Yvonne Zhou
Commemorate Ren Hang---Bare self photoshoot
Prompt: Using yourself (or someone you live with) as a model, develop a concept for a styled photo. Use existing clothing and accessories you already have. The purpose of the assignment is to practice thinking conceptually, researching, and executing a photoshoot. The photoshoot should have a cultural commentary message and a clear, cohesive visual style. The photo/s can be a commentary on the current situation with CoVid 19 or another idea that contains cultural commentary.
In this photoshoot, I dedicated my style to a passed away photographer: Ren Hang, who always shooting the human body naked, poetic structuring the photography using the human body. His photographs have a raw feeling of human nature, always portraiting female character with a fire red lips. I mimic his style and composed this photoshoot, addressing the quarantine situation that happens to everybody. At this time, I wondered is clothing really necessary for humans? Since we all trapped in our home, I no longer dressed up anymore, no makeup no anything. This pandemic made me realize how vulnerable human is, how small and shallow we are in this universe. Do we really need all the things we made up to sustain our life? Makeup, clothing, shoes all these manufactured goods, accessorizing our life, we seem living in a happy fulfilling world. But the end of the day, an invisible virus could’ve taken a million hundred life that easily… In this photoshoot, I made the miserable facial expression, wondering and feeling sad. We are merely living organisms that utilizing the earth resources to sustain our life, simply like that. What’s the meaning of human or this forgiven life…