Contemporary addictions

Contemporary addictions, is the title of the series created, 7 portraits and the masterpiece, aiming straightly into the core of the issue.

Doing research, I came to a long list: corruption, suicide, addictions, diseases, conspiracy, depression, war, limitations, jealousy, loneliness, brainwashing, etc. Among all these, I stopped at addictions, and I decided to develop and present this topic.

Living in such a fast world, sometimes it's hard for us to keep up, or to face situations, and we throw ourselves into addictions. Through my photo series, I want to highlight the most common addictions of our days: alcohol, drugs, pills (excessive and illegal), video games, coffee, pornography, shopping (excessive), and gambling. The most frequent mistake we make is to point the finger and judge others, not taking into account our mistakes, and pretending to be saints. In each portrait, the "saint" in us is represented, with its own vice.

THE LAST SUPPER is a reinterpretation of the lifestyle of our days. The painting contains all vices and addictions in one picture, highlighting human decay. It was not created with the intention of defaming religion or divinity, because in fact the pictures do not represent them, but us. Each "saint" in the painting represents us, each saint in "today's dinner" represents the whole society seated at a table. Leonardo da Vinci's painting represents Jesus and the apostles, as an example of how we should live, and the painting created by me is my vision of today's society, as a warning sign of how we have arrived. If we take the analysis of the two paintings (the original, and the picture created by me), what I want to emphasize is that from a table with only one "Judas", we arrived at a table full of "Judas".

I started the project by sketching and preparing the necessary details for the start of the shooting. I searched on amazon for outfits and other clothing details appropriate for the theme. In the meantime, I started looking for suitable models for the project.

I dedicated the first day of shooting to testing the lights, with some detail shots. This shooting was very useful, because I set the appropriate lights, I calculated the distance of the model between the light, the background and the camera. Photographing portraits was very easy after that setting, the shooting being fast and according to expectations.

The difficulty began to appear at the masterpiece, the contemporary dinner, having much more details both on the table and in the position of the models.