Matt Crockett is a British Photographer who recently crafted a series of 50 portraits, each of a different, well-known comedian, and tried to present their inner personalities or in a way in which they had yet to be shown. Because I own the published book of the portraits, Jean-Baptiste Mondino’s work with props reminded me of some of Crockett’s comic portraits. For example, here when photographing Reece Shearsmith, he incorporated puppet ‘Gremlin’ hands both for comedic effect and to show Shearsmith’s love of the horror genre. He also used a smoke machine to add a thematic quality to the image.

Crockett’s playfulness with the horror genre in some of his portraits is what inspires me the most. For example his portrait of comedian Jimmy Carr features the man in a straight jacket with ruffled hair and a crazed look on his face, by exploring the darker side to comedians Crockett’s use of black and white photography really isolates the expressions (or lack of, in some cases) and dilutes the attention to the subjects of the photos in a similar way to Mondino.

 Though I doubt any of the props I will be able to obtain would be as aesthetically intriguing or thematically dark as the ones featured in Crockett’s work, I wish to not divert all the attention away from the subject but to enhance it. For example, much like Shearsmith, this image of Mark Gatiss is relevant to his body of work for the horror genre too, as well as his comedy work. The plain backgrounds isolate the almost border of shadows that are also cast across half of his face, whilst the comedic position of the skull and subject dilute the terror evoked from the appearance of the skull.

Here however though the prop is minimal (the pipe in the jacket pocket) it’s the appearance of Matthew Horne’s eyes that pop combined with the frizzed hair that give across an ‘Eraserhead-esque’ idea of insanity, combined with the pure white background which isolates the piercing stare at the viewer to create a sense of unease. The relation to the individual is something I’d wish to explore within my self-portrait and portrait of a familiar individual, as I feel as though I’m more confident with the themes of my work than the technical aspects of it, which is something I’m also trying to work on across this module.