DAY 5

PORTRAITS

Double Exposure

KUNIE SUGIURA

For this portrait, I very much wanted to collaborate with the subject, who was an artist and made giant photograms. I asked her if could pay homage to her method, using the same shadowed outline of her subject, but this time it would be of her.

I was shooting with strobe light on slide film, thankfully using Polaroids^® to check exposure. So I decided to shoot her against a lit white background and effectively silhouette her against it in the exposure. It worked well, and I had made my version of her photogram, but all I had was a shadow of her! Next I shot several rolls of her smiling, standing next to her life-sized photograms pinned to a wall, which I knew was what the editor wanted. I was about to call it a day, when I came up with a great idea of how to get the portrait and the silhouette of her all in one image: I would make a double exposure and shoot her twice on the same piece of film! This is a difficult process, so I discussed it with Kunie, who seemed delighted to work with me on this idea. The result shows her arranging flowers and her face inside her silhouette, which worked out really well. —SA

Photo © Simon Alexander.