Maurizio Anzeri

After the last tutorial, the rest of the group and I were really keen to look into stitching into the photographs that we had already taken to create a more textured, 3D feel to the photography. I have been looking further into this over the past week and have found some interesting works by Maurizio Anzeri. He is a Graphic Designer who collects images from flea markets and car boot sales, he never actually knows the subject in his work.

"His embroidered patterns garnish the figures like elaborate costumes, but also suggest a psychological aura, as if revealing the person’s thoughts or feelings." 

The above images have been taken from a piece that Maurizio helped out on for Dazed and Confused magazine. He did not take the photographs, he just contributed the stitch to an already styled shoot. I much prefer this work than his work with vintage photographs, it is sleeker and more contemporary. 

I have found Maurizio's work very inspiring, to me the stitch looks very Spirographic. The geometric stitch is juxtaposed by the vintage photographs used as a back drop. The stitching actually transforms the photographs and almost changed the character of the subject. My group are looking at distorting the face however I like the concept of 'defacing' the face.

Satin Stitch

I have drew a small drawing of a little girl in fine liner, I have then used some embroidery thread to stitch into the image. This was inspired by an artist named Hagar van hu, whom I found on Pinterest. Their way of working has really appealed to me throughout this project as I feel it links to a lot of the criteria that our group is trying to reach. Portraiture, distortion and covering the face. This is just a basic idea at the moment but I would like to discuss this further with the group in our next tutorial, bringing in the ideas of 3D and texture.

To take this idea further, it could be done on a much larger scale, on a number of different materials and textures, and also in many colour ways. This is all down to experimentation which I plan on carrying out in the upcoming days left of the project. However, our group is yet to settle on an idea for a final piece, so I will act quickly on this experimentation in order to settle on a final piece soon.

Making Progress

I really feel like I am starting to make some progress finally within this unit! It has taken a while but slowly but surely it is coming along. I have dug out my sewing machine and made a start on my pastiche of  Nikos Gyftakis' work. It is coming along a lot better than I expected. The only struggle I am having so far is the heaviness of my lines and the contrast between light and dark. The face is quite hard to copy as the skin is stretched into every direction possible, so to keep one fluid line is also quite difficult. This is an image of the progress that I have made so far, I will post an image later when I have completely finished the piece.

I think that the fingers have worked the best throughout this process, however I do need to define these more, as I have only used three of the 5 colours I plan to use. It's not perfect, but it is a start! I really like the texture that this technique creates, however for me, it is not polished enough. I have also been looking into distorting the face, using my scanner at home I scanned a few images of my face to see what the outcome would be like. The final images are slightly strange and I do not think I will be taking this any further.