A week or so ago, we reported that Dean O’Gorman was about to debut a an exhibition of his artwork and photography in Wellington at the PageBlackie Gallery.
Now PageBlackie has uploaded a small sample. They really are beautiful pieces of art, and well worth a look. You’ll also probably note the resemblance of some pieces to certain actors from The Hobbit.
O’Gorman dressed and set up the shots himself… [roping] in friends to play the soldiers, and fellow cast members from The Hobbit. (One features British actor Adam Brown who plays the dwarf Ori, and another has Luke Evans, who plays Bard the Bowman).
O’Gorman, who fell in love with photography at school, was a big fan of Vietnam War photographers including Larry Burrows and Don McCullin, as well as other war photographers such as the legendary Robert Capa.
“They were beautiful images and I loved how they made me feel. I loved the rawness and the humanness that was captured. I thought wouldn’t it be cool to try and stage something that could allow you to potentially feel something similar, but wasn’t actually real?
“I’m not trying to trick anybody, but I’m just trying to play with the idea of how do you feel about something that is not real but is made to seem real?. Movies do it all the time, but a lot of times in photography I find it’s approached with quite an obvious parody, or quite an obvious irony, and I wanted to try to be a bit more sincere.”
Thanks to Ringer Dragonslayer731 for the heads-up.
[Gallery] | [Stuff.co.nz feature]
