Diana Chryzynska's photoshop-ed female faces seem surprising natural upon first sight. With most of the pieces of a normal face present, the viewer’s brain mashes them together to make sense of them, when actually they’re quite reworked. It’s fascinating how well your brain is able to reconcile two noses and two mouths sandwiched between two hands with eyes on top. Somehow, it takes a few seconds to realise what you’re seeing is completely surreal. Of course you realise what you’re looking at isn’t quite right, but it takes a while for your brain to sort out exactly what that is.
Maybe what makes the images more consumable is the appealing features: big eyes, luscious lips, unblemished skin. I don’t think it’s that, though. Its like when you read a word like beautiful, and your brain is able to organise it into beautiful (with some coaxing). The see-through hands over the faces are the most interesting in terms of theme. They feel like veils, hiding the strange faces from view, though not entirely. It feels like the women are hiding their mixed up faces, but some are peaceful while others are confrontational. Most close their eyes, but the confrontational ones stare out from behind their hands, self-consciously aware of their strange arrangement.
Maybe what makes the images more consumable is the appealing features: big eyes, luscious lips, unblemished skin. I don’t think it’s that, though. Its like when you read a word like beautiful, and your brain is able to organise it into beautiful (with some coaxing). The see-through hands over the faces are the most interesting in terms of theme. They feel like veils, hiding the strange faces from view, though not entirely. It feels like the women are hiding their mixed up faces, but some are peaceful while others are confrontational. Most close their eyes, but the confrontational ones stare out from behind their hands, self-consciously aware of their strange arrangement.
For my response, I used a self portrait similar to Diana and then used my models hand to cover over her eyes, Before the photoshoot I ensured my model had dark and dramatic eye makeup so that when I make the hands transparent the shape of the eye stands out. When placing the hand over the face to get the transparent and ghostly look, I had to reduce the opacity. For the first response I ensured that the lips were still coloured to make the feature stand out. For the second one the image was all in black and white and feel like it looks better.
I then wanted to experiment further and try to overlap the same image but only half of it to replace the bottom half of the face and to make it look more fascinating to look at. However, I think that the first image without the overlapping was more successful but the mage on the right looks very interesting because it gets us lost when we're trying to discover who the person is and to creates an illusion when you first glance at it. Another way I could've approached this response was by simply using a tripod and placing the camera at a close angle of the face and taking a picture of the face with no hands, facing the camera directly and then the next shot with the hands over the face and I will try it in different directions. after that I will photoshop it and place the images over each other making them transparent r print it out onto a transparency.