Foiled Portraits

I’ve never felt particularly comfortable working with a live model. A few years ago, I ended up purchasing some mannequins that were in disrepair. So, with a roll of tin foil, these mannequins, and a desire to personally confront portrait photography, this project was born. At the beginning, tin foil was the color of tin foil – silver gray and metallic. After many failed experiments to add more color, I pulled a sheet of tin foil from the box and walked outside. As I laid it on a table, it turned into a beautiful sea of blue. The color on my models needed to originate by setting up colored objects to be reflected in their faces. I was immediately attracted to the idea of making something, that because of its delicacy, would not last very long. These objects disappear in that they quickly revert to their original form: tin foil. The only way to prove that the objects I created ever existed was to photograph them.