Another memorable collabration in NYC, 

featuring Olga Kukharenko with

Hair and makeup by Laurie Hefner

We aimed for the Art Nouveau Style

R E D E F I N G  Beauty Portriats…

“to me, a portrait is that very doorway to this Inner Being/Entity that people call the Soul and maybe Spirit…” 

I had always loved Beauty… and my passion for portraiture had always been about revealing the soul beneath the eyes and facial expressions that housed millions of moments experienced and interfaced with others and life… 

My work as like many have been evolving and I have now integrated or incorporated more retouching into my portrait work… there are many reasons… 

Yes, there has been a rising opinion about beauty standards set by commercial/advertising/fashion worlds that many have expressed how they do not represent the authentic person (women) in most cases… and that photoshop shouldn’t be used to ‘re-present’ what is not ‘real’ … I agree… yet I also disagree in the sense that photoshop should be used… and here is my view to why I think this way…

What is ‘real’?   Firstly, many people think what you see is what is real… well, to an extent yes…

However, in say the case of people, person hood, I myself consider the very dimension and existence of a human spirit or soul that is more of a spiritual consciousness that animates each person, their essence, preferences, desires, likes/dislikes, hopes/fears, virtues and uniqueness… this very nature is not material (just the physical) but very much… energetic and difficult to quantify because its nature is organic, sometimes symbolic or for some conceptual.  So… when someone describes a person, that person is being described by their qualities, nature, not just how they look physically….

“to me, a portrait is that very doorway to this Inner Being/Entity that people call the Soul and maybe Spirit…” 

The qualities of Elegance, Dignity, Wonder, Wisdom,  Goodness, Purity, Love, Allure, Sensuality, Sexuality, Mystique, Gentlness, Tenacity, Vulnerablity, Authenticity, Virtue, Courage etc are to me the nature or qualities of the Soul and Spirit.

Many people have a limited understanding of what a photograph is… although to me the photograph is many things that can be paradoxical in nature, one of its basic function is to ‘record visually’ the subjects that are being photographed.  Yet, for those who have deeper understanding of photography, its nature first can be described as ‘taking a photograph’ and also ‘making a photograph’… the first is much more passive and the second much more active principle.  However, both of those process involve an internal decision making process for example…  scenario - a rare abino deer is now crossing the streets in downtown Manhattan, photographer with camera is identifying such a rare and perhaps surreal opportunity that is happening right in front of him and he snaps a snapshot in attempt to record the rare subject in his usual environment as a documented image… in here, the documented image has at least two elements of one the rare subject, and two, the environment that has to be the reference point to show why element one the abino deer is rare, because if the environment is not considered, (say just using a long telephoto lens with DOF blurring all backgrounds), one may think this is happening in the forest and not in downtown manhattan. So, the decision to include the environment as a contrasting reference to the main subject is a decision still based on the idea of wanting to record such a rare moment, which in a way, is still an expression. 

Second process of when making a photograph, one meticulously places a photographic subject (say a wedding couple) in the middle of a busy downtown manhattan street…  

(to be continued)