SHADOWLAND
Photographing shadows for the paper ballet was everything I was hoping it would be: elusive, fleeting, mysterious, transparent, a subconscious perspective. I started by thinking about what shadows I wanted my dancers to have and how their recognizable shapes would relate to and effect the relationships between their images, the background and when seen in a pair, to the other dancer.
As I have been creating this series, I have continually been aware of and tried to create tension between the dancers while at the same time incorporating the graphic and natural elements of the sets. Now with this last layer, I am hoping to complete the narrative with these shadows.
Although completely independent from both the dancer or the background, I wanted to create a third element that would connect the other two elements together subconsciously. To represent the unfocused awareness and inner knowledge of the dancers visually, I decided to employ shadow to represent a deeper expression hidden in the gestures of the dancers. The shadow is the key that unlocks the relationship between the dancers and their environment.
We all have inherent responses to common shapes, so I began to explore them and list those that I thought would help create that connection to the underlying subconscious narrative I was trying to build. I began to explore shapes that represented flight, mechanical toys and childhood memories.
I started playing around with items that represented transportation as a means of expressing movement. Planes, cars, boats, bicycles, trains, birds - anything that moved. I began to explore and ruminate on what their physical features would look like and how they would be interpreted as the dancers shadow.
Inspiration came from watching Murnau's "Nosferatu", "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and a multitude of Vincent Price movies. I wasn't particularly looking for scary shadow imagery but I knew these movies contained a plethora of shadow play in their narrative and it certainly influenced the tenor of the final objects.
By extracting objects out of their normal environment and placing them into an entirely different context, the shadows I believe, now embody the unconscious state of the dancers. Hopefully one that becomes a subtle and underlying accent to the drama unfolding on stage.
The subliminal visual stimuli of the shadows that I am aiming to place beneath the threshold of conscious perception, is one that I have explored throughout this project. I hope they induce an emotional response that is undetectable but at the same time fulfills the objective of tying the pieces together.
It was important that the shapes would be easily recognizable once projected. As I set up my make shift photo studio in my living room, I started by shooting the figures from 3-4 feet away from the backdrop. I quickly figured out that I needed to lay the structures on the set itself to create a more defined shadow.
Distortion was important to think about as well. How does a shadow appear stretching from the ground to the wall? Did I want it to be at direct angels or graduated? I ended up with several scenarios for each shadow that I could select from once I sit down to put the final pieces together in the computer.
Depth perception is another subject that Rudolf Arnheim, the avant guard Bauhaus contemporary psychologist that I had mentioned in Part 1 discusses in his book "Art and Visual Perception". It was in the back of my mind as I was balancing all the various elements in my mind. Proportion will play a large roll when considering the sizes of the shadows in the final layout.
As I began to draw the shapes in white chalk on thick black hard board, I began to wonder how old shadow puppetry was. It wasn't a far leap to imagine ancient cavemen using their hands against the fire light to tell a story. I was about half way through creating the various shapes when I finally sat down and did more research on its history. I was delighted to see the many way in which people had created their shadow puppets and realized it has been a tradition throughout the world dating back as far as 960 AD in China.
Shooting the last element for my paper ballet is now complete. Now I will begin to put all the pieces together and fine tune their placement within the frame on the computer. It has been a labor of love and a real treat to be able to take a full year to complete this project.
The shadow knows....
Julie Pavlowski Green
December 14, 2014
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