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 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.
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.
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