Recently a client of mine commissioned me to produce an image for them. They are doing an exhibition on the tragedies of life's past and one of my briefs was to produce an image of a Jewish person meeting their end during the holocaust.
A daunting brief being one of the the heaviest subjects known to mankind. this is the image i produced for the artist.
I am sorry to say that I saw precisely what Ole saw. Sorry, but to me there appears to be a perfectly healthy looking person with a lot of makeup pressing the face against glass. I suppose I would expect an emaciated figure... with less life left in the eyes.
This image does nothing for me, neither shock nor commiseration.
The only thing I find offensive is the title: "The Jew." It sounds like a slur. As if a person could not be anything else than a Jew. It's like titling a picture "The Black Man."
So if that picture had something to say about the theft of human dignity, it would be undercut by its own failure at escaping the very own racial pigeonholing it is trying to critique.
The model is the person who has commissioned me to produce the works.
I agree she does look too "healthy" however that is nothing once the retoucher does his work. Ole and others if your willing to give me some feed back on how you would have approached a brief where you had to simulate "a Jewish person being gassed in the holocaust period" as per my brief with a 50 dollar shooting budget, Ide love to hear some suggestions.
the fifty dollars doesn't include my shooting fee, the lab fees etc. just the material fee.... film and makeup etc. no one would shoot this for 50 bucks but really suggestions on how I could have better approached this brief on 50 bucks? ide really appreciate the feedback because if i am able to supply my clients with a higher level of work then i will always aim to do so.
Skinny model (easy to find female skinny ones), curled up in a ball in a corner of a dark room, B&W. That's how I would do it. I'd do more fear, more vulnerablity.
I actually thought this was a self portrait of you the first time I saw it. What's with the face at the very top of the image? And the shadow over the shoulder?
John's suggestion is excellent; foremost know the material that establishes this context. I'm sure all of us can recall specific images that made us truly recoil in revulsion.
It might be asking too much to expect someone to "act out" a scene to try to invoke all the emotional power of the real images we've all seen.
Your artist has to be very strongly moved in her thoughts for this to work.
Heather's approach also sounds like more of what I would imagine- I imagine a dreadful feeling of confinement, real horror, a sense of inevitable doom, all set against plain, unadorned humanity.
It is definitely worth more thought. You are very brave to tackle this, it probably couldn't be any harder a task.