DarinaH

portfolio

Cyklus Světice

2007

The Saintesses cycle

In Spain and in Latin America there is a tradition called POSITOS, when people decorate santons with diverse materials, like teeth, human hair or spangles. It is a specific religious tradition when people express to saints not only their affection and adoration, but also they try to make the statues as liveliest and authentic as possible to make their look like beautiful human beings to be more tangible, closer for common people.

In Saintesses cycle - Mis positos, I was inspired by this tradition and let the girls choose saintess as well as saint, with his or her attributes and look they would like to be portrayed as. All the girls finally decided to be portrayed as saintesses, only one of them wasn´t sure if to be saint or saintess. An important factor, which influenced their choice, was also fact, if the saintess was a female martyr, mystic, follower, anchoress or benefactress e. g.

The girl´s choice was influenced by their inner affection for the saintesses, in the case of believers there were very important their religious tradition or conviction. Most of the girls understood the saintess like some kind of archetypes or characters, who was imposed to them and into whom they would like to project themselves during the photographing. It was obvious, that during the playing the role of saintesses, the girls discovered their inner emotions and traits, they express themselves more widely.

The connective item for all of the portraits was clothes which were decorated by fashion spangles and the form was close to glossy holy icons or cards of saints, which were favourite in the first half of last century and till today they are an actual phenomenon in Latin America.

In this cycle, it is like I reversed the tradition positos: “from human closer to saint” to mis positos: “from saint closer to human”.