My photographs share portraits of the love of my life and favorite model:  my wife. These pieces reveal my wife's affinity for 1940s movies and style, her bookish personality, and love of traveling. The images highlight my wife's beauty while utilizing a painterly effect in the post-editing. The simple lighting encourages the viewer to see the simple dramatic quality of the photographs. 

 

I drew inspiration for these pieces from seemingly two very different sources. These two sources are the rich Baroque paintings and the snappy 1940s, or at least how we in this decade feel about the 1940s. During my undergrad experience, I fell in love with the rich colors and texture used by Baroque painters such as Rembrandt and Velasquez. My work here is a fusion of these two worlds. The model's hairstyle, clothing, and props were specially chosen to be reminiscent of the 1940s while the lighting and post-editing draws directly from the Baroque masters. My photographs take risks by bringing two worlds, ripe with beauty, together.

 

My artistic practice here involves creating the scene as much as possible before the first click of the camera. By collecting props, styling the model, and setting the mood through lighting, each photograph can share a story. The use of a fog machine adds to the nostalgic quality of the images presented; the fog in some photographs mimics the smoke of a departing train or the foggy quality of a past memory that someone attempts to recreate. By editing each piece with a very specific inspiration in mind, each photograph becomes a painting that simply needs brushwork to complete the painterly feel.