Paris Photo 2011

As another November comes and goes so does my third annual trip to Paris for Paris Photo and so here is my third annual blog of photographs from my trip to Paris. Armed of course with my Canon film camera the only difference this year is instead of heading to Paris with my usual motley crew of University friends, I went for a romantic trip with Matthew. We stayed in a hotel the other side of Paris to the normal Republique side, opting this time to stay in the Trocadero, near the Eiffel Tower.

I had another fantastic trip visiting the Musee d'Orsay to see the new Surrealist exhibit as well as many wonderful little shops and cafes and of course the Grand Palais for Paris Photo itself. The weather could not have been nicer, and was unseasonably warm meaning we could walk everywhere allowing for many photo ops. So here you go avid bloggers. Another year of another wonderful weekend in one of my favourite cities in the world, Paree!

Schilte & Portielje

Well it was that time of the year when I jump on to the Eurostar and journey to Paris for Paris Photo weekend. It was held in the Grand Palais this year and I thought it was the best one yet (well out of the three I have seen).

Whilst I could talk about the many beautiful photographers I saw there I want to mainly focus on the works by Schilte and Portielje, who I saw at the Kahmann Gallery stand. I had never heard of the photographers before but fell head over heels in love with their work. The dark black and white portraits were so beautiful, photography and styling wise. They have really inspired me with my project dealing with identity or lack of it and got me straight to experimenting with long exposures. I am absolutely blown away by their photographs and hope you feel the same. So here are a few of my favourites that I saw... I know you'll love them too!

Constructing The Self

Bloggers I need your help. As you may recall a few posts ago I did some self portraits of me hiding behind curtains in an everyday scene for my current University project, which is all about dealing with my issues of lack of self confidence and the feeling of being overshadowed and insignificant. I have come up with a couple more shoots dealing with this idea but in different ways.

The first test shoot is me hiding behind people who are participating in pretty mundane events and laying an arm or other limb across their body, so that this is the only part of me you can see. At first the scene looks pretty normal until you spot the extra limb, it deals heavily with this idea of me feeling overshadowed and insignificant. So here are a few examples let me know what you think!

Click on image to enlarge

The Second test shoot is again based around the everyday scene. Using a long shutter speed I move while the shutter goes of so that everything else is in focus but my figure is blurred and thus unidentifiable. Again this focuses mainly on the feeling of being insignificant as well as blurring my identity and body showing the lack of self confidence that I deal with everyday. Again here are some examples and feedback would again be appreciated.

So keeping in mind the curtain images as well, I'd really like to hear which idea you think is best and I should carry on with!

Thanks bloggers!

Viviane Sassen

This month I am loving Viviane Sassen. I first discovered her after seeing her incredible In Bloom shoot in Dazed and Confused (see blog post 10th July) and fell in love with her work completely after just seeing it at HotShoe gallery in London. I find her work is so contemporary and different to a lot of the fashion photographers out there. Seeing her work exhibited has really helped inspire me for my current project. Having achieved great success as a fashion photographer, publishing work in avant-garde fashion magazines, she has established a unique visual vocabulary all her own. Her aesthetic combines a sense of childhood memory, where scenes are crystallized and highly saturated with color and shadow, with a photographer’s sensitivity to the body and surface.


I absolutely love her fashion work as well as her personal series and I hope you do to! Here are a few of my favourite photographs of hers but I encourage you to visit the Hotshoe gallery before the 27th November in order to see her work along with Alec Sloth and WassinkLundgren.