with it’s own theme, messages and statements.
–select to expand–
Wind
I find this collection weirdly angelic and biblical, which seems almost ironic given the works. Seeing the fabric fly behind them like wings and being nude in the desert reminds me of Adam after the Garden of Eden.
The colours clash so beautifully with the sand and human body. Being of the same tonal range, the human body blends into the sand and all you’re left with is this fantastic sheet of colour flying throughout the air.
Within his collection, Hastings compares the wind to electricity. The strength and it’s energy creating the sharp bolts. In the images you see this imagery being shown beautifully with the fabric sheets and raw colour.
My personal favourite out of this collection is Endurance. It’s the only one with the tonal shift but it creates a dimensional shift, like it’s not on our plane of existence. I may be reading into it too much but my initial depiction is of an uphill battle where everything else is trying to pull you back down.
Fire
Although initially I thought these were only lustful and passionate, looking further into the collection and pushing past the haha naked men aspect, I started noticing the raw feeling of this.
Man in his raw element back where humanity began
Yes, there is a lustful element of this but it’s still powerful in it’s own way. You always see heterosexual imagery like this within modern media but very rarely homosexual, more so the gay male, aspect.
Whereas this is not my favourite of the four, it’s still beautiful in it’s own way. The only lighting being used is that from the campfire and it adds so much to the passion and emotion of the image.
I don’t have a specific personal favourite in this collection, my favourite bit is the use of the campfire and the lighting effect it gives.
Water
The official successor to Wind, Water comes along and, using nothing but water and fabrics, creates a stunning collection of natural abstraction.
Later in the collection, you do see poolside and the before/after the water dip but focusing mainly on the water images, they are a fantastic look into the science of water and images.
I’d played with this idea before but seeing it done so majestically with nothing more than a few sheets of fabric is wonderful! In a world trapped by AI and Image manipulation, seeing something so raw and genuine is a lovely change of pace.
A personal favourite is “I am Art“. Using Hastings own words, it’s a visual representation of boundless creativity. The colours are stunning, blending together within the water and the colours of the human blending in just enough it takes you a second to realise there’s someone there.
Earth
*Phil Collins “Son of Man” starts playing*
Hastings describes this collection as:
The Earth series is a choreography of contact. Across stone, water, and silence, these images trace the body’s descent into elemental memory. Each piece stages a gesture—reaching, resting, resisting—until the final movement, Crawling Out, meets the ground with nothing left to hold. This is not a journey upward. It’s a rehearsal of gravity, grief, and the quiet refusal to disappear.
This is probably my favourite out of the four collections. No only do we have our biblical aspect back but also the evolution of man back in his original habitat as well as the raw depiction of emotions. Men, throughout history, have been told to hide their emotions, Man up, and to be stronger. Seeing them in this element, almost a feminine element is beautiful and powerful!
As always, my personal favourite here is Paradise Lost. Whether that’s because I’ve been listening to Agony from Into The Woods or it does genuinely effect me, I’m not sure. Although, the two aren’t dissimilar. Both talking about raw male emotions, one through powerful imagery, the other through Chris Pine singing in a waterfall.
Overall, I’ve fallen in love with Hastings work, focusing on the raw and powerful by any means necessary. Even if that means certain people become uncomfortable viewing it. Once you get past the whole “Nude” bit, there is so much here to reflect on.
Unknown Student, Circa 2014
In my deep dive into the back ends of the internet, I came across a blog site from around 2014 for a third year student at the University of Northampton. They needed to document for that module and after coming across their work, it was majorly intriguing.
I was linked to their contact sheet for a collection called Chimera V. This idea of a face full of paint and makeup slowly peeling and falling away is wonderful and has been beautifully done. As someone who has struggled with masking and hiding trauma, this collection hit rather close to home.
Sometimes, things chip away at your mask and make you show who you really are underneath.
I don’t want to delve too much into this as it is another students work and feels a bit… plagiarise-y but I couldn’t ignore it completely.
Alice Poyzer
I was talking to a friend about this project and said how I always see depictions of gender, mental health or self-identity but never really see a collection specifically on Autism. Using the above as an example. The message could be interpreted as the Autistic masking however, that was not the intention.
This is when I was introduced to Alice Poyzer and her collection “Other Joys”. Friend found Poyzer on Instagram and sent it over my way to have a deep dive into. I hadn’t realised this was close to home, Poyzer is a Yellow-Belly! (Lincolnshire Born Person)
Her collection, Other Joys is written as:
…an ongoing body of work that highlights my special interests as a woman with autism, through portraits and constructed imagery. Featured are butterflies, animal shows and taxidermy; all of which create an intense feeling of euphoria and excitement that is almost indescribable.
This is just one woman’s joys that you otherwise wouldn’t see. Things that are considered generally taboo to be interested in but give Poyzer pure, unfiltered dopamine!
The best bit? It’s still going! As an autistic person, your special interests can change and warp into new things. This is almost a documentary on her favourite things over time and changes. Going through Crufts, to taxidermy, to church architecture, these are a few of her favourite things!
Shooting solely in black and white is a fantastic statement that, I’m not even sure Poyzer intended. Autism is something that often depicted as very binary and literal. Something that operates in “Yes” and “No”, not maybes and could-bes. Shooting in monochrome, something that is very much “Yes” and “No” follows this pattern and depiction of ASD. Again, not even sure if this was an intentional choice but it’s wonderful to see!
Final Thoughts
This seems to be where I ended up with my own work last year. Using portrait to depict a bigger, more hidden meaning that, only with a small amount of context, makes full sense. I do love this format and really want to play around with this idea. I’m slowly, but surely, falling head over heels for portraiture.
It’s where the message isn’t a pretty or standard one that you grab me. Hastings talking about the raw emotion and depiction of man, Poyzer talking about the unusual interests of an autistic female, they’re all beautiful and so intriguing to me.
AlphaRose Photography 
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