Pop Culture & Meaning in Photography
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Keith Haring's Legacy
Uniqulo, Cotton On, H&M, ASOS & Typo are just some of the affordable brands that are still using Keith Haring's designs, while Lacoste, Pandora and Levi's promote more premium products. While we have seen a resurchgence in Y2k and 90s fashion, the 80s Haring designs have also been extremely prominent in the last few years.
Cosplay Photography
Cosplay Photography is a photographic genre that captures dedicated fans of movies, TV shows, anime, and video games dressed in elaborate outfits and costumes inspired by characters. As the popularity of comic conventions and pop culture events has increased, cosplay photography became a significant trend.
KIRA, for example, is a popular Armanian cosplay photographer who has gained a significant following on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, where they showcase their cosplay photography work. Their images often feature intricate costumes, impressive makeup, and captivating poses that bring the characters to life.
(Kira Photo Arts, 2023, 'Cyberpunk 2077. Never Fade Away' URL)
Influencer and Celebrity Portraits
Influencer and celebrity portraits gained significant popularity as influencer culture rose to prominence in the last decade. With the increasing influence of social media personalities and celebrities, these professionally shot and stylized portraits have become sought after by fans and followers. Photographers often collaborate with influencers and celebrities to create visually captivating images that highlight their personalities and fashion styles. This promotes their individual popularity and status and also has substantial impacts on fashion and beauty trends. These photos blur the lines between traditional portraiture and modern-day digital media representation.
(LA Times, 2022, 'Our favourite celebrity portraits from 2022' URL)
Memes & Viral Photography
Memes and viral photography emerged as a prominent aspect of internet culture in the past decade. With the rise of social media platforms and online communities, specific photos gained widespread recognition and created the foundation for meme culture. Meme photography included adding humorous or satirical captions and creating a shared language of internet humour which transcends borders, reaching a global audience. Much like how 50s Pop Art appropriated everyday images being distributed on mass, memes and viral images take this to the next level in the digital age. They blend pop culture, high and low art, mundane or familiar visuals and repurpose them for amusement and engagement online. This challenges conventional ideas around what art can be.
(Esquire, 2023, 'The Best Memes of 2023' URL)
Class Project: Pop Art Portrait
Your task is to turn a photographic portrait in to a pop art graphic that uses contrasting colours. Contrasting Colours are colours that are opposite each other on the colour wheel, like red and green, or red-orange and blue-green. Near contrasting colours are colours close, but not quite opposite each other, like yellow-green and violet. Cool colours are blues and greens, warm colours are oranges, red and pure yellow. You can learn more about colour theory here.
You can bring meaning to your work by considering which colours you use and why. Use the links below to help you identify which emotion or vibe you wish to convey in your portrait.
Use this website to see a visual representation of the psychological associations that many people have with a range of colours.
Use this website to see an explanation of how various cultures have connotations related to particular colours.
Pop Art Portrait (final).webmInstructions
Find a celebrity / influencer /politician photo that you wish to recreate. Save the image to your documents.
Take a photographic portrait where you aim to use the same facial expression or body position as the image you have saved.
Once you have saved your image, locate the image in your folder and right click, open with and select Adobe Photoshop. Your image should now be open in Photoshop.
File>New> Create a Photohop canvas that is 1000x1000 pixels and 300 Pixels/Inch. Ctrl+A to select your image, Ctrl+C to copy and Ctrl+V to paste on to your new canvas. Ctrl+T to resize your image and move it to fill the canvas or show the most aesthetic compisition (e.g. you may choose to fill more than the canvas to crop part of the image out).
Go to Image in the top bar, select Adjusments>Brightness/ Contrast. Toggle the bars to increase both and give your image a strong sense of light and dark. It does not have to look realistic.
Next, go to Image>Adjustments >Threshold (not the adjustment palette) adjusting the threshold until you see the facial features. Now your image is made up of only black and white shapes, with no values in between. This is also called a high contrast image.
Use Ctrl>Shift>N to create a new layer. Label this 'Colour 1.' Toggle back to the original picture and use the magic wand tool (it is the fourth tool from the top on the left hand panel - you may need to right click and toggle through other options to get to it). Use this to select the black. If not all of the black is selected, click 'contiguous' in the middle of the bar at the top of the page and deselect the tick in the box. Try your selection again. You should see the “marching ants” around the black area.
Toggle to your new layer called 'Colour 1' and use the paint brush tool to colour in this selection. You can choose your colour by clicking on the top colour square at the bottom of your tool bar. A colour picker window will pop up. You do not have to choose the most highly-saturated (most brilliant and pure) version of the colour. You can try a subdued version of the colour for more a more sophisticated colour scheme. Ctrl+D to deselect when you have finished the colouring.
You should now have a layer called 'Colour 1' with the parts of the image that were black coloured in your choice of colour. Use Ctrl>Shift>N to create a new layer and call it 'Colour 2.' Toggle back to the original image and use the magic wand tool to select the white area. Now go to your 'Colour 2' layer and choose another colour to colour in the area you have selected.
You should now have a two coloured image that you can save if you would like to. If you would like to add a third colour, create a third new layer and label it Colour 3. You can then use the polygonal lasso tool (near the top left of the side bar) and draw around your subject by clicking to create points. Once you have created your shape, it will turn it to marching ants and you can paint in your selection a third colour.
Adjust your colours until you are happy with the combination. (Try the Adjustment called Hue Saturation, for example.) Note: The face will seem to pop out at you more if the background colour is cooler, lighter or duller than the face colour (see examples above).
File>Save As>Save As Photoshop document. Save a Photoshop file version of your image in your documents in case you wish to continue editing it.
File>Export >Export As>Change File Type from PNG to JPEG. Save. Use this to save your image as a JPEG. This file type can be used online and on social media.
For Your Process Journal
In your process journal, create a subpage under 'Class projects' called 'Pop Art Portrait.' Then complete the following:
C level (ish)
C level (ish)
Using the instructions above, recreate a celebrity / influencer / politician image and take a photographic portrait of it. Use the editing techniques to colour this like the Marilyn Diptych. Choose colours to bring symbolic meaning to your image.
Write dot-points for A, I, M, M, E. For audience, consider who the audience for your original inspiration photo is as this will likely be the audience for your recreation.
B level (ish)
B level (ish)
Complete previous steps. Show further skills by actually creating a diptych with 9 panels. The instructions are included in the second half of the video and called an extension. You can also view them here:
Save your image as face1 and then use the Hue/Saturation Adjustment tool to get another colour combination and save as face2.
Repeat until you have 4, 6, or 9 versions of the face, named face1, face2, face3, etc.
Select File>New and create a Photoshop canvas that is the same ratio as before (1000x1000 pixels) but decide how many images you want to include. If you want 3x3 as in this example, then make your canvas 3000x3000 pixels. Open all of the face files you have created.
Select All>Copy and Paste into the new canvas. Move them into position and save your final with a new name.
A level (ish)
A level (ish)
Complete previous steps.
Do additional research in to the audience and intention of the photo that you are recreating.
Save APA references for this research.
You might also do additional research in to examples of how the colours you have used have been used to make meaning in other artworks or photographs and make reference to these.
You can then integrate this research in to the extended responses that we develop next lesson.
Lil Nas X - 3 Colour Example
Lil Nas X - 3 Colour Example
In this imaged, I followed the instructions as shown in the video.
Lil Nas X - 3 Colour Diptych
Lil Nas X - 3 Colour Diptych
In this image, I followed the instructions in the video but I completed the extension task and made 9 different variants of contrasting colours on a 3000x3000 pixel canvas.
Image Inspiration
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