Laurence Demaison

Laurence Demaison, a photographer and visual artist, was born in 1965 in France and graduated from the Strasbourg School of Architecture in 1988. In the early 1990s, she began her self-taught journey into photography. From 1993 to 2009, her photographic work consisted entirely of self-portraits.

These distinctly bizarre and artistic portraits were not created using digital techniques. Laurence Demaison explores the medium of film photography as well as the concept of photography. As a result, her images appear to bend light and time, distort the human body's look, and hold beauty in their various reflections, refractions, and visual repetitions, dissolving into smears of light in darkness. Completely monochromatic, her work conveys an emotion that colour often is unable. The way that greyscale presents depth of texture is my favourite aspect of black and white photography, I simply do not think Demaison’s work would have the same affect if it was done in colour. That is why I have used solely black and white in my own portraits.

Eautre n°6 (Bacon), 1998

En Cellule, 1998

Bulle n°2, 1998

Most of Demaison’s compositions rely on a simple head and shoulders self portrait, as she stares directly into the lens. This is where the simplicity ends, however, as each portrait disorientates the viewer with a range of different techniques that manipulate and distort the image. The direct stare creates intimate relationship with the viewer, but - at the same time - the figure seems very far away – floating in darkness. In this image Demaison appears to have create a screen of liquid between herself and her camera. As with all of Demaison’s work, the image is in black and white, with high contrast between the subject and the background, further giving the impression of isolation and dislocation. The form is distorted by ripples making the face appear deep underwater. In stark contrast to the dreamlike form of the face, are the crisp details of bubbles on the surface of the liquid – again adding distance between the face and the viewer. The miniscule images in some of the bubbles add exquisite little details to what would otherwise be an unstructured and blurry photograph. I think it is a very beautiful portrait that has the power to haunt like something from a dream.

My work

Shot on Canon EOS 4000D with a combination of 18-55mm lens and macro 100mm lens.

f/2.8 1/15 ISO:200

Edit for above photos.

Behind the scenes.

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f/2.8 1/20 ISO:200

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Underwater shoot

Here I decided to conduct a shoot where I photograph a person while they are underwater. This macabre concept is very within the style of Demaison, who often photographs things and people submerged in water. A pretty ambitious concept to carry out, I think these photos have ended up being some of my favourites ever.

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Behind the scenes.

Before edit.

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detail.

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Scanner photos

To extend my work I came up with an imaginative technique in which I scanned myself into the computer while pressing my face and hands to the scanner. The impression that this idea gives off is honestly a little disturbing. These are loosely self portraits but are done in an unconventional way. The unnatural way my face is contorted is especially reminiscent of Laurence Demaison’s work.

The two images below have been layered to mimic double exposure, a technique used often by Demaison.

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