Loretta Lux

 

There’s always been an unsettling connection between children and the genre of horror in culture. The number one goal of the horror genre is produce fear in the audience - children suit that kind of role perfectly. Looking at the artist-photographer - Loretta Lux, surreal portraits of young children moment of fear is captured perfectly by combination of still life painting and digital manipulation.

Lux’s main subject matter is children of various ages in choreographed poses and with accentuated features. Provoking questions about our views on childhood and ideals of beauty, Lux’s images create scenarios of isolation and distance.

Loretta Lux was born in 1969 in Dresden, Germany, and was introduced to art at an early age. Her childhood museum visits made a profound impression on her, and, not surprisingly, it was the images of children that especially caught her interest. She trained as a painter at the Munich Academy, and her time-consuming technique is more related to painting than to photography. Like a painter, she arranges forms and colours in her images, digitally creating cohesive compositions from staged photographs with carefully selected models, costumes, props and backdrops.  A single image can take several months to produce.

Loretta Lux’s photographs are not portraits in the traditional sense. 

Lux is a former painter who brings an understanding and passion for form, shape, and colour to her current work.  Her strange and magical portraits of children have turned into a signature work.  

With digital technology Lux has been able to recreate such portraits over and over again, making the process of construction:

 - First arranging the model in real life, choosing her clothes and posture, and then taking a photograph of the child. 

- After taking a photograph, Lux transfers the data to her computer.  

- On the computer she strips away the background and replaces it with quiet settings- grassy fields, abandoned buildings, indiscriminate sky- from her personal stack of paintings and pictures.  

- Then, she erases any objects that crowd the picture; thereby, making the child appears part of the work. 

- Finally, Lux digitally manipulates the appearance of the model and the background, changing colour scheme, enlarging the model's eyes and hands.

So it’s not surprise it’s could take a while to produce such a work.

My own photographs won’t be involving that amount of manipulation, for a very simple reason…I’m not to skilled for that kind of art yet. But it’s very helpful to gain some ideas of this kind to help me realise my own.

 

As you can see in mine it’s no much about art as more about portraits, even manipulated it’s hardly the same as Loretta’s. But getting closer that’s was my idea to get at least same impression.

I really wish to become more original with my own style and trademark, as these days to be something you have to be in the right place in the right time with the right original idea.

Research on Loretta Lux was really interesting she seems like a really talented and creative artist especially because she takes both new and old media and combines them to produce her work - photos of children producing something really ordinary - really unique. It reflects her style, because it seems like once she's done with a piece, it is not just any photo of a child. Her style has something about it that set her pieces apart from other ordinary photos of children.

http://trendland.com/portraits-by-loretta-lux/#

http://www.lorettalux.de/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_Lux
http://www.yossimilo.com/artists/lore_lux/
http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/lux_loretta.php