SPUN NO. 2 — Lelaina BRANDT

This series of digitally manipulated portraits, entitled Spun No. 2, is an exploration of the boundaries of identity and representation. I have always been fascinated by in-between spaces, especially in regards to depictions of people. How far can I push the abstraction, and who or what is still there when features are altered, obscured, or removed completely?

The working process for each of these portraits always begins with one to five photographs of someone I do not know personally. The people in these photos are sometimes famous (or infamous), and sometimes randomly anonymous people from found photos on the internet. I then layer the image (or images) several times in Photoshop and begin processing the layers with numerous blends and filters until the portrait has a certain shimmery, glowing quality. Many of the images are still recognizable as portraits, but others begin to shift in focus toward abstract shapes, edges, lines, and gradients.