What is an aesthetic and what is mine?
What does the word aesthetic mean? Aesthetics refers to the appreciation of beauty, more specifically, looking at art or design. It looks at characteristics contributing to a piece of work's visual appeal, quality and principles. Overall, it is defined as what looks pleasing to the senses.
When it comes to visual art like photography, I do believe that aesthetics are somewhat essential and should be one of a photographer's main priorities. Without a clear aesthetic theme running in a person's project, it can be hard to catch a viewer's attention in the first place, even if the main goal of the project is not the visuals but the message in the work.
When looking at my own aesthetic and what that means for my work, the first thing that comes to mind when reviewing my most recent projects is that they all seem to encompass the same dreamy look with a colour scheme of earthy tones running throughout to keep them as if in uniform. The main goal for my work is for them to be seen as a collective, not one image, but for people to view the project as a whole, all the photos put together.
My work plays in the world of editorial fashion photography in an attempt to spark conversations about how women are portrayed throughout the fashion industry. I wanted a different take on editorial fashion. The usual editorial fashion images I see are very bright, loud, and full of colour, whereas what I wanted from my work was for the viewer to feel the quiet of the images of the forest and the peace the model feels in the images. The peaceful, dreamy look of the images brings a certain aesthetic to the work that I feel adds so much more to them - they’re not just fashion images. Like many other female photographers, I feel that women are portrayed in an unsatisfying, unoriginal and repetitive way in popular magazines. What this project seeks to do is comment on these issues by veering away from the stereotypical, highly polished and airbrushed aesthetic. The focus here is on the concept of natural beauty. I have created these images using medium format film; this is something that also builds up an aesthetic as the look of the film can be tried to recreate but will never quite be the same as the real thing. Everything about my project has been carefully thought through so as not to mess up any of the puzzle pieces. Having a clear and concise aesthetic has been one of the main objectives throughout and will always be when creating my work.
