Mirrors Art Collaboration with Elodie Silberstein

I had the great pleasure a few weeks ago of working on a collaboration with Elodie Silberstein and Rhiannon Bulley for the 'Mirrors' show opening next week at Morie Gallery.



Concept and Direction was provided by Elodie whom I have known through art circles for a while now & who I also had the pleasure of doing a portrait shoot with back in April of this year.

The shoot took place at my home base, The Photo Studio in Glebe. Elodie came in with her art notes, outfit and of course Rhiannon who modelled as a kind of Japanese Ningyo Doll. It was a great learning experience for me working alongside Elodie and being part of her process for bringing about the final image she was visualising with Rhiannon. It was a bit like a Master Class in Art & Process!

Of course Elodie's final work is much much more than one shot and is part of the Mirrors Art Exhibition curated by Rhiannon; an awareness and fund raising show for The Butterfly Foundation. Its well worth coming along to the opening night if you can make it as there is also a performance aspect to Elodie's work that will only take place on the opening night.

Mirrors Art Exhibition, Mirrors opens next Wednesday, October 14 at 6pm at Mori Gallery 168 Day St Darling Harbour.

For more information about Mirrors click here.

You can keep up to date with Elodie's work here.

And you can read the City Hub article about Mirrors here

See you at the show.

Fashion & Portraits.

Is there a Fashion Photographer worth their salt who does not do a pretty good line in Portrait Photography too? I think not, fashion, people and portraits do have a lot in common even though the purpose of fashion pictures is quite different to portraiture. I think the common denominator is understanding your subject and getting to the core of the matter at hand be it the sitters personality or the form of a gorgeous dress or gown.



I met the artist Elodie Silberstein at an opening a few months ago and then attended the opening of her show ‘Mothers Day’ at Mori Gallery a few weeks later. I had no idea what the show was going to be about or what form it would take so you can imagine my surprise when I found it was an instillation piece; a massive space full of pink light, shoes arranged on shelves along one wall, a beautiful ‘model’ writhing (ever so slowly) in the middle of the floor in ‘mothers shoes’ and in very large type on another wall, a letter to a mother, quite some time deceased! Well it wasn’t Silence of the Lambs but it was a little disturbing and exciting at the same time. And those shoes! Beautiful shoes all lined up, and that pair strapped to the model/hostage, well you get the idea.

Fast forward to Now; Elodie has come to the studio for me to take her portrait before a trip to France & the UK to see Galleries about her work. Elodie was a little nervous about having her portrait done but quite likes my work and had put her trust in me. I wanted the portrait to reflect her use of space and to somehow reflect her artistic interest in shoes; all bundled up into one shot.



We agreed that B&W would be nice and I started shooting with bits of studio equipment in shot, chatting about space and shoes and motivation for making art. After getting the shots out of the camera and looking through them on the computer we both felt we had some pretty good pictures and were pretty happy. But I thought maybe we should take just a few more frames; just to be sure.

I found Elodie a stool and then gave her the copy of Vogue Italia with the beautiful Ferragamo gatefold brochure spilling out of it that we had been admiring before the shoot; “Here, why not just hold this, we love these shoes!”



I think the last shots turned out the best. After looking through the first set we could see that we had some lovely shots and Elodie could see that the portraits were just what she wanted, so now we were much more relaxed and trusting and the final pictures bring out all of that as well.



You can see more of Elodie’s work on her website here, and you can also see more of my portrait photography here. Click the images to see them by themselves.

Haute Couture Design in Sydney

Dressing the Void by Cigdem A ydemir.

An interrogation of the space between body & dress.

“… a core structure with the use of boning, fibreglass and fabric.The form of these garments have also been heavily influenced by current ‘blobitecture’ – a response to rectilinear planes found in traditional architecture and a move towards computer generated design.”

“… ‘Dressing the Void’ is an attempt to create cocoon-like negative spaces that engulf the wearer and simultaneously evoke a sense of containment and refuge.”
Cigdem Aydemir.

With Sunny modelling, Kaori on Hair and Make-Up and the designer styling the shoot; we managed a full set of fashion documentation images for Cigdem’s graduation exhibition.



Although we only shot two garments there was considerable time and effort in the ‘dressing’ of the model on set as well as the time spent on two changes of hair and make-up. I took inspiration from Russian Constructivism in my approach to dressing the set using large foundry technical drawings pinned to the white background. As constructivism was concerned with the formal qualities of architectural space it seemed like a good match with Cigdem’s architecturally inspired Haute Couture.



This was perhaps Sunny’s most demanding modelling job with me so far as she had to spend quite a lot of time being fitted to the garments on set. Seven hours latter we had a great set of images including some lovely high key head shots detailing the garments free form collar. A great days shooting and everyone has been very pleased with the results.



You can see the garments at the COFA Annual 07
Thursday 29 November to Friday 7 December 2007
College of Fine Arts , UNSW
Cnr Oxford St & Greens Rd
Paddington, Sydney , Australia .