How on a journey from portrait photographer to visual artist

When I started my journey as a portrait photographer, I never thought that I would move into creating staged portraits embracing creative direction, being the creative brain, stylist and photographer to develop a series of fine art photography from that. 

With more perspicacity, I could have taken some clues from my 20s when I was more into painting and drawing than photography. 
The medium of photography was too limiting at the time because my knowledge of photography was pretty narrow. I had never set foot in a studio or used studio lights. I had imagined myself more as Robert Doisneau with a camera, than Avedon.

The digital revolution changed all of this. How? Because you could experiment and make mistakes, learning lighting was much more straightforward, being able to see the results straight away and adjusting your lights on the spot. Suddenly photography became attractive again with so many possibilities of creating art inside and out of the camera. 

I was attracted to fine artwork, paintings, admired other photographers but never thought this would be an area I could jump into. I didn’t know if I had the skills, the ideas, whatever the usual stuff you bombard yourself with, when you step out of your comfort zone and try something more challenging. But Pinterest has been nagging me for for far too long; giving me the opportunity to create all these mood boards.  I love renaissance and baroque paintings why?

I love the richness of the colours. The drama and theatre inspiration, I loved the work of painters like Artemisia Gentileschi, the fact that everything seems so obvious in the painting, although with room to make your own story.

How was the bewildered maiden series created?

The idea of working on a different personal project from what I had done previously i.e Women who served in WWII and Women who reinvented themselves after 50, was taking shape in my mind. 

I had the idea, I new about the creative direction, now I had to find the costumes and the model I already had a make up artist on board. We went to studio to finally create the work this was one major step, the editing of the images was another, choosing the images that were right for the story and creating drama by editing them.

I choose 3 images to build this series. What inspired this series was renaissance paintings, working through the subtlety of light and shadows, the renaissance painters used to create drama and to enhance shimmering fabrics. In this series the story is also relating the position of Women in society at the time, the little role they could play in society and how they had to follow conventions keeping the freedom of being themselves inside. Keeping a strict stance. 

Will there be more images? Of course yes, due to COVID-19 the project is at a halt as I haven’t been able to borrow costumes but I cant wait to continue this series. 

I would love to hear you thoughts about how this series is speaking to you or not.