Still Life Portraits by Lauren Hare
I have always been a portrait photographer, since day one. I am hugely motivated by my own personal experiences, and the relationships I have with the people and the world around me. And this curiosity has steered me loyally towards portraiture, of myself and of others. And, for years I lived immersed in others’ art, as well, working as a professional artists’ model with painters, drawers and sculptors from all over the world. If you have any experience with painting, drawing or anything where you’re rendering a likeness of someone or something, you come to accept that it can never be the thing itself, it will only ever be a representation, but it takes on a life of itself. I learned this through my experiences with drawing, and in being a subject for others and seeing a version of myself reflected back at me.
Photography however feels a bit different. It is so close to our reality that it can be infinitely more challenging to create a representation of something. I oftentimes find that viewers want to know what the truth of the matter is when looking at photographs. Fact finding. Still Life Portraits is a bit in the same vein of other visual arts in that it is a representation of the people portrayed. The images won’t reveal personal details of the subjects, they are certainly not focused on facts or conclusions, or revealing a spicy story. However, they do exist to illuminate the harmony I found through experimentation, learning and trying something new. The images crave to be admired for their lush union of light, color, shape, and everything that holds the images together. Among them exists a bonding duality of the animate and inanimate, and an understanding that we are all art and life can always be an expression of that.
I love seeing my Still Life Portraits as studies of life, beauty, dreams, and art.
Lauren Hare lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
To view more of Lauren’s work, please visit her website.
