Jean Faucheur
Jean Faucheur was born on June 14th in 1956 in Versailles, France. He is a French photographer who specifies in taking ordinary potrait images and then distorting them into fragments. Jean has been described as a eclectic and polymorph artist who is seen as a prominent urban artist who was highly influenced from the 1970's and the art of conceptualism. Jean's work links to hidden identity photography as you can never clearly see ones facial features. His work resembles one whom never reveals their true identity, a hidden shadow where you can only see the surface, or the secrecy of a true dark personality. Jean wanted to promote his work on the streets and to make it legal and permanent. That mission did turn out to be a success. Jean has a variety of different styles in photography, his images are always distorted but in some images you will see circular holes, in some you will see squares that make the image look as if it was weaved, some just irregular shapes distorted into the image to make it whole. I like this artists work as it can portray so much and many different emotions but it's almost as if its hidden away due to the different shapes and blurry effects stopping the viewer from looking into it.
PHOTOSHOOT PLAN
FIRST PHOTOSHOOT RAW IMAGES
This is my first photoshoot that I did for my 3rd artist, I used this photoshoot beforehand with my 1st artist (David Hockney). I selected the images that I thought would best fit this style of work. The overlapping and hallucinatory style of Jeans work is a great combination with the pictures that I took of my friend. The angles in this photoshoot are good as well as the lighting and the facial expressions. I think the one thing that I need to improve on is to not blur the camera, because some of the images are a bit blurry.
FIRST SET OF DEVELOPMENTS - EXPERIMENTING WITH DISTORTION
circular distortion :
I think that these developments turned out successful. I experimented with using a variety of different colours, not too vibrant but not too pastel and then I did a set of circular distorted developments on photoshop. Since Jean does both circular images and linear one's those are the 2 that I decided to focus on. Creating a abnormal set of photographs adds character to my work. The texture looks quite contrasted and uneven which is quite unusual in certain ways. The recurring circular shape of these images are getting smaller, some circles are bigger than others where you can see certain features more clearly. All the images have required the blur tool on the circles, as that is what Jean does in his work and because I want to summon similar work and ideas from my chosen artist, I also want to make the photographs unique to my creativity skills and exemplify the techniques that I am capable of.
PROCESS LOG - DISTORTION COLLAGE
The technique to do the circular distorted images is pretty simple and straight forward. First of all you need photoshop, I have access to this at school. The first thing I did was I adjusted the brightness, I turned it down by 10% and then I heightened the contrast by a little bit, to make the features of the images stand out. Then I clicked on the elliptical marquee tool on the left hand side and I select the face. Then I pressed ctrl + c ( copy ) and then ctrl + v ( paste ) and ctrl + t ( move and adjust ). After you press ctrl + t, you can rotate the image slightly and then you just repeat that step over and over.
Until you get images that are as shown in my first set of developments. This technique is very straight forward and although it may be a bit time consuming the process is worth it. After doing the above you will then want to press ctrl + E multiple times which will enable the image to become one (you should only see background) or you could press on each layer (right click on your mouse) and choose flatten image. Once I completed all the steps, I drew with the blur tool over my finalized image which created a similar piece of work to my chosen artist.
Linear distortion :
These developments are similar to the circular ones. They still categorize under distortion but have unique lines which are 2 images forming together as 1. I chose to experiment with different widths of the lines, some thick and some thin. I wanted to experiment with composition by layering blur lines on top of my images, to create an illusion of a dissociative view.As a result in my portrait images added on to the value of emotions already expressed. It brings out a psychotic manor which could also relate to the fact that the images look like shredded paper.
PROCESS LOG - LINE COLLAGE
Line collages are different to the circular ones. They consist of using the same tools but just a different form of doing it. Once again the rectangular (not the circle marquee tool) marquee tool is too to be used again to draw lines, still used copy in paste, where I then select even lines with the background. Repeat this for each line.The width doesn't have to be the same each time, I experimented with different sizes but found that finer lines make the developments look much neater and gives the image a fuller and more distorted style. Once all the steps at have been completed and all lines have been copied and pasted, you will want to press ctrl + E on all the layers to merge/flatten the image into one. Then I tweaked the brightness, decreased it slightly and increased the contrast to make the lines sharper.
2ND PHOTOSHOOT RAW IMAGES
This photoshoot was constructed in the photography studio in school, where I took pictures of my friend. As I did beforehand I used a studio light to add a nice brightness to my images and to enable the features of my friends face to stand out and her features become more visible. I selected 15 images, which I was going to edit on photoshop. These developments seemed to be the best images from this photoshoot which is therefore why I chose them. The one good thing am particularly pleased about with regards to my images is the creativity that I could present and the freedom to change each image, such as the width of the lines. The variety of the images gave me insight on having enough images to further develop on photoshop.
2ND PHOTOSHOOT - EXPERIMENTING WITH TONE
This photoshoot was successful, the images were taken on a quality camera and the editing was pretty straight forward. I chose to try a variety of different styles in relation to my artist and his work, where he uses different shapes on the faces, he also blurs the images and adds noise (grain). The work of my artist is rather fascinating as he portrays his artwork as hidden identity, where you can visibly see a figure of a person but you cant see the details in their face, which is what I have done in these set of developments. I wanted to create a piece of work where I capture Jean's work and create something similar to him. I am proud of these developments as they kind of alter a mind-bending image and may confuse the viewers who are looking at this work. For the linear developments, I used 2 images which you can see if you look at the detail of the lines. I made some of the lines small to really make the 2 images stand out and make the different facial features vibrant.
Further experimenting with my developments
For my further developments I focused on experimenting with different techniques and shapes to make the images look more peculiar and abnormal. I used photoshop to produce these images where I experimented with different tools which is the cause of being able to be creative and try different things. The color tones in the first development
Experimenting with composition
I decided to create something different still linking to my artist Jean Faucheur. Showing 3 pieces of the same style of work shows the difference and uniqueness of the different work that I have created.I chose to do a set of developments in black and white, some in vibrant colours and a set in no colour, to demonstrate how colour has a major effect on how similar work can be portrayed differently.