Rada McNally-Marchenkov

Being on the Creative Direction course and always having a love for photography, I was very determined to strengthen my knowledge and my skills with the opportunity of joining the Portrait Photography course. Throughout my artistry, ‘people’ were a consistent theme in my work, specifically in the black community, as being of Russian/Jamaican descent, I have always wanted to explore my heritage and cultures. Thus, taking on Portrait Photography was the perfect way to continue my practice with the bonus of refining it.  

 From the first lesson, I was introduced to an array of diverse portrait photographers, who used portraiture to showcase their lives, tell a story or make a commentary on their culture or life situations.  I gained inspiration from a few of them, noting down ideas for my own work, like using self-portraits to tell a story of my heritage and focusing a lot more on styling.  

Halfway through the project, I became concerned with the current events that have occurred, and was questioning how I would be able to continue producing work, with the limitations that were at hand. We were set the task of creating a portrait in isolation, preferably looking at the theme of family, which I found to be a challenge as I have not been staying with my family during this time and it was quite a touchy subject for the time. I have been living in a house that is part of a semi-private area, with a big garden in the middle, and have recently been observing all the different characters that have been my neighbors for months and who I have never noticed. On sunny days people would be doing exercise in the garden, families would come out to play and some people would just come out to sunbathe (all one at a time). I was intrigued by this system that was created due to lockdown; if you get to the garden first it’s yours till you leave. I wanted to figure out a way to capture my neighbors each spending their own time in the garden but was struggling to find a way to do this discreetly but still with a good quality. So, I decided to scrap the idea.  

Being in lockdown, made me very appreciative of the times where I would go outside and be at one with nature, so I wanted to showcase this element within my photography, yet still alluding to the idea of being in isolation. So, I decided to do a series of self-portraits, using a mirror in the middle garden, reminiscent of mirror selfies but doing it outside instead of indoors. The mirror was supposed to represent the element of being at home, despite being outside and also a symbol of not fully being able to go outside due to lockdown. I also styled myself using a dress I made from an old vest top, during lockdown, as I wanted to use more sustainable styling as I have said I would use this after the Better Lives themes we were given. Overall, I felt as though the photos were quite successful considering the difficulty of our current situation and gave me more ideas as to how I could use what I have available to me to create work.  

I have always admired the idea that a photograph is individual to the photographer, and how the same subject could be captured differently due to our personal aesthetics. Our backgrounds, culture and identity play a big part on how we view the world and is what differentiates our work from one another, which is what drew me to choose Portrait Photography.  

Throughout my personal practice I was mainly interested in capturing people and their individual identities, thus when we were presented with the Better Lives themes, I was instantly drawn to the themes of Diversity. Being a person of color, this is a theme that I am passionate about and wanted to explore a lot throughout my work in Portrait Photography. However, Social responsibility and Sustainability are topics that I have never thought about in previous work and is something that would change how I approach my work in the future. 

From the first Portrait Photography Lecture, we were already discussing the theme of diversity and social responsibility, looking at the work of diverse photographers and the message they try to portray through their portraits. I was particularly interested in the work of Nikki S Lee, a Korean Self Portrait Photographer, who embeds herself in her surroundings by taking on different identities to fit into her environment. She is an example of someone who heavily explores the theme of Diversity as she embodies different social groups in the world, from Korean schoolgirl’s, to seniors to black and Hispanic communities. However, as much as it is interesting to see the representation of all these groups, I was concerned with her use of Blackface/ Brownface in her Hip-Hop and Hispanic projects. This is one of the issues that can occur within the exploration of diversity; without proper research it is easy to step into cultural appropriation or cultural insensitivity, which is something that I always try to avoid in my work.   

I think that the concept of social responsibility became more relevant to me once the whole world fell into a lockdown. Social responsibility has never been more apparent, by having people stay at home to prevent the risk of someone else’s health and safety. I have observed a small divide between those who are taking the pandemic seriously and those who still try to “live their life” by travelling and meeting up with friends, which gave me the realization that there will always be someone who doesn’t care, no matter how serious the situation is. As an artist, I was thinking about the social responsibility that artists have in our current times. As content creators should we be using this time to focus on getting more of our work out there, to distract people from the dullness of lockdown? Or will people consider this selfish and insensitive? Personally, seeing artists releasing new content is what is keeping me going right now. Especially work that is completely unrelated to quarantine.  

Similarly, the theme of sustainability is something that is going to change my work in the future. Along with the pandemic came this time of the D.I.Y, where people are using what they have around them to create, minimizing our product consumption. Over the last few week’s, I have developed a massive interest in making my own clothes out of my old ones and have considered doing this for future work where styling will be involved. Overall, social responsibility and sustainability is something that I will implement more of in my future work, as I think naturally a lot of people will after this pandemic is over.  

Kim, E., 2016. Nikki S. Lee’s “Projects”—And The Ongoing Circulation Of Blackface, Brownface In “Art”. [online] contemptorary. Available at: <https://contemptorary.org/nikki-s-lees-projects-and-the-ongoing-circulation-of-blackface-brownface-in-art/> [Accessed 1 May 2020]. 

Payne, K., 2020. 19/20 Better Lives SMC › Log In. [online] 1920betterlivessmc.myblog.arts.ac.uk. Available at: <https://1920betterlivessmc.myblog.arts.ac.uk/author/19033085/> [Accessed 1 May 2020]. 

The concept of Representation has been a circulating theme in the media, that many are still pushing and fighting for, in order to break the cycle of false ideas and divide between people. The ‘Lack of ‘ and  misrepresentation in the past, is something that has affected many of our subconscious perceptions regarding race within society today, and is something that is progressing over time but is still slow to fully change.

As a person of mixed Russian/ Carribean heritage, growing up in Russia ( a predominantly white country) has definitely affected my perceptions of beauty, as I was not exposed to seeing almost any women in the media who looked like me. It has taken years of confusion, self hatred, exploration and education for me to accept myself as a person of colour, and even so mainly because of the increase in representation that I witnessed during my later teenage years. Being personally affected by the increase in representation of people of colour made me realise the importance of it and is something that I am very passionate about and will explore more in future work, as I believe there is still much that hasn’t been explored.  

In Teleica Kirkland’s lecture on representation, she spoke a lot about how “Black entertainment and culture’’ has become a trend, which despite what one many think would be something completely positive, it can become a negative, due to the misrepresentation and misunderstanding of black culture. She linked this to the emerging topic of conversation that is Cultural appropriation, and how “ It’s about power and privilege”, as some take ideas, with no acknowledgement or engagement with the cultures they are taking ideas from, and claim it as their own. This is a topic that I myself have delved into in previous work, addressing “ Blackfishing”, where a person of european descent presents themselves as being black. However, rather than focusing on the negatives of the continuation of culture appropriation, Kirkland turned the attention towards Cultural Appreciation and how brands and designers can still take influence from other cultures if they do the right research and acknowledge the culture they are taking influence from. She gave a great example of this, Wafrica, which is a collaboration between an African designer and Japanese culture which created a series of work that is collaborative and has been created through an immense amount of research and immersion into the culture. 

I was particularly intrigued when Teleica highlighted how representation is different from inclusion and that even though we are seeing a lot more representation of POC on the outside, there is still a great lack of inclusion in work behind the scenes, which also affects the authenticity of the narratives that brands try to embody. Thus when thinking about how to create ‘better lives’ when we consider representation, I believe that the focus on inclusion behind the scenes is primary, as through that there will be a lot more accurate representation in the media and a lot less misrepresentation or room for cultural appropriation. After this lecture, I was inspired to collaborate with more people of colour when producing my work and not only using them as my subject matter and think it will make my work even more authentic and interesting in the future.