Week #4: Marisa Howenstine, Photographer

When Concepts Go Kaput

While a lot of my conceptual imagery succeeds in being discernible to my audience, that's not always the case. There's nothing more disappointing than creating an image that I think is bullet-proof, only to have it met with misinterpretation. This was the case with my image "Queen of the Ants," which looks visually interesting, however, very few people understood the meaning behind the photograph.

My assignment was to incorporate nature/animals into an image, and I wanted to shoot something that wasn't going to be a generic cover for Bark (the dog) Magazine. Once again, props never fail to inspire me, and I came across a package of oversized ant magnets at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Hollywood. The ants were about an inch in length, and if I cut off the magnet from their base, I knew I had a perfect "animal" to work with (the assignment didn't say the animals had to be alive, and it didn't exclude insects as animals!).

So I came up with the idea of creating an ant farm, complete with tunnels and dirt. And I was emphatic about incorporating a person into the picture, as people are what I shoot. I thought it would be interesting to create an image that had a woman – not an ant – who was the queen of her ant farm. And because she was a queen, I thought instead of having the dirt be colored brown, it should reflect a heavenly quality and had my scenics paint the textured dirt blue. The queen's hair extensions were supposed to mimic ant tunnels. However, the general consensus was that the woman was an octopus underwater with ants crawling all over her octopus arms. There were a few who got the ant tunnel reference – particularly when I cited the name of the piece, "Queen of the Ants." But overall, the image's interpretation fell flat with my viewers.

Ah, well. You can't win them all….at least I've got an cutting edge photo for a Raid advertisement, as ants crawling through your hair is a pretty horrific thing!