A New Way of Making

The work questions 'what is portrait?' Here an actor plays a character; that's the subject of the portrait. It also asks what is a photograph (or photographic portrait) as this is in fact a 3D scan - wireframe model with 'skin' stretched over it.

I became interested in creating 3D environments while working on "Remembering what never happened" The image below shows the "model" of the house, the pool, the building, the city...all created in the virtual world. The girl in the pool is real, as were all the characters in that series.

For me the natural progression was to work with 3D constructs of my characters, they are actually 3D captures of the subjects. Using a device, Structure Sensor, attached to an iPad I was able to scan the characters,

capturing a 3d model, complete with a surface skin. This model can the be animated and manipulated, it can be used as a still image, depth of field can be adjusted as can lighting.

This is still at a very experimental stage for me, there are more questions than answers right now- but I like that. I'm also intrigued by the aesthetic, there's a Playstation or VR "unreality" look to it, for me that aloof, disengaged look again related back to the characters in the "Remembering what never happened" series.

The image below is also a finalist in the Perth Centre for Photography - Iris Award

While these images feel well suited to the screen, I am also exploring print. I chose to use the dot because I the 2d (print realm) it's the dots that enable us to see the image, this image is actually not photographic, it's a 3D scan, a point cloud is created, thousands of dots sitting in space (xyz) giving form to the subject / object - much like the halftone dot does for print.