Now, as I often say, soft and hard light are easy to obtain. Basically I would have recreated a white dress instead of a dark frock, and so I’d be illuminating the part of the body I wanted to ‘draw’ on. The photo that I’d originally planned would have been the opposite it would have been necessary to use overexposure, with the light hitting the naked body in a way that it loses its visibility. In this photo with Chiara, everything’s in the shade and therefore underexposed compare this with the light hitting her face, which almost renders it totally invisible. The results were pleasant, with the minimum of visual coherence. So, after a few days, I immediately set to work on finding out whether this was feasible. I chose to reflect on the technical questions, and asked myself: instead of using shadows, why not use the light? But, as always, my instinct is to simply get on with it and experiment so I really shouldn’t have been asking these questions of myself. That doesn’t mean to say that I won’t be doing so in the future, as it could be used to recreate another type of effect. It was from these experiments that I took this photograph of Chiara Bianchino, dressed in an elegant ‘black dress’.įor me, using a classic light projector wasn’t an option because, for me, I’ve seen this done so many times. A long time ago I wanted to experiment with these possibilities to further enhance my competence, and so included the possibilities of using light cuts, along with projected shadows that would be placed on the body with precision.
Although Mayer conducted many experiments with double exposures, mirrors, colours, shadows and geometries, he particularly took several shots of many models, ‘drawing’ shadows on their bodies and often combining them with luminous geometric figures.
#I am the shadow you are the light series#
The source of inspiration for my work comes from George Mayer, who was an outstanding Russian photographer born in 1985, and who produced several series of beautiful photographs.