The Ophelia Project

This project began as a continuation of my personal essay on Pictorialism, and finished as an exploration into the depiction of feminine madness in literature. Across literature madness, love and femininity are wound inextricably together. Examples range from tragic female madness such as Ophelia in hamlet, to more secretive hidden and shameful madness, such as Mr Rochester’s mad wife in Jane Eyre. The project looks exclusively at the character of Ophelia and explores the different manifestations and interpretations of madness within her character.

Shoot 1

Julia Margaret Cameron, is one of the most famous Pictorialist photographers, I chose to make artist copies of these photos because I liked the style. I was interested in Cameron’s depiction of literary women, such as Beatrice Cenci, and Italian noble women accused of murdering her abusive father. Cenci is portrayed sympathetically by Cameron, and the images have a distinctly religious feel.

I took some artist copies of the photos, imitating the light and feel of the images. I then used the photos as inspiration to make artist inspired pictures of the virgin Mary.

References

Julia Margaret Cameron - Beatrice Cenci

Shoot 2

References(unknown)

This shoot stemmed from the idea that other body parts can portray an emotion. I used the shoot to explore how you can manipulate a photo to look like a drawing , as they were in the Pictorialist era.I wanted to experiment with different ways of making a soft focus photograph. During the "hands shoot" I wrapped a chiffon scarf and some tights around the camera with a rubber band to see what effect it would produce.

The tights were less effective than the scarf , as the knit of the tights was visible on the photograph making it look like a comic book image.

The chiffon scarf worked well, the pictures had a alternating texture and tone. The green colour of the scarf could be edited to give the pictures an underwater effect.

Shoot 3 - The Pre-Raphaelites

Due to the nature of the Pictorialist images I was using as inspiration, it was suggested that I look at the Pre Raphaelite paintings of female literary figures. I chose to use the paintings of John Everette Mallan’s Ophelia and Rossetti's Helen of Troy.

I really like the style of the images and the recurring themes throughout the Pre-Raphaelite era of women with loose curling hair and big eyes. I was also especially interested by the paintings of Ophelia, I realised I could use the underwater effect created using a chiffon scarf over the camera lens to create images inspired by her death (by drowning).

References

Shoot 4

This shoot was done with my first model, I used the willow crown again - although this time the leaves on the crown had wilted. I felt the dead leaves added to the shoot as i was portraying the death of a young woman.

Shoot 5

Next, I decided to do an outside shoot by the river , this would involve making a costume for Ophelia.

The costume was made of :

a simple box shift dress , sewn over a weekend
a flower crown made of twisted willow branches and white flowers I bought at a market – as Ophelia is collecting flowers when she drowns.
A belt made of gold cord and the same flowers as were in the crown.
Veil of see through guaze material

The dress was white to imply Ophelia’s innocence, virginity and also lifelong her position as Hamlet’s betrothed. I also chose white flowers for this reason.

The shoot was taken down at a river using the willow trees as a background , I used the gauze veil to blur some of the pictures by securing it over the lens with a rubber band.

References

Waterhouse's Lady of Shallot and Cabanel's Ophelia

References for Edits

Unknown ,Unknown ( actress, Lemarr), Steichen

I didnt want to limit myself to just making pictorialist style edits,on two of the edits I used the above 1930's era hollywood photoshoot images as references , I highly contrasted the photos to give them a classical look. On another of the images I used an Edward Steichan image as a reference to how i wanted to edit it - it was taken with the gauze over the lens the image is extreemly "fuzzy" and classically pictorialist.

Shoot 6

I drew away from making Pre-Raphaelite themed paintings when I read a poem about the glorification of suicide and depression. I saw this glorification within the Pre-Raphaelite images and felt I could not continue the romanticism of something so ugly. I felt there was a strongly patriarchal influence on my references as they depicted Ophelia as a beautiful, empty, tragic object, not as a woman who faces choices that eventually break her mind.

Therefore I changed the soft focus of my images to sharp unromantic depictions of Ophelia; my intent was to show the ugly side of madness and love.

For this shoot I used makeup to make the model look as if she had been crying , she was meant to look much less composed and serene than previously.

References

Uma Thurman in Lars Von Triers's Nymphomanic and Unknown

Shoot 7

The Mad hands were a response to the previous hands shoot , this time I used a macro lens and wanted the hands to look distressed and hard instead of soft like they were previously.

I used this photo called "calm down" from "Deviant Art" by user gintonic13 as a reference because of their technical use of a macro lens to show all of the features of the hand , and because the photo shows an emotion portrayed through a body part whixch is what i wanted to do with madness through my shoot.

Shoot 8

In “Mad Women in the Attic” it the Victorian woman is typified as “naturally passive, dependent, sexually disinterested, and born to be mothers” it follows that feminine madness is the opposite of this. Literature and art of the Victorian era feminised madness, a once male dominated diagnosis had become overwhelmingly feminine. Madness was associated with sexuality, it was believed that a woman in tune with her own sexuality was unnatural; the surgical procedure of “clitoridectomy” (removal of clitoris) was practiced on women who were believed to be “too assertive”.

During reading I conclude that the main symptoms of feminine madness were:

Disassociation
Assertiveness
Sexual Deviancy
Intelligence/ wanting to learn
Hysteria (which comes from the Greek word for womb and is intrinsically linked to the feminine)

Shoot eight was an attempt to shoot the symptoms in photo form, as is stated in “mad women in the Attic” ,”women have been repeatedly defined by male authors” Ophelia shows classical symptoms of a insane woman – she is disassociated , singing nonsense songs , and becomes sexually deviant , singing “common” bawdy songs .

References

Hannes Caspar

Shoot 9

in this shoot would have their hair tied back – loose hair is a sign of madness. Makeup – to show she cared about their appearance, and to suggest a social cage created by the conformation of the female. I used pictures of Victorian women from the 1880s to see the fashions of the time and the way women presented themselves.

References

These pictures are hand coloured Victorian/Edwardian portraits - i liked the kitsch and fake effect to colouring gave the images. I thought this colouring effect would add to the artificial theme of the "Society's Cure shoot".