"A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth." - Richard Avedon

Monday 8 March 2010

Week 3 - Studio

or my third week I am going to be using the starting point of studio. My shoot is going to themed around Bert Stern's photoshoot of Marilyn Monroe, the last shoot before her death. The photoshoot was done in 1962 and have now become known as the "Last Sitting". Taken during several boozy sessions at the Hotel Bel-Air, the photographs are arguably the most famous images ever captured of America’s most famous actress: Monroe, sleepy-eyed and naked, sips from a Champagne glass, enacts a fan dance of sorts with various diaphanous scarves, romps with erotic playfulness on a bed of white linens. Six weeks after she had posed, Monroe was found dead of an apparent barbiturate overdose. I came across the images whilst looking in a book called "Photo Icons: The Story Behind The Pictures." The following images are my favourite ones from Stern's shoot.

Bert Stern recently re-created these images, with Lindsay Lohan, for a "New York Magazine" photoshoot, which got published on the front cover. What I like about Lohan's images are that she kept her poses and the femininity of the shots the same as the originals whilst making the images seem more up to date and modern. The following images are from the Lindsay Lohan shoot.

The theme of my shoot is going to be based around these images but I am going to be adding my own modern twist to them. The model which I am going to be using for this shoot is Natasha from my tutor. Tash is as beautiful as Marilyn Monroe but has a more modern look and attitude. I am going to be using a see-through fabric like the Marilyn Monroe shoot but i'm going to be using a vivid turquoise colour. I feel that the brightly coloured fabric will give the photoshoot more of a twist whilst the model's make-up and hair will keep the photos feminine.

This is Natsaha the model which I will be using for this photoshoot.