Hasselblad Open Studio 2012 Tokyo

Freudian Rear MirrorPsychology in Portraiture

My Hidden EgoMonica Silva

"Existence is actually an imperfect tense which never becomes the present"

Nietzsche.

"存在は、実際には不完全な形であるこれは現在のことになりません”ニーチェ

1 Opening session: LIFE ABOVE ALL project, The key as photographer to new discoveries

2Self-portrait in art and history

3 Psychology in self-portrait: Analizing a portrait to discover a new me

4 Freudian Rear Mirror; Psychology on photography: as therapy for disturbs

5 My Hidden ego and other aspects of portraiture

6 Moldelling the “soul matter”: Discovering new personalities and it’s secrets

7 Acting Out: You photographer reflected in the Universe

8 Authors biographies, and reading suggestions

9 Biography

Topics

Everybody is a reflection of you.The universe is a reflection of you. This includes supposedly opposites such as good and bad, conscious and unconscious and personality and male and female. It is important to understand these opposites in our personality and merge them, or we will be at continual war with ourselves and everyone else.

Life Above AllEvocations and inventions for a photo project.From the book The Anthology of Spoon River by E. Lee Masters

"All is vanity and a chasing after the wind"

Vanity runs fast within our thoughts as time goes by. Contemplating a skull is like remembering our weakness. We have always been opposed to the void left by the Vanitas, we reject our human condition, seeking a form of staying connected to the memory. Photography thus helps us live longer making the image of a person, immortal.

“...and God created man as his image and likeness”

"...a picture is often the photographer’ self-portrait, as he tends to project in the model his physiognomic features and his own inner world..."

“The Ego in the Mirror” by Stefano Ferrari

Lebrun 1790

Ingres 1804

Hobein 1542

Salvador Dalì 1954

Self portraiture in the history of art

Gustav CoulbertSelf-portrait, 1844

David Bailly Self portrait with Vanitas 1651

Dürer 1500

Albrecht Dürer Self-portrait 1493.This is among the earliest known formal self-portraits. He is dressed in Italian fashion, reflecting his international success.

The craze of Frida Kahlo for self-portraits

Photographer & PsychologistShoot, analize, discover yourself

Self-Portrait Theraphy

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman in the series "A Play of Selves" works (recalling Duchamp’s style) on the change of identity and on the analysis of the definitions of appearance usually dictated by the photographers. She appears only in her photographs, p laying wi th disguises, amatoriality and a research of oneself as different entities, referring to the fragility of me in front of the mechanisms of identification and social recognition. In 1975 with the series "Untitled ABCD" she works on her face as on canvas, using makeup and accessories to take on different connotations.

Cristina Nunes 22 years of self-portrait - Self-portrait experience

My life from 25 to 45 in self-portraits, which shows the evolution of my inner consciousness and growth. These pictures and texts reveal the way I've seen myself over the years and my inner struggle. My need to look at myself in pictures was instinctive, at the beginning I thought it was my own need of attention. Now I understand that I was actually p rac t i s ing my own k ind o f se l f - t he rapy. Photographing myself I felt free to express what I needed to say, I felt important (to myself), worthy of love and a wholesome life.

Peter J. Witikin

Joel Peter Witkin

B o r n i n B r o o k l y n September 13, 1939. The subjects of his work were o f t e n d i s m e m b e r e d corpses, transexuals, hermaphrodites and the deformed.

Helmut NewtonSelf-portrait with his wifeand model1981

Richard AvedonSelf-portrait 1980

Annie Leibovitz

Her work was both political and personal, and often played with the concepts of gender and sexuality. Cahun's work encompassed writing, photography, and theater. She is most remembered for her highly-staged self portraits and tableaux that incorporated the visual aesthetics of surrealism.

Her birth name Lucy SchwobClaude Cahun

"The awareness of yourself, abolishes any kind of subjection"

Freudian Rear Mirror

Richard Avedon “On Photography” bySusan Sontag

"... I often think that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune teller to find out what and how they are, that’s why they depend on me, I have to win them over, otherwise I have nothing to photograph, the concentration starts from me to involve them, sometimes its strength is so strong that you won’t hear a noise, time stops. We live a short, intense period of intimacy, but it is undeserved, has no past nor future, and when the shooting session is finished, when the photograph is done, nothing remains except, of course, photography. "

Francesca Woodman

Diane Arbus

"There’s always a difference between what we want and what we can not avoid from others to know about us; it’s the distance between intention and effect"

T h e A r b u s w a n t e d t o accommodate perhaps, in the negative, the invitation of G iovan P ie t ro Be l l o r i , seventeenth-century art theorist, who suggested the artists to "measure the nature of the intellect with the compass" in order to suppress the irregularities caused by the imperfections of matter.

Psychology in photographyThe camera and the“third eye”

Picassoby Richard Avedon

In the science of psychology the camera represents the extension of the psychic aparatus, in one of its main cognitive organs: The Eyes

Psychology in photographyWhen photography becomes the tool to the cure of a soul

Samuele BersaniSony Music

Paolo SorrentinoFilm Director

Matteo BecucciSony Music

NoemiSony Music

Frank Nuovo

James SallisWriter

Ansel AdamsA "great shot" is the one that "comunicates” all the emotions that the photographer feels for his subject ...

My Hidden Ego

Find an “ego” underneath, take your subject towards a new self

My Hidden Ego

My Hidden Ego projectAngela

My Hidden Ego projectFederico Brugia

My Hidden Ego project Marta Ilardo

My Hidden Ego projectIsmael Lo

My Hidden Ego projectParide Ursino

My Hidden Ego projectDavide Rossi

My Hidden Ego projectGianluca Macaluso

My Hidden Ego projectKim

My Hidden Ego projectNicoletta Mantovani

Wim Wenders says that every photographer shows his soul thru his “photography” (from prefacy of the book Stories of Peter Lindbergh,)

An ordinary looking object or body, if observed with real attention, they become something sacred. The camera may reveal the secrets that naked eye or mind can not see, everything disappears except what is on focus thru the lens. Photography is an exercise of observation and the result is a stroke of luck: the thousands of negatives that fill several drawers of my study are very few exceptional ones. The camera is a simple tool, even a fool can use it, the challenge is to make through it, that combination of truth and beauty called art. It’s particularly a spiritual search. I seek truth and beauty in a transparent autumn leaf, in the perfect shape of a snail on the beach, in the beautiful female back, in the texture of an old tree trunk and also in other forms of fleeting reality. Sometimes, while working on an image in my darkroom, i can clearly see the appearance of the soul of a person, the emotion of an event or the life essence of an object, by then my heart overflows with happiness and tears free down my face, I can not help it.

("Portrait in Sepia" by Isabel Allende)

On My Skin

On My SkinKharmaSutra

On My SkinSeta-Baricco

On My SkinMising You

On My SkinSexLigious

On My SkinL’objet du desir

On My SkinIl Vangelo di Luca

Portraits are about more than just capturing a face. They are about capturing a life. That's why they are such an invaluable aid to leave tracks of a person’s existence

Modelling the “soul matter”When photography becomes the tool to mutate the expressive form

Nicoletta Mantovani

Nicoletta Mantovani

"The camera is my sketchbook, the instrument of intuition and spontaneity. To photograph is to hold your breath when our faculties converge to capture fleeting reality, at which point the captured image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy. Photographing is recognizing at the same time and in a fraction of a second an event and the rigorous arrangement of forms perceived with the eyes that express and signify that event. You put on the same line of sight mind, eyes and heart. It is a way of life. (Henri Cartier-Bresson 2004) "

Acting OutFirst thing a photographer should do before shooting, is to exit himself to create a bond between his inner and outer world. He will be the one and only to decide when to freeze the situation he is living the moment, its his interpretation of reality, which is defined as an act of re-production and re-creation.

Cristiana CapotondiSette Corriere della Sera

Shannyn SossamonCorriere della Sera

Yelena IsinbaevaStyle Magazine

Samuele BersaniSony Music

Michael FassbenderCorriere della Sera

For those interested in exploring the topic covered in this workshop, I suggest to search on the work of Linda Berman and Judy Weiser, first to use "phototherapy" as a tool adjuvant to psychotherapy and the project "Photo-Unconscious" of Ayres Marques Pinto.

“On Fotografia” by Susan Sontag

“Beyond the Smile and The therapeutic Use of photography Albums” (1993) Linda Berman Ed. Erickson

“Ideas on photography” Marra Claudio ed. Mondadori“Photography therapy thru the images of Luigi Ghirri” A. D’Elia ed. Maltemi

“The exuberance of shadow-reflections on photography and psychology” (2008) Carlo Riggi ed. Le nuvole

“PhotoTherapy Techniques: Exploring the Secrets of Personal Snapshots and Family Albums” (1993) Judy Weiser PhotoTherapy Centre Press

"The Art of Inner Worlds" Portraits and Psychology edited by Christopher Chapman.

“Psychology in portrait, art and in literature” Stefano Ferrari ed. Laterza

“The Mirror of the Self. Self-portraiture and psychology by stefano ferrari Ed.Laterza

“Someone To Love” Cristina Nunes book of self portraits techniques.

“Some disoredered interior geometries” Francesca Woodman.

Judy Weiser website regarding the topic http://www.phototherapy-centre.com/

Self-portrait in art history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-portrait

All the images here reproduced are used with the only means of education and are copyright of the respective authors

Bibliography & Sites

Monica Silva was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She is based in Europe since 1986.

For 8 years she has worked with major film studios as first AD for international advertising campaigns with directors as Robert Richardson, Federico Brugia, Daniele Lucchetti, Zack Snyder.

In 2001 she joined professional photography, shooting many works in the music business with labels as Sony Music, EMI, BMG and Edel portraying Italian musicians for CD covers. Nowadays she does several editorial assignments, for italian magazines and newspapers: Max, Dove Viaggi Flair, Vanity Fair, Io Donna, Style, Magazine, Sette, Panorama Travel, I Viaggi del Sole, Corriere della Sera.

In 2008 Monica Silva becames Nikon Pro Photographer and shoot projects in collaboration with Nikon Italy and other Countries tourism board.

In 2009 she was assigned by the UNESCO ambassador Edith Tamagnini to carry out the photographic campaign for the book "Perpetual Freedom-San Marino World Heritage Site", published by Edizioni Minerva and sponsored by Cassa di Risparmio di San Marino (Savings Foundation of San Marino).

In 2010, she helds a serie of workshops for Nikon School and in 2011 starts working with two major names of professional photography: Hasselblad, Manfrotto, for lectures and workshops on the psychology of portrait.

Turning into arts

From these multiple experiences, Monica Silva feels the need to express herself more creatively and move on from corporate obligations. Thus set first steps into the world of art photography, shooting articulated projects such as "Life Above All" in 2008 (interpretation of the collection of poems entitled "The Anthology of Spoon River" by E. Lee Masters) in exhibition at Mazzoleni Art Gallery (Milan), Stefano Forni Art Gallery (Bologna) and Pomposa Art (Codigoro). Follow the the project On My Skin," a serie of nude shots for the event Art Fair 2010 (Bologna) in collaboration with Stefano Forni Gallery and Open Project.

In April of 2011 a new project comes to light: "My Hidden ego", a study project of the psychological aspects of the human soul. Simple set lighting for contemporary photos in order to highlight what is not shown of a person' self. The projections of interactive design is done by the designer Gianluca Macaluso from Deep. The exhibition was open to the public for two months and took place in the prestigious tuscany Palazzo Pichi Sforza (Sansepolcro AR) with the support of Mercurio Promozioni and Kemon.

In November 2012, Monica Silva was awarded Best Photograph of 54th The Biennale Art in Venice with the picture Dorfles infinito e lo sguardo a Ghirri . The award was conferred by the judges composed by President of la Biennale di Venezia Paolo Baratta, the curator of the 54th Art Exhibition Bice Curiger and the artist Shirana Shahbazi.

Recent works:

Manfrotto School of Xcellence, Bassano Photography: Workshop "My Hidden ego" and "Light there be Light!"

Hasselblad Workshops: "My Hidden ego" Portugal: Lisbon and Porto; "My Hidden ego" Monopoli (Bari)

Brazil; Reportage in Sao Paulo and Salvador Bahia to be published in the main italian magazines next two months Most recent publications:

"Gods", published by Skira. Portraits of the artist Gianluigi Colin and his works (Madre Museum, Naples)"Mitographs", published by Skira. Portraits of the artist Gianluigi Colin and his works (IVAM Museum, Valencia, Spain)

Mayonnaise of strawberries, Moreno Cedroni, Mondadori Publishing“The Voices of Books”, Ezio Raimondi, published by Ed. Il MulinoVictor Hasselblad Italy - Cover story on Monica Silva's works

Biography

More about Monica Silva on www.monicasilva.it