By Vanessa Weeden
I am certain that I feel the need to capture the intimacies that exist in the relationships between myself and the world. When holding a camera, I find myself reconfiguring this world using long exposures, open apertures, and experimental lighting. I often frame my subjects in light and reflections to emphasize the narratives that exist in my mind. To explore how we purposefully present ourselves in front of the camera versus how we subconsciously carry ourselves, I capture in both studio and natural settings.
In the ongoing project "Glamour," I am creating glamour portraits inspired by those of the early 20th century, using soft focus, colored lighting, dramatic posing, and hyper-femininity. I am exploring stereotypical female beauty in historically unconventional models. It is important to me that I am representative across all groups of people including different genders, body types, and ethnicities. Further, I believe there is importance that I, a female, am behind the camera, rather than the male photographers of the time. For this specific body of work, I encourage my subjects to choose their own attire and makeup (or lack thereof,) so that they can be portrayed in a genuine way. In an attempt to create the characteristic soft focus of 20th-century glamour portraits, I use an open aperture and often photograph through a plastic bag.
