A Project to Last the Rest of My Life!
As a conceptual photographer, I'm constantly drawing on outside resources to inspire my photo shoots. A painting, a poet, a prop, a song, a book – these are just a few things that have inspired me throughout the years I've been shooting conceptual work.
As a side note, I'm known to occasionally entertain a guilty pleasure of mine – visiting tarot card readers (even though 99% of the time they're completely inaccurate)! While getting these readings, I've generally found the tarot card illustrations to be dark and depressing in nature – not to mention the fact that they're not very stylish, which is something I notice as an artist who is drawn to aesthetically pleasing things. I did a little more research and found a spiritual bookstore that had a wall sectioned off for tarot cards. It was interesting to note that all the cards were illustrated. Not one single deck consisted of photographs – and in that moment I discovered my latest photo shoot inspiration!
The first tarot card I decided to interpret photographically was the character of "The Fool." I had set builders create a corridor with 6-inch nails driven through each of the corridor's panels. My model being barefoot in the set and holding onto a bouquet of balloons that could pop at any moment illustrated her as "The Fool" character perfectly.
A tarot card deck consists of approximately 80 cards. One card down, 79 more to go!
I love this idea. We should explore the way we see an image and the subjective readings we give them, for instance "The Hanged Man" is not an evil card or a card of doom, but of change. He can right himself up and move forward. This site has a great breakdown of the card meanings: http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/learn/meanings/
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for that amazing tarot card link!!! It's going to help me so much as I continue my tarot card project! It's so funny, too, because the next card I was thinking about doing is "The Hanged Man"! Great minds think alike! ; )
ReplyDeleteMarisa, love the play between the spikes and balloons. Maybe adding a frame around each image will give it more of a "card" feel.
ReplyDeleteFor sure -- the frame idea is awesome, and if I use these tarot card shots for self-promo pieces, I will design a frame around them to pull them together as a conceptual set. Thanks for the suggestion!
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