When I found this work, I was impressed that someone had already explored my idea but not with female icons, with male musical icons instead. Bradley slightly confuses this notion of someone playing the role of someone else by drafting in an artist to play the role of himself. The artist plays the role of Bradley playing the role of Kurt Cobain or Ian Curtis. This is where the title 'doppelganger' comes in, forming a complex layer of masquerade and male identity.
Bradley also works with the aura of the preexisting images by layering them on top of a gold back ground, linking the male icons with icons of religious value.
'The photographs reveal the intense obsession that teenagers might place upon their idols, and the yearning to not only emulate them but to actually be them'. - Auto-focus - the self portrait in contemporary photography.
I think adding the background in works really well to emulate a new kind of religious icon as well as give a scrap book feel to the image. It feels as if a fan has taken this image and physically made a religious icon out of it, instead of it being given to the fan as it was.
I am already exploring this idea of the fan scrap book as well as taking influence from people who frame newspaper clippings as I think this is the way I wish to present my work. Maybe just framed newspaper clippings or a small scrap book or both. Maybe the scrap books can be handed out and I can create a new celebratory following?!
No comments:
Post a Comment