Model Society

about axelsaffran

Male

Visual artist from the Netherlands. After working digitally for about ten years, started getting his hands dirty again two years ago. Still experimenting a lot, trying to find his voice in charcoal, graphite and pastel.

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In a time when having the right suitable person model for you in your studio is especially difficult, this platform is a real treasure trove for any artist working with the human form.

Using photographic reference material someone else has shot does however present its own challenges, and there are many fine lines involved and sometimes painful decisions to be made, if one wants to do so in an ethical manner.

While working, I'm always aware that I'm utilising quality produced by another artist, as a source material. When deciding what to use from a photograph and how, I consciously avoid leaning too much on the creative aspects of a photograph... that which makes the ingredients of an image into a work of art. In some cases this is inevitable. The anatomy of the model in a particular photograph almost automatically involves lighting decisions made by the photographer, for example. In cases where I recreate a whole scene in my medium, I try to credit the artist(s) wherever it seems appropriate. In some cases I wouldn't include a work like that for presentation. Like I said :) many fine lines.

As I'm becoming increasingly proficient using soot and pigment to create stuff, these things are become more important. They increasingly form the basis or the roots of work I intend to be able to stand on its own, not be an appendix hanging off the creations of another artist.

So even though we are -- all of us -- swimming in a rich cultural soup of (interdisciplinary) cross pollination, and we all remix stuff in one way or another, consciously or not... (there's a great TED Talk by Kirby Ferguson about that by the way) ...

... if anybody feels that there is an uncomfortable amount of 'them' in any work of mine, please let me know so we can resolve that :)