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photography


These photographs were taken to bring all my research together and visualise my final ideas. Throughout my research into Rineke Dijkstra, I studied the composition and mood of her photography and how it can inspire my own artwork using pastels, paints and collage. However, as I use more secondary images online, I consider how I could create primary sources, branching off into a new medium in photography to build my art. Following my experimentation in distortion under my Bodies subheading, I composed a collection of self-made images featuring myself in contemporary positions; in these images, I use my body to reference all three themes I have focussed on surrounding adolescence: appearing lost and as through a blank canvas as they search for their identity, incomplete with the detached head, and of course bodies with the vulnerable skin exposure. I chose myself as the featuring model, a 20-year-old female, as adolescence falls within the ages 10-25. [4] Furthermore, although I am objectively a healthy weight with a consistent BMI of 20-21, I have always felt like I fit into the stereotype of being a ‘scroungy teenager’ through nothing but my own insecurity and growing body. Additionally, I used a mask to enhance the movement and disfiguration in the photographs, as researched in my Incomplete section. The mask, body language and facial expressions enhance this imagery through its consideration of Identity.


In these photographs, I am dressed in neutral clothing to avoid any distracting clothing in my final painting. In many of the images, you can see me pulling at the waist band of my shorts; this is due to the high waist band and my aim to emphasise my stomach and ribs. The mask’s purpose is to increase the distortion/disfiguration in my work I have worked on throughout my documentation and experimentation. Due to the nude colour pallet, the focal point of these images is the composition. The images that I selected- and bordered in black- that I found filled my criteria (body exposed, searching identity, incomplete growth) are bordered in black. Other images either looks too posed and/or not authentic to a suffering adolescent. While taking these experimental images, I considered how the body language of Klaus Killisch’s Der entfesselte Zuckerman resonated with me with all my research on the body dysmorphia, identity, and incompleteness of adolescence.











 

Bibliography


[4]World Health Organization. “Adolescent Health.” www.who.int, 2025. https://www.who.int/health-topics/adolescent-health/#tab=tab_1.

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