Elisa Benaggoune DFSA

A photographer, and artist that I bumped into was Ren Hang who has absolutely beautiful work that really makes you think why he placed objects to trigger thoughts and questions. Sadly, the photography passed away a year ago at such a young age and his work is still timeless. His work was known for being controversial and questionable due to nudity and the use of animals in his portraits. He passed at the age of being only 30. As Ren Hang was opposed by his whole country due to his expression of sexuality in whatever form, Ren struggled with sexual freedom and expression since he is Chinese which is shown in his work, he struggled although his work is adored around the entire world. Ren became a self taught artist, and photographer based in Beijing in China who was born on the 30th of March, 1987 whom also suffered from depression and mental health issues due to the politics of the country he was born in, similar to his role model Ai WeiWei whom also struggled with almost getting a...

These are some of the first projects for the introduction. (Portrait project on identity using lighting experiments) I decided to do this project in the night as the perspective of everything is different, and more mysterious and very beautiful, so I decided to use the available light that I had to be able to manipulate what I was trying to achieve. I wanted to use the neon light as a symbol for vulnerability and purity in people using light reflections as a way to symbolise that. The fact that the neon light was created by the "fish and chips" sign made it more interesting for me for this project because my aim was to capture vulnerability in the identity of someone else.