Grand Maternal Photography

Blog Excerpt from Agitprop Issue Four - 2020

It feels so surreal to be on Issue Four already but I’ve been really churning out the work for Agitprop so it’s kinda both expected and nerve-racking haha! So I did this issue in two ways, I did a version that was four main banners on the page, one was called Love and the other called Fear, and I did a whole mantra about different ways of coping with life during Lockdown. I then thought about it and decided that what I wanted to do, was an uplifting and experimental version that shows everything from my heart. I am in the same situation everyone else is in, I can’t see my partner who is in France, I can’t visit people I love and care for. I am making the most of it and taking the time to breathe, finish projects I had started before, and take this time to show off some new work.

I have been saying for over a year, my skill set as a creative has evolved to a new level in my working life, and it’s the one time I’m not being creative haha! It’s like a literal mad experience, I put the moron in oxymoron for sure because I am just so much better at makeup, hair, my personal health, I’m skinny and my back is straight for the first time in my life, ever. So I should be throwing out random content all the time but I’m still nervous. I own every piece of equipment you can imagine now so I said to myself, fuck it. Go into your archive of inspiration and recreate things you want to do, so I took my favorite shoot by Peter Lindbergh and Milla Jovovich and I decided to do my own version.

So I’m starting slow and I added verticles for Youtube for the new layers of work. One of my new ethics with my videos, is to be clear on what retouching has happened and the basis with black and white work, is you shoot in color and you pick out the channels (Red, Blue, Green) to create smooth flat surfaces or detail. That’s how you get those amazing shots where the freckles in the skin are all visible in black and white, you use a filter on the actual camera lens. So I simply staged very little makeup, some finger waves, and a simple silk jumpsuit. I think these are my favorite images I’ve actually ever taken and there are hundreds straight from the camera that I thought could have made the cut.

I wanted to create different flash versions so I took out my contacts for some, added glitter. I started with no lip, added lipstick and then added glitter and honey to keep it on, so I was able to get a lot of variation in one shoot. I do not use flash photography ever, I have tripods and I often tape lights to strange angles and then use the viewfinder to get the image. I manually focus and I tend to leave things unflipped. The two below, I flipped because I had an image of my grandma which was flipped in printing, and I wanted to show how much I looked like her aha!

So there we go! Issue Four is all about creativity, love and doing what we can whilst we’re in the confines of this space.

Sending energy to everyone.