The unspoken truth is that photographers spend hours digitally wading through hundreds of images which are the product of every shoot. The reward for this is the myriad of weird facial contortions embedded within, eyelids drooping and lips askew. This is the blooper reel of photography stills, a pleasure us photographers typically keep to ourselves. In the end we delete the gaffes and present the client with a package of perfect photos wrapped in smiles.
What sets this project apart from your prototypical portrait session is that Wade wasn’t looking to be handed a collection of perfect smiles. Instead these photos constitute the latest iteration of a personal project to chronicle his body as it ages. Conscious of the manner in which still photography freezes otherwise imperceptible moments, this project gave me the opportunity to explore facial expressions and body movements in a state of organic contortion. Together we found ways for Wade to move so that I could faithfully document how he walks and sits and leaps. In these photos you’ll see the struggle to remove socks, the fastidious coiffing of hair, the careless throwing of boots.
In addition to the body itself, we incorporated a number of artifacts into the shoot chosen from Wade’s vie quotidienne. These were chosen to serve as anchors in time—an array of objects that would yank him back to his body and life in the year two-thousand-and-fifteen. Interspersed throughout these photos you’ll notice the shirt which represents Wade Vroom's mini-donut enterprise Sugar-Mamma’s, the percolator passed onto him by his grandfather, the 8mm camera he uses as a filmmaker, and the safety goggles he uses while instructing grade eight science class.
Just as the meaning of a sentence is determined by the meaning and arrangement of its constituent parts, so our sense of identity is determined by the various constituent parts of our life combined with their arrangement during particular points in time.
Tech Specs
Location: Toronto, ON (in studio)
Date: March 25, 2015
Equipment: Canon 5diii, Canon 24-105mm, Canon 35 mm, Canon 85mm
Up Next
On Thursday I throwback to an ice-cold Edmonton winter wedding.
This Life by Selena Photography blog post about portrait photography was produced by Montreal photographer Selena Phillips-Boyle. You can see more studio portraits with Calista or Kat. Cet article de blogue sur la photographie de portrait Life by Selena était produit par Selena Phillips-Boyle, photographe montréalaise.