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Photography Culture

The Curious Inspiration Behind Unmasked: Demiurges

Chris Gampat
No Comments
07/09/2015
3 Mins read

Last Updated on 07/09/2015 by Chris Gampat

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All images by Bartholot and Serial Cut. Used with permission.

In the professional world, it’s not uncommon for photographers to collaborate with other artists in order to create products or satisfy what a client wants. So Bartholot and Serial Cut worked together to produce a series of portraits for the OFFF art festival. Serial Cut has quite the client list ranging from Absolut, Adobe, AT&T, BlackBerry, Burger King, all the way to Volkswagen.

Run by Sergio del Puerto, he tells us about how the idea for Unmasked: Demiurges came about.

 

Phoblographer: How did you guys get into photography?

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Sergio: The SC style has always been photographic, aside we sometimes use CGI in some of our artwork. The final works always have this defined, sleek, crisp look. Bartholot has a background in the History of Art and Graphic Design, but he wasn’t really happy with it. Then he had the opportunity to play with photography as an assistant. It took him a little while to start shooting for himself, but when he finally start playing with it, it really made him happy and starting working in more and more projects and build his own style.

Phoblographer: Where did the idea and inspiration for this project come from?

Sergio: Spanish design studio Vasava approached us asking for 12 portraits to be published in an art book celebrating the 15th anniversary of the OFFF festival. They asked for anonymous demiurges representing some of the most influential contemporary designers that have been assisting to OFFF festival over the curse of time. So we came up with the idea of going back to the roots and putting tights on the model’s faces and cover their bodies with some interesting drapings. So actually we were inspired by ourselves.

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Phoblographer: Every photographer tries to say something in their images in order to creatively express themselves. What are you guys saying in these images?

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Sergio: Our main interest was to express a dark and esoteric atmosphere without being too serious. The acting and the yellow everyday life objects help to get that ironic feeling. They would be too dramatic without these props. Is part of the SC style: a mix of something iconic, pop and surrealistic.

Phoblographer: Why was there so much matching involved with the skies and the outfits? Why the color contrasts?

Sergio: In order to achieve a certain “religious“ aesthetic it was very helpful to use this special colour pallette as well as to involve a lot of colour matching. The random yellow contrasting objects were necessary to break the atmosphere and to add an ironic and fun element in the series. Bartholot also shot the skies in the south of Germany, so the contrast work really well as a typical paint backgrounds from XIX century paintings.

Phoblographer: How did you explain these concepts to the models? Was there storyboarding involved?

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Sergio: Before the shooting we were preparing elaborate sketches for each portrait to help. However, when shooting we had to move the models like dolls as they were almost blind and pretty focused on not fainting for the lack of air. We always work with some basic sketches, that helps so much during the process.

Phoblographer: Why were the specific objects in the scenes picked?

Sergio: Each character needed an identity through these objects. At the moment of making these portraits, we didn’t know the designer names related with each one. By adding these generic objects, any name would work perfectly with any name.

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Bartholot festival art OFFF Photography Serial Cut Unmasked: Demiurges
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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