Bruno Metra & Lawrence Jeanson (duo)

Bruno Metra and Lawrence Jeanson are a photography duo who were fascinated with the idea that the media bombard society with images of others, usually people who are inaccessible to us, these images are imposed on us and they make us feel powerless to escape. The idea behind the ID projects that Metra and Jeanson worked on was to reflect the notion of identity; they invited each of their models to play a part in an experiment which involved them selecting and cutting out the face of another and placing the appropriate parts on their own faces. The faces, when transformed like this become a photographic art form that makes the audience take a hard look at their own individual identity. Each model in turn, defaces the other and then defaces himself/herself and this is an example of each person becoming the other by destroying their model. This is like a physical representation of how fragile our identities are as people, the identity of each person becomes visible or even tangible and they have become a blend over the process. In the modern society, the act of representation has taken over in the scale of importance and the edit is often more important than the original photograph to most people. 

I chose to study this ID Concept by Bruno Metra and Lawrence Jeanson due to the fact that part of my theme covers how the beauty industry encourages us to use makeup to change and transform our identities however I believe that this 'transformation' is just exploiting a false idea of who we think we are or SHOULD BE.

 I chose this photograph by Metra and Jeanson which follows their "ID Concept"  in order to show just how much people would change themselves if they had the chance, this woman chose an eye colour completely the opposite from her own.

 I chose this photograph because I find it very interesting how the model in this photograph has chosen a females feature rather than a males and also someone with the opposite skin tone and hair colour to him.

 I chose this photograph by Metra and Jeanson in order to show how some of the models tried to match all aspects of their faces rather than chopping and changing certain ones.

I chose this photograph to study in order to show how some of the models decided to match areas of their face while making sure other parts were entirely different.

How I was Influenced...

I was influenced by Bruno Metra and Lawrence Jeanson because of their sincerity to the topic of identity. I love the surrealist nature of their photography despite the fact it couldn't get more real in context, the unreal nature and aesthetic of the photographs makes it hard to picture that these are normal people exhibiting a physical example of how society force us to conform to the standards that they set. An example of something society should fight in the eyes of what they have imposed on us is this idea that there is a 'perfect' look for example an advert for a protein company in London recently asked Londoners if they were "beach body ready" next to an image of a thin girl however society fought back and women and men of all shapes and sizes declared that everyone is beach body ready no matter who you are or what you look like. This is a message similar to what Metra and Jeanson are trying to promote by saying that by making yourself look like someone else will not fix the flaws that you yourself see when you look in the mirror.

Since studying Metra and Jeanson I feel inspired to focus a lot more on bare faced models rather than models with pre-done makeup, I have an exciting idea which focuses on the transformation from beginning to end.