I got on the other side of the camera again with one of my favorite people, @ahna.greener, to pose for these images taken by the very talented @jonnycreative. This was a quick impromptu set we did while waiting for our real model to arrive.
If these images don’t say Caravaggio, I don’t know what does. There’s the Chiaroscuro, of course. (Chiaroscuro is Italian for “come to the dark side.”) I love that look. It’s very dramatic and with the strong directional light the bodies look almost sculptural.
There’s a real physicality in Caravaggio’s work. You can feel the weight and tension. The subjects aren’t posed to look beautiful in the classical sense, but to tell a story physically. Compare Michelangelo’s Last Supper for example to Caravaggio’s depiction of Jesus having Supper at Emmaus.
Jonny suggested we do the Pieta – the virgin Mary holding Jesus’ body after being taken down from the cross. These images especially, with my head cradled, capture that feeling. I’ve used that motif a number of times in the past in my own photography and I’m now curious to dig those images up and look at them again.
The red divan hints at a Caravaggio as well. You look at his paintings and the colors are usually muted with some splash of color, usually red, as an accent. I think having a stronger light on the back of the divan to bring out that red would have been one way to take these up one more level. And you’ll see that Jonny did this in the first couple images and the last few. He did some solo shots with Ahna after we finished this set with light accenting the red and they looked gorgeous.
Overall, these feel like a modern riff on Carivaggio rather than an imitation. I’d say they’re cleaner and look more contemporary.
If it’s not obvious, I love these images. And it’s great to be able to work with talented creative human beings that love making art as much as I do.
