Cutting Up Images

Since I had had a little bit of inspiration for my FMP I decided to make haste and get on with something before I lost it and to save my lungs from being hunched over cutting and sticking (still not fully recovered by the way) I thought to make these collaging photos on Photoshop - despite my undying hatred for it I could sit properly while at the computer. 

I started with something simple and full on inspired by the Guerrilla Girls - I just cut out the face of a gorilla and put it on a runway model and hoped to create something similar to what they were doing. I didn't bother editing the image too much because I just wanted to have a quick go and see if the effect is something that I liked and could possibly develop and look at further.

I did like the idea but I felt too much of a copyright thief by doing so.  

I noticed that the image didn't have as much of an impact as the Guerrilla girls posters but I think that was purely because of the lack of an aggressive gorilla face - which was quite hard to find one of a clear resolution to use, so calm gorilla faces it was. But I could smile at theses images because it felt funny taking the mick of these stick thin models - so I didn't create a thought-provoking picture like the Guerrilla Girls but more of a comedic commentary.

Since I said in my FMP I wanted to try and see if I had room look at both sexes I thought that I would take a male body and collage on it - since the Guerrilla girls used an animal that was a typical image with power, intimitation and masculinity I though to use an animal that would represent that stereotypical delicate female nature, my first thought was a rabbit (no clue why) but a rabbit it was. I thought it was quite funny to see this and it defiantly capture the image that I wanted. 

Then I thought about the phrase "I'm not a piece of meat" - for some reason I chose an apple and covered the entire body so to take a play on words. It wasn't as effective as I had hoped but it defiantly gave me a perspective of possibly using objects/food to cover the bodes and possibly uses of collages.

For equalities sake I did both a man and women as a walking weird apple thing.

The red apple reminded me of the red Coca Cola - also it reminded me of the use of Coca Cola in the Pop Art that I've been looking at for my contextual influences, it also achieved my idea of using objects to cover the body.

This one again came from a phrase that describes a mans 'perfect' abs - when in secondary school they were often called "chocolate abs" because they looked like a the shape of a chocolate bar (it might just be a Lincoln school thing :/) So since I'm looking at Pop Art, which has a lot of branding, I went with the most popular chocolate bar I can think of and it slapped over the model.

Right this was a bit of weird slip-of-the-mouse mistake but I really liked the cut up effect that it made - since I'm looking at how genders body image is distorted and I looked at covering the body, this weird cut-up-and-paste thing I was doing in photo shop was literally distorting the figure and making it a collage.

After messing around with this I could possibly look at how I could combine multiple images to make a more distorted image - maybe that is something that I can look at tomorrow.