Although I appreciate Picasso’s work more than like it, I have always found it fascinating. And now, to that, I can add inspiring. When I saw a highly abstracted self portrait created when he was 90, I wonderered whether this could be replicated in camera.
I wanted to emulate the colour pallette of the original artwork so, working in very subdued light to produce deep shadows, I added three LED light panels to set a magenta cast for the highlights.
To achieve the self portrait, I laid an A4 sized mirror on a flat surface covered in a handful of randomly placed, smaller square mirrors. I then ducked and bobbed whilst firing off multiple shots until I had suitably exploded my face.
Initially I would have liked not to have included the camera, but this proved so tricky I decided come up with the narrative that the visible camera was a metaphor for the visible pencil marks. Ignoring the weak metaphor, I decided to embrace the camera fully.
And the result is that I don't hate it…