Description

“Amy Arbus…leaps right into the age-old tussle between paintings and photography by audaciously re-staging for her camera some of modernism’s most iconic avant-garde portraits. Her astonishing and pitch-perfect pictures say as much about the sweetly treasured past of paintings as they do about the unpredictably hybrid future of photography.”

~ Brian Wallis, Chief Curator, International Center of Photography

“afterimage: an impression of a vivid image retained by the eye after the stimulus has ceased.”
~ Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary. Deluxe 2nd Edition. 1983

After Images is a series I made in 2011 and 2012 in which I wanted to pay homage to my favorite painters such as Balthus, Cézanne, David, Ingres, Modigliani and Picasso. Initially I had no idea how to actually produce these pictures. I studied the portrait paintings, organized a team, and began experimenting by photographing actors and dancers. My biggest challenges were how to create extremely soft lighting, skewed perspectives, Picasso’s elongated fingers and Modigliani’s incredibly long necks.

The more experienced we got at recreating the images, the more we wanted to deviate from the originals. I was amazed how the painted elements – costumes, props, and the models themselves – appeared to recede while the eyes seemed to advance. The images appear both flattened and dimensional in a startling way. It is as if the models are trying to escape the confines of their two-dimensional world.

The response to the images has been unprecedented for me. When people see them for the first time they are often stunned, mystified and intrigued. They can’t tell if they are looking at a painting or a photograph. Some have said that the images make them uncomfortable because they don’t know how to categorize them which is something I find quite desirable.

Richard Avedon taught me that if you go into a photo session and come out with only what you expected, it was a failure. He believed one needed to surprise himself in order to create something unique.

Amy Arbus