the Unbearable Lightness of a Studio Portrait
Original framed artwork by Edwin Gendron
This is a limited edition (of 40 total) by Ed Gendron. When they're gone - they're just gone. Outside dimensions approx 20x26
This picture is part of an yet-unnamed series. I loved the idea of finding a box of vintage photos from some other reality or universe. When I began this series, I was very interested in surrealism as well as making something purposefully irreverent. This series really just revels in the absurd. Sometimes it's pretty, sometimes it's grotesque. I began this series in oil painting. But it has expanded to digital photography and found images as well.
This image originated in a found, vintage, B/W photo, a studio portrait of a young man with a cleft palate. His identity was, and still is, unknown to me. I dramatically reworked and hand colored this photo to create something new.
I thought of this pic as a high school portrait from some other reality. The clouds in the background are anything but natural. They reflect some universe that more closely resembles "the Matrix" than our own. We know this, because they have not fully formed ("rezzed") just yet. They remain in an in-between stage, somewhere between existing and not existing. What is "real" in this portrait is up for debate. But what is undeniable is the gaze of the young man who not only has a cleft palate, but a cleft head to match. His one eye stares intently at us, the viewer. Is he asking us to set things right? The emoji pin in hs lapel implies a naive positivity that's at odds with his environment and his intense gaze. Perhaps its from better times and now it simply highlights the absence of such notions.