Self-Portraits - Research

 What is the purpose of a self portrait? 

Today self-portraiture is used as a way to document day to day life with the assistances of the front facing camera which has been around for a minute amount of time compared to the vast history behind portraiture. Portraiture has been used to show style, wealth, social status and individuality. As technology has become more advance through time we have seen many different styles and ideas through different media formats but common ground shared throughout portraiture is showing identity in some form or another. 

"I loathe my own face, and I've done self-portraits because I've had nobody else to do." Francis Bacon

I want to force myself to create a self portrait as I find it incredibly uncomfortable to look at my own face and to explore anything which involves myself and hopefully this will be challenging enough to create something interesting. I decided to start my idea generation off by creating a couple of mind maps to start thinking about the themes of identity and self-portraits. Whilst creating these mind maps I have looked a some artists/photographers for inspiration. 

Some of the ideas that seem appealing to me are: looking into physical appearance such as body and face, other people perceptions of myself, habits and gender.

• Physical appearance is an issue which I have never been comfortable with and I would like to explore this idea of comfort and physical appearance a little more. 
• Perception and how other people perceive myself is something which I also ponder on far too much and would like to look into this more too. 
• Habits more relating to my own habits whether they are good or bad habits, what makes them a bad or a good habit?
• I would like to look into stereotypes and how people are perceived.

Some of the ideas that I would like to look at are: modern selfies/old selfies (elizabethan), caricature, symbols in a scene. A couple of artists which I have found are: Chuck close, Robert Mapplethorpe, Vincent Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Cecil Beaton, Nan Goldin and Vivian Maier. 

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I have created a mood board for inspiration for self-portraits as I find looking at images is a more productive way to generate ideas for myself. I find abstract very appealing and this is something which I would like to carry through to my final outcome.

I find artists work such as Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso's work to be more about their visual style rather than context, where as Nan Goldin's self-portrait explores the ideas of relationships and abuse as her home background and bruised face suggests.

Nan Goldin

Looking into the idea of physical appearance in portraits, I came across Nan Goldin's photography which shares themes of glamour and beauty as her work is usually based on the LGBT community. The gay community is instantly recognised for their eccentric fashion choices and outgoing personalities, however Goldin reveals their "uglier side" by portraying contrasting stigmatic themes such as death, addiction and intoxication.

From looking into Nan Goldin's work, she's introduced that people are more than just a label.

Robert Mapplethorpe

I wanted to look into peoples perception and stereotypes and found Robert Mapplethorpe's self-portraits. All of his self-portraits are very visually similar as Mapplethorpe wants to portray himself as "cool" and impassive as his work tends to be very controversial and has a lot of stigma behind it. I find the idea of Mapplethorpe choreographing himself to be seen this way to be interesting and would like to play on this idea of maybe falsifying myself and seeing whether it be believable.

Frida Kahlo

"I paint myself because I am so often alone, because I am the subject I know best." - Frida Kahlo.

I wanted to look into the idea of bringing something into the scene as many photographers - including myself- tend to rely on the deciding moment rather than staging a scene. Whilst looking into symbolism I found Frida Kahlo whom painted their perception of reality by painting animals, flowers and other objects into her self-portraits as a way to visually represent her life, people and emotion. 

I really like this idea of setting a scene and would like to create homage to Frida Kahlo's work.