Sara Lando is my friend. She’s also a brilliant photographer, artist, and teacher based in Bassano del Grappa, Italy. Last week we hopped on a FaceTime call and she graciously sat as my subject for an hour-long shoot.
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Remotrait Session with Aleksa Palladino
In my last post I described how I’ve begun to do remote photo shoots, via FaceTime. By hooking a projector up to my laptop while I’m on a call with my subjects— who are often not just in a different state but sometimes in a different country— I can project their face onto a backdrop in my studio. Then I shoot through a range of different materials and substances, throwing the subject slightly out of focus, which takes the focus off the poor video connection and puts it on the texture, helping sell the illusion that the subject was actually in my space. I’ve dubbed these portrait sessions “remotraits”…
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Chelsea Wolfe: American Darkness Tour
I’ve been a fan of Chelsea Wolfe’s music since I first heard “Moses” off of her first album, nearly a decade ago. I first began collaborating with her in 2013 on her Unknown Rooms acoustic tour, and we’ve since shot together eight times. Whenever she heads out on a tour I make it a point to not only catch her show but also squeeze in a quick shoot. This past month I drove up to Detroit to catch her American Darkness tour at Smalls for some conversation, music, and of course photos…
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Strata IV
I’m beginning to figure ways to control and manipulate the honey in my Strata portraits. I’m now using a mirror for my honey images, while I still use a large sheet of glass for the oil shots. Rather than cleaning off the mirror between shoots, I leave it laying flat, allowing the honey to settle (and collect dust and grit). Once I am ready to shoot, I stand it up and and dab it with my fingers, which creates raised areas for a few minutes. The refraction from the honey can get really extreme, mimicking the distortion from a funhouse mirror. My favorite parts of the image are the areas where the face/skin begin to split away from the body, as if to disintegrate.
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Strata II
For the past couple of years I’ve begun drifting away from the literal and heading for the lyrical. I am finding myself easily bored with well-lit (and even colorful) images. I find myself longing for the qualities a painters brush stroke brings to a portrait. I have experimented a great deal with using multiple exposures or projectors to add layers of texture and distortion to my images. Though I made images I was happy with, they didn’t feel like they were close enough to where I was wanting them to go.
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