Front men

August 16, 2011

Hi there Kenny here. I’m posting a blog as it’s been ages. I’m currently working on a project called ‘Front Men’.
I was a front man in a band for years and it seems obvious that I should turn my camera on what I once was. It’s all to easy to take what you see on stage as the person but I know it is as much of an act as the tunes themselves. I want to seperate the men from the rest of the band and shoot them against a black backdrop, leaving them hanging in a dark void. It’s essential that they are not looking into the lens as I want them to be disconnected from the audience in total contrast to their usual enviroment.
I’ve found moments of vunerability and quietness in these intimate moments. It’s quite an in-your-face set up that I use, making it impossible not to be in the subjects face, which seems to help. It seems almost to intimidate the sitter into disconnection. The set up entails two lights – one is a soft box as a rim light and the other is gridded from above with a reflector pushing back up into the eyes. Here is a video of a couple of shoots:

Video shot by “Matt Martin”

Here are some other finished images.