Honest Portraits and A Body of Work – Masks

Honest Portraits are a series of photographic performance in which I investigate what is an honest photographic portrait. The works question the truth behind a photographic portrait and invite the audience to reimagine how they relate, view, and experience photographic portraits.

The portrait exists in two strands, the experience of observing the creation of the portraits and the remnants of the performances. These remnants are what I consider honest portraits. I find it important to separate these two strands when discussing them. We often consider that looking at a photograph is to be informed about what had occurred. To witness an event and to view back the event in the case of a photograph does not generate a linear outcome.

These actions manifest in the form of breathing photographic chemicals onto black and white photographic paper and also covering my body with the chemicals, then making contact with the black and white photographic paper. The remnants are forever in transition as they are not fixed after, to view the work in natural or artificial light will alter it’s appearance.

/ Diana Agunbiade-Kolawole