Perfect Illusion: It wasn’t love… it was a new self portrait series!

I am a big Lady Gaga fan. When I was younger my friends and I would make up dances and sing around to her songs like we were the next Britain’s Got Talent Winners! While those days may be behind me, the love for Gaga’s songs isn’t and her hit song ‘Perfect Illusion’ became the catalyst in the creation of my next personal project.

I find inspiration from a multitude of resources, it actually brings me joy to connect the dots between different mediums. For this series, it was a combination of music and a theory set out by Jean Baudrillard, a sociologist best known for his analyses of media and the formulation of concepts including simulation and hyperreality (I actually ended up writing my dissertation on these concepts!). I’ve had a few questions regarding where I find inspiration from, so buckle up! In this blog we are going to breakdown my research process and how it led to the creation of my ‘Perfect Illusion’ self portrait project.

Perfect Illusion, Self Portrait

Creativity often strikes unexpectedly, for me it was 3AM. While listening to Gaga’s song ‘Perfect Illusion’, curiosity got the best of me and I decided to do some research into the meaning behind the song, where I came across a brilliant post by the Pop Song Professor. In the article, it mentions a BBC interview which explains that the lyrics are a commentary on social media, and the risks of presenting an idealised image of yourself online. To put it simply, Gaga is requesting truth and authenticity, rather than the fake identities we express to others online.

Next is a key part of the process, I picked out keywords from this analysis (social media and idealised), which then led me to reread Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality. I must stress that I reread the concept because I don’t just happen to have a library of random sociological concepts in my brain, these have developed through reading books and resources not related to photography. If you take one thing away from this blog, it would be to branch out from reading and consuming topics that focus solely on your practice. Now, I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty of Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality but I will mention that we can spot similarities in the concept and the dissection of the song. Hyperreality is the state where we cannot distinguish between real and fake, and social media is a platform where we can present inauthentic versions of ourselves that people believe to be true. This similarity is the pinnacle of my research, and thus forms my concept for the self-portrait shoot.

Here comes the fun part of the research, planning the shoot! I wanted to be more creative with these self portraits, and to challenge myself, I invested in a cheap projector so I could project illusions onto a white backdrop. When I was in frame, I wanted to embody the idea of being trapped inside the illusion, or the fake identity, Gaga talks about in the song. For makeup, I chose a graphic eyeliner to match the graphic, black and white of the illusions. This was also my little nod towards the Pop Art genre, and I felt it mimicked the filters that we can apply on social media, so there are several layers for the viewer to dissect within the final images.

After a couple of hours of shooting and post-production, the final series was ready! I find that when you have a strong concept, the process is much quicker and easier.

Perfect Illusion, Self Portrait

Perfect Illusion, Self Portrait

I hope this gave you an insight into my research process, from the initial point of inspiration through to delving deeper into the thought-provoking elements of the concept; to the final touches that add little nuances to the images. Images containing several layers can sometimes be the most interesting, and it’s always fun to see how your audience will react and interpret what is in front of them!

You can view my self portrait project ‘Perfect Illusion’ in the projects page of my website. Alternatively, head over to my Instagram to view more images from the series, and behind the scenes footage on how I made them.