Research: Ashvini Ray

http://cargocollective.com/ashviniray/The-Untitled-Series

https://www.behance.net/gallery/4310227/The-Untitled-Series

Ashvini Ray was born in Sydney, Australia in 1990 and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture, Performance and Installation at Sydney University in 2011. She has created a number of photographic series including The Untitled Series 2010, Amorphous 2011, Ordered Disorder 2013 and Embryology 2014. She now lives and works in Berlin in Germany.

In her images The Untitled Series 2010, Ray has taken close up images of structural elements of the human form. Her black and white images have an abstract quality, and in many of them it is not immediately obvious which part of the body she is focusing on or even that it is a person’s skin that she has captured.  Using her unusual perspectives to disguise her objects she allows viewers to focus on the tactile elements of her images. Such as the soft round textures and the taut sculptured forms and by presenting her images in black and white she enables the viewers to focus more on these elements by removing the distraction of colour.

Her close-up images capture the beauty and detail in how we are made and this makes the viewer take the time to think about something that we often overlook as it is omnipresent and is often disregarded by our minds. She facilitates us to feel the physical landscape of our skin and body. Her images capture the beauty and intricate patterns and tactile aspects of our skin and stimulate our physical perception of it. By intently focusing on our skin and bodies as a physical art form to be admired and studied this stimulates our senses of how our body and particularly our skin feels to the touch and to look at. Her images capture various perspectives of ourselves and highlight that this is what we are essentially made of. In doing this she makes us contemplate about the different sensations and textures of our skin and how this can vary and be adapted and so takes us on a sensory experience with our own skin.

In this image Ray has captured a close up of a person’s left ear. The black and white image has been closely cropped to focus attention on the structural parts of the centre of the ear. It captures the soft curves of cartilage that give the ear its form and how they encircle the hole at the centre to allow the sound to be channelled towards it. Also how the smooth surface is covered in small dowdy hairs. The high detail and the three dimensional feel of the image make you feel as though you could reach out and touch the ear and feel the softness of the tiny hairs with your finger.   

This image is of the centre of a person’s palm. It captures the base and lower part of the digits of several of their fingers and their thumb. I find that the most interesting part of this image is the pattern and texture of the skin that is captured. The skin is completely covered with delicate swirling finger print lines and then on top of this there are numerous intersecting criss-crossed lines created from the folding of the skin.  Also the way the palm is being held with the thumb slightly raised allows the light to create high-lit and shaded areas that help accentuate the three dimensional quality of the image. This allows viewers to not only visually see the palm in close detail but also feel though they could touch it too.
                                                                                                                                                                                                            

The folded texture of the skin on this body part which I think is the sole of a foot creates interest in this image. Also the difficulty in identifying the body part also adds intrigue to it. The undulating appearance of the skin creating a rippling effect across the entire length of the skin shown and makes you feel as though you could just reach out a finger and feel the rise and falls of the peaks and troughs of skin. Also the large swirls of finger print patterns that cover the skin on the base of the foot make the image more realistic and alive and make it more personal and individual. These patterns draw attention to the fact that this is a natural material that is living and is part of us and enables us to feel the wonder and beauty in such a flexible detailed surface.

This is a close up of the skin around the collar bone just under the chin. The image captures the taut elastic texture of the skin as it is stretches over the slightly protruding collar bones of the chest. This gives the skin a smooth silky texture and feel and the visible veins traveling up through the neck to the head makes the skin feel alive and healthy. You could almost feel the chest rising and falling with each breathe the person takes.  The excellent use of lighting used to create the high-lit and shaded areas add depth and mood to the image leaving you with the impression that you could feel the smoothness of the skin if you stretched out your hand towards it.  

This image looks as though it is a close up of the centre of the back of a hand. The skin has a number of large veins under the skin creating meandering lines across it where the skin is slightly raised. Also across the centre of the image a line from the central bone running towards the middle finger can be seen. On closer inspection the hand is probably from a slightly older person as the skin is not that taut and is covered in small lines which create tiny triangle shapes over much of the skin. It is hard to believe that such detail could be seen from just looking at the back of your hand, and that considering most people look at their hands many times a day as they perform tasks then there is a lot of detail that we are missing. Or that the mind is just routinely dismissing it as it has seen it before.

Ashvini Ray’s images have a tactile quality that captures the beauty and art of our own skin. She has skilfully used unusual perspectives and cropping of close up images of peoples skin and bodies to immerse her audience in the physical aspects of the intricate and varied patterns and landscape of the body’s surface. Her images capture the diverse variety of textures in this surface showing areas that are smooth and taut, gently rippled or intricately covered in crisscross lines. Her images convey how our skin feels and makes us realise how little time we have spent thinking about the beauty in the surface that has always been there surrounding and protecting us.

Influence and Summary

I have taken inspiration from Ray's images and the conceptual approach she has taken to capturing a tactile quality in her images. By focusing so intently on the skin and by using close cropping she captures the physical details such as the different patterns and textures and form of our bodies and skin. In this way you feel as though you could reach out and touch the image in front of you and feel and touch what you are visually seeing. Her images have inspired me to take close up cropped images that focus on the tactile nature of dog's fur as it comes into contact with a persons hand as they experience the sensation of its soft smooth feel.


The image I have taken below shows the fingers of my hand stroking the soft fur on my dogs back. My fingers are burrowed into his fur and individual hair strands can be seen standing up and protruding at various angles. This adds to the perception of the 3D feel of the fur. Also by taking the image in close up and by using close cropping I have intensified and focusing on the tactile qualities in the image. In this way the viewer will feel as though they could imagine it is  their hand in the image and perceive what the softness of the dogs fur as their finger tips flows over and into it. Feeling the softness of an animals fur is something that most people will have experience of and so be able to recall the sensations they felt from it. This image by having an anonymous hand will aid them in imagining their own experience of this and the close up should intensity this. Also the way I have captured the 3 D feel of the fur by having some strands displaced from their normal smooth position by the fingers will help create the perception of the thousand of soft hair strands brushing gently over your fingers. For this image I ensured that I had good quality natural lighting so that the hand and the dog's fur looked realistic and 3 D in the image.