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Jesse DrAXLER

Jesse Drexler is a mixed media and multidisciplinary artist, his pieces feature a wide combination of not only photography, but also paintings, collage, typography and digital painting. Drexler grew up in a rural town in Wisconsin, when he was two years old he discovered that he was colour blind, being red-blue deficient which was what most probably made him move his colour pallete to a monochromatic grey scale. He continued on to study at the College of visual arts in St Paul Minnesota, his thesis was on the commodification of subculture through the lens of punk rock. 

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Initially, the most prevalent emotion that is evoked from Jesse Drexler's work is a sense of solemn mourning, or else it could also be some sort of thoughtless atmosphere, however it could also be this exact confusion that Jesse might be trying to evoke with his work, which would add an entire new depth to his work in my eyes.  This feeling is exemplified through the artists use of noise, texture and collage in order to make bewildering images and this is further emphasised through the composition that he creates.

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Within Jesse Draxler's work, the most prominent characteristic of his work is his inclusion of distorted the human form. performed primarily within the greyscale. Drexler has accomplished this in many differing ways and incorporated many different techniques. Some examples of this are the way in which he has created forms of humans, creating a layer mask in order to only expose the image which fits the frame he creates, Additionally, he has also made it so that he has taken several images of the same face from different angles, and then fitting them all into one original photograph, and he also goes onto use different media such as what I can only assume to be either some form of paint or other slimy substance that he has bought. His insistence to create work only within the greyscale makes it so that they appear to be more professional that should they have been in full colour, as it would be much to similar to modern day photography, and I believe it only exemplifies the photographs surreal nature, which is also brought about by the obvious intricacy and abundance of different lines, shapes and forms.

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It seems as though, within this work, Drexler has used a faster shutter speed and lower aperture as his subject appears to be in full clarity and there is no evidence of there being any background that would have been in any sort of detail, however there is possibility that he made use of a slower ISO in order to create the grainy texture that is visible in some of his work. Most of his work is leaning further towards the overexposed rather than underexposed, which might seem unnatural due to his colour scheme however this does not make it so that his pieces are unsuccessful, it might have even made it so that they stand out more than they otherwise would have. He has also made it so that whilst he can sometimes have an abundance of negative space, the way in which the work has a very complicated composition, or his manipulation of different shades makes it so that it does not become immediately obvious. 

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Jesse Draxler's deformation of the human form, hiding and morphing what could be said to be the most important feature of ones physical identity, their face, makes it so that the work he presents has a new sort of meaning because despite this they are still recognisable as human beings, which could be a message that he is trying to portray through his work cliche as it might be. I find this work to be strangely comforting despite its confusing nature, I also find it greatly intriguing because of the use of mixed media which makes Draxlers work much more successful.

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With this photoshoot plan, I aim to ensure that I am prepared for my photoshoot so that it will require less experimentation to achieve my desired results. And so some examples of how I have done this is through my choice of almost exclusively taking images in the portraite orientation, and taking images at around midday so that the lighting would be best for what i hope to achieve. In saying this I will still most probably encounter some issues with the modelling, and with who will be taking the images. Because of who I would  want for my photoshoots, in the end it may be necessary that I model for my own images, and so there will be an issue as to who will be taking the images since I cannot take them for myself. It is most probable that this will end up being my mother, which will mean that the photoshoot will end up being harder as I will be having to constantly be checking the quality of the images that she has taken.

My photoshoot was successful because of how closely I worked in combination with my initial ideas in order to make the photoshoot easier to perform. I ensured that the lighting would be the best for my work, in waiting until the better day and time to create my photographs. In addition to this whilst I did not solely use portrait orientation, switching to landscape on multiple occasions as I wanted to experiment. The crosses represent my least successful images, which were mainly due to the way in which I did not like the angle or the position that I was in, making it so that the photograph did not achieve what I wanted.  Furthermore they may also include the worst lighting due to clouds hiding the sun at certain times.  The images that I have circled on the contrary are those which are most successful, as they have achieved what the others have not, including the best lighting and form.

First developments

I made these images by taking my most successful images from my first photoshoot, which would also be most usable for my next developments which will use these edited images. The reason that they seem so bland is also because if this, as if you look at the artists work you would notice that there is a variety of textures on both the face and the background, however I cannot implement this until I have made them into the edited images, with may angles or faces on top of one face. So this is why I devoted  my first developments to be untextured and only manipulated the contrast and hue and saturation, so that I can add textures after I have produced some finalised images.

Highlighting Success

These are my most successful images from my first attempts at creating development suitable fot the work that will come later. The reason I believe these are the best edits is because they have the composition best fit for my further developments, the contrast, levels and hue saturation fits the work at the greatest level. However they are certainly not perfect, and this is most evident from how some portions of these images are either too dark or too light. Furthermore, because of how they are all quite large, I will have to edit some of them to make them smaller before I print them off so that I am able to achieve what I will later be attempting.

Second photoshoot

For this photoshoot, what I tried to differ from my last one as not only the angles, but also the clothes I wore, my expressions and my use of hands in order to see what results this would yield. What I ended up with was quite a few images which I believe would be able to work well once I print them of to create mixed media work.

Edits

These are the edits that I made from my second photoshoot. For these I did much the same thing that I did with my first edits however with these I experimented more with brightness and contrast to try and see which different setting I believed would be best suited to the work that I will later produce. In turning them black and white, not only to they hold more semblance to the artists work but it it also interesting in that it enables for a clearer view of the contrast between the mid-tones and the highlights as well as the shadows, making the image much more striking than it otherwise would have been.

Highlighting Success
 

These are my most successful edits, this being because these images have the better contrast and brightness level to compliment them in comparison to other photographs. However other than this fact they do not differ much from my other pieces which is why I believe another reason i believe these are so much more successful than the rest is simply because I find that the base photographs are better than the others which of course would lead to me enjoying them more since the edits at this point in time are so simple.

Second 

Developments

Because of the variety found within Jesse Draxlers work and the multitude of different style of images he creates, I decided that instead of devoting my second developments to one particular style, it would be better if I tried to almost replicate many different types of the works that he has created. Some such as the first row are visibly muchg easier than the ones on the third, but I do not think that this detracts from the pieces at all, instead i believe that the multitude of different edits makes it so that they would all look successful in either their complexity or their simplicity.

Highlighting success.

These are what I believe to be my most successful images. I believe hese to be my most successful because out of each of the ones that I have created, I believe these three are those which are most similar in style to art that Jesse Draxler may have produced himself, not because they were the ones which required the most effort, but because they are the ones which follow similar rules to those which he does. None of thee images obey the rule of thirds, nor are they perfectly symetrical, but they do distort the human figure, either in masking different aspects or in showing a persons many faces, but not their actual one, which is what makes these sosimilar to this artists work in my eye and thus my most successful developments.

Physical 
  Developments

For these physical developments I printed of some of the initial edits that I made and I continued onto paint over them in different ways, using stencils and different types of brushes in order to try to create different effects all the while staying within the grey spectrum. The visibility of the different brush strokes, although they may seem crude to others, I believe makes the pieces more charming and more successful, especially when considering the artists own work, and the essence of trying to hide ones identity, which seems almost as rude as the brushstrokes themselves.

Burnt
    Images

These are my burn images where I printed out select images and burnt them in many different ways, with different intentions behind each. For many of them I tried to make the fire follow the contours of the subject in an attempt to make them more interesting than they originally were without adding too many different elements that would cause the piece to become overwhelming. For others where the composition was less interesting and I could add many different details, I decided that it would be best if I burnt either directly into the piece, or in the centre of the piece itself, which I believe made many of them much more interesting than they originally were.

Experimental mirroring.

For these developments, I layered a duplication of my first edit on top of the itself, changed its orientation and then experimented with the different layer opacities, and the saturations in order to get the results above.  I did this because the artist work seemed to be similar to a previous artist and thus seemed that it would be successful if I were to mirror the images. For many, the reason they became so successful was because in doing this it completely changed what the images originally look like, into something else, which is in no way less worse than they originally were.

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