Alison Jackson and the Girl’s Night In.
As part of my history assessment last year we had to do homages to significant artists, in the portfolio section is my tribute to Jeff Brouws, and one of the artists I choose was Alison Jackson. Jackson is a photographer well known for her satirical takes on celebrity and the culture surrounding it, most specifically the British Royal Family, often in a very voyeuristic or ‘peeking through the window’ style which is a tongue in cheek use of showing us that these people are often just like us… often in not the most wholesome ways.
Jackson’s original claim to fame was her photoshopping Princess Diana giving the finger the camera, a response to the media’s fawning over Diana after her tragic death even though the british press had spent years demonising her and can be see as culpable for her death. Jackson’s style often involves find look-a-likes and doubles for famous people and creating images of them either doing normal everyday things (e.g. Queen Elizabeth on the toilet) or commenting on the sensationalism surrounding (i.e. Marilyn and JFK with their secret love child).
Jackson’s work is so well crafted that it often becomes mistaken as real images of the subjects she’s referring to and has been used to sources for even reputable news sites, which in turn as given her even status that she actually as worked with real life celebrities like Elton John, and has even directed a music video for rock stars Duran Duran which stars both the original members and doubles that look straight out of the 80’s.
Girls Night In
This leads me to the above image. Part of the brief was about replicating what the photographer was saying with their images but not directly copying their aesthetic. So my take on this was leaning into the idea of what we don’t see of the ‘celebrity' life’ and transfer it to a different genre, specifically Super Heroes and Super Villains. I liked the concept of seeing what two villains would be doing in their downtime, so I chose what are possibly the two most wholesome villains and a fan favourite regarding the shipping of such, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy.
To visually differentiate myself and Jackson I chose to not shoot this in a voyeuristic style with natural colours, leaning in towards a deliberately crafted lighting and aesthetic, which also seemed appropriate for such over the top characters. It was also helped by the fact that being part of the Cosplay community for many years I was able to ask some friends to be a part of this shoot and didn’t mean I had to source models and costumes and could be achieved on practically zero budget.
Major shout out to Danna (Harley) and Amber (Ivy).
The shoot took approximately two hours with half the time dedicated to set up and pack down, and most of the time it was just getting the models to have a bit of fun and shoot numerous images with input from them both.
Outtake
For a little bit of fun here’s an outtake as I was setting up the lighting and setting on the camera whilst Amber was deciding on her wig whilst her partner Chris looked on. These are often the moments that make these shoots fun despite unfortunately not being able to be used in the final shoot, at least they can have a place here in a blog so we can share in the lunacy.
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