Jane Long is self taught Australian photographer and digital artist who was born in Melbourne in 1970, and is now based in Brisbane. Working with Photoshop since 1994, for both personal and commercial work, she then began working as a graphic designer over 20 years ago, and established her own studio in 1996.
Her series Dancing with Costica initially began when she wanted to brush up on her retouching skills with digital processing software. She stumbled upon old glass plate photographs on the photograph sharing site called Flickr, which had been taken over half a century ago, by Romanian WW1 photographer Costica Acsinte. These portraits showed stiff, straight face subjects, with not a single smile between them. I generally find this type of portrait photography cold and ‘spooky’, in a way, as their eyes seem vacant and the stiff poses make them appear strange.
“Photographic practices at the time meant people rarely smiled in photos but that doesn’t mean they didn’t laugh and love. I wanted to introduce that to the images.” [1]
When finding the online archive for the first time, Long quoted,
“…After finding the Costica Acsinte Archive on Flickr I became fascinated with the images and their subjects. I wanted to bring them to life. But more than that I wanted to give them a story….…I will probably never know the real stories of these people but in my mind they became characters in tales of my own invention…star crossed lovers, a girl waiting for her lover to come home, boys sharing a fantasy, innocent children with a little hint of something dark.” [2]
Combining the found photographs, with her expertise in digital manipulation, Long has completely changed the context of these portraits, and has produced beautiful, surreal, fantasy style final pieces. She has given the subjects a new life, character and story of their own. Her use of muted, pastel colours remind me of the surrealist paintings by Dali, Rene Magritte, Rafal Oblinski and Vladimir Kush. This can be seen in the pieces Flock, The Whimsy Brothers, Singalong, Gun Shy , The Juggling Act and Corvo.
“…I wanted there to be some ambiguity about the images….I wanted to change the context of the images…Things that are almost real or not quite right. That’s why I like to place them in a slightly surreal context. But I think it should be up to the viewer to determine if the characters in my images are good or bad, light or dark.” [3]
She describes Dancing with Costica, as a collaboration with another photographer ( Acsinte ), despite the fact that she has never met him, nor ever will. Her work however, has meant that his photographs are now being seen world wide, by audiences and people like myself, would have never seen them otherwise.
I really love her pieces, especially Innocence, All Hands on Deck and Tall Poppies.
References:
Long, Jane.
Tall Poppies, Innocence, All Hands on Deck, Flock, Photographs by Jane Long. Photographs are copyrighted to Jane Long. ( I have only included them for research purposes, which the OCA advised was ok )
[1-3] Quotes taken directly from the websites below.
http://janelong.fotomerchant.com/ ( Accessed 02/03/2018 )
http://janelong.fotomerchant.com/dancing-with-costica ( Accessed 02/03/2018 )
http://janelong.fotomerchant.com/tutorials ( Accessed 02/03/2018 )
https://www.flickr.com/photos/costicaacsinte/ ( Accessed 02/03/2018 )
Artist Jane Long Digitally Manipulates Black and White WWI-Era photos Into Colourful Works of Fantasy, online article. By Kate Sierzputowski. 14/08/2015.
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/08/black-and-white-photographs-into-colorful-works-of-fantasy/ ( Accessed 02/03/2018 )
https://retrospectgalleries.com/news/artist-blogs/jane-long/ ( Accessed 02/03/2018 )
Chantelle Grace Photography 