The Art and Business of Conceptual Portraiture

Lesson Info

Commissioned Work vs. Fine Art

This is probably the one of the biggest questions I get when I talk about what I do is my conceptual photography which I'm jeered at galleries, museums, publications things like that that's what I'm after versus like commissioned conceptual photography which would be most likely like a portrait or something maybe for a novel or a book cover something like that it's just a different world on and I do both I'm not going to read this whole statement, but the main thing I want to get at is that even if you're doing this four commission so you are doing conceptual portraiture for people you still need an artist's statement you still need a language that you're using because what I find a lot is people doing conceptual pictures for a client end up making work that could be anybody's work it has a style maybe but it doesn't have a language to it because they've let the client dictate the whole thing so I've got a client who's an author or something I want to make a picture about being an auth...

or and then the whole thing just it looks just like the client but it doesn't look like you so I write a statement for my women's work, which was what I was doing for a long time as commission work I don't do it anymore because I didn't enjoy it very much um I still photograph women but for fun but I need that statement. I need to know why I'm making the work I'm making. Why does it look the way it looks? Why are these they wearing these garments? Why do they wear these crowns? All these things? And so my work is a very specific visual language. And when someone commissioned me to do it, they know that it's gonna look like this. It's going to fit in this language is going to have a brand to it. So I won't just make something for somebody when they show me a picture and say, can you do this? No. It's going to look like this it's gonna have a very specific language. And this is what they look like the commission work that I did, some of these were just favorites from everywhere all over the place. But just so you have an idea of kind of what the commission work, wass and is still I do a little bit, but they always wear vintage gowns I bring them, I always make crowns for them. I used water and ashes and clay, we're going to do that this afternoon. Very specific things on the commission work. So I'm not allowing my client to control the output in the outcome of the image and that's pretty important, I think when you do commission work do the clients have come to you knowing that they have no control over the output or did they come to you saying I want this and you control that afterwards see that's the beauty of it is when you have a body of work that is absolutely positively your language people come to you expecting that result I don't have people challenge it they come to me knowing that's what they're going to get this is what they're going to get it's gonna look like this doesn't make any sense but it takes you have to develop that language first curious how you both take a portrait of someone and capture who they are and keep say your voice in the same car you fixed that and so on and that's balance like yeah, good question and I think there's two two parts of that question the first part is how much is your client expecting it to be about them and their actual life versus what they physically look like? I find most portrait clients my client we're after a beauty portrait that's what they wanted because this is with my women's work what I was doing and so I'm imminent that's the second part of it I'm emanating this thing they're seeing this thing and they look like this this is a beauty portrait, so when they come to me they're expecting a beauty portrait doesn't make any sense but if somebody like I have a friend who makes very narrative images of her clients and everyone is very specifically about their life that's a different thing that's just a different completely different thing, but she still has her own language her own tell it her own way of using space and things that makes it look like her work. Yeah, I find with my women's work, I'm a lot more interested in how people are the same then I am and how they're different I don't want to make pictures about individuals, they don't care about that very much. I want to know how we're all the same, so and I tell people that this is quickly just if I look it for my women's work like the cues my list, my list is on the left, resilient sexuality, strength, feminism, the actual body fragility that temporary knows that I'm always interested in that that's my list, and if I look at that, it translates into the things I use in the photographs that's why I use white garments because they look like that dismal gowns to me and they're old because I like the idea of all the dna of all those women having worn that gown hundreds of times that their dna is physically in that fabric so all of my women wear those gowns when I photograph women and they know that coming in he was water because of the baptismal aspect. I make organic forms because things that are living represent that life to death think that life cycle that they're only going to be living for a little while. So all of these things are part of my artist statement and part of my language, my visual language that I use to make a commission piece that makes sense, and it shows up in both their very different looking right, but I've got the fleece on the girl on the left and the police on the people in testament, so I'm still using the same symbol the symbolism, the same type of symbolic objects freighting the images with this stuff, just using them in different ways same same artist, though same deanna up here, even if they look a little different. So I got the crowns that I make for my women. I made a crown from my pregnant lady in the show it's really this it's just different iterations of the same concept, so I'm trying not to let them take over. So in the end created visual vocabulary, nurture it, give it its prenatal vitamins and develop it, and it takes years and years.

Class Description

Lessons

1Conceptual Meaning and Inspiration
2How to Get Started
3Breaking Down Your Own Experiences
4Experimenting with Homemade Materials and Spaces
5Testament Series
6Conceptualizing a Body of Work
7Concept Origin
8Thinking in Layers
9Writing an Artist Statement
10Commissioned Work vs. Fine Art
11Creating a Visual Vocabulary
12Preparing a Conceptual Beauty Shoot
13Preparing the Model
14Shooting a Conceptual Beauty Shoot
15Shooting a Conceptual Beauty Shoot Part 2
16Conceptual Beauty Shoot Questions
17Conceptual Domestic Shoot Prep
18Conceptual Domestic Shoot Part 1
19Conceptual Domestic Shoot Part 2
20Conceptual Domestic Shoot Part 3
1Submitting Work to Galleries
2Submitting Work to Publications
3How to Submit Work
4Writing a CV or a Bio
5Writing a Grant Proposal
6Artist Residencies
7Portfolio Reviews
8Pricing, Edition and Signing your Work
9Printing Your Editions
10Working with Galleries
11Building an Audience
12Preparing for an Exhibition and Final Thoughts
13Making a Living
14Conceptual Shoot with Family
15Conceptual Shoot with Male Model
16Post-Processing Conceptual Shoots