The final post of my preview to "You, Me & Everyone Else" photo exhibition opening this evening is from Anna Leader, the third artist from the group show of six. Anna has been documenting the changing shape of her first time pregnant body through a series of self portraits and art direction of creating different masks for each stage. Every individual guise is a diverse manipulation of materials from someone who is usually involved in polishing pixels rather than props..........so full credit Anna for pulling off this powerful set of timeless portraits. To better explain the concept here are her own words:
"When I first became pregnant, several people told me I was now a warrior. I did not know how to respond as I did not feel like one and it left me with the question of how one can deliberately become a warrior.
The most obvious thing that came to me was to dress like one. If feeling like one was intangible, I could try to look like one wearing a reproduction of a tribal mask full of symbolism and ritualistic weight.
All the 'warrior' masks produced so far for this series run with a similar vein of depicting a role one could assume in a moment of metamorphosis; an oversized and cumbersome body shield; a soldier esq. persona
whose rigidity and stability seem absurd; a mask of fruit and fertility that are contracted by a jesters scarf. All leave something fleshy and insecure, an exposure to a grey area of doubt and contradiction in a transitional period."
"My favourite piece of equipment generally I think is the Mamyia 7II. It can take wonderfully sharp (when my focus isn't off...) medium format images, but is light and compact so you can kind of take it with you anywhere. It is also really silent, which is sad when you would like the heavy 'clunck' noise film cameras make, but great for going about your business un-noticed."
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