Gerwyn Davies’ Vivid Costumed Photographs Toy with the Intent of Portraiture

Set against glowing backdrops of desert, city skylines, skate parks, and anonymous interiors, Gerwyn Davies’ vibrant photographs merge fashion photography with elaborate and sometimes bizarre handmade costumes. His practice harkens back to some of his first experiments with photography, when he and a group of friends would stage collaborative portraits in which they’d take turns operating the camera, posing, and searching the house for lamps to light the scene.

“It was Vogue magazine on a B-horror film budget,” Davies says. “I was transfixed by the potential to fabricate fantasy through photography and from that point I was very excited about what else I could do with it.” He credits those early, playful experiments with his continued fascination with readymades and a highly constructed approach to making a photo.

a photograph by Gerwyn Davies of a brightly colored abstract costume obscuring the top half of his body in a desert landscape

Davies describes his practice as “queer photographic self-representation.” He designs and creates the costumes himself, transforming the human figure into a sculptural form. Sometimes garments envelop his entire body, but even if his legs or arms are visible, the head is always obscured. When he takes the photo, Davies works blind, snapping a sequence of automatic shots while he quickly performs for the camera. From these, he later selects a final image.

Whether made of sequined fabric, vinyl, or faux fur, Davies’ costumes border on the quirky, humorous, and even absurd, as he explores the fluid relationship between fantasy and reality. He also plays with notions of what portrait photography is—or it’s intended to reveal about the sitter. In this case, “the subject, which is always me, is conspicuous in the frame,” the artist says, but the nature of concealment adds a playful, sometimes slightly unsettling layer of complexity. He continues:

The use of elaborate costumes, often fabricated with shimmering and sparkling materials, makes the subject almost hyper-visible. At the same time however, the specifics of the subject are unable to be seen. The face is always obstructed by fabric and the precise dimensions of the figure wildly distort, meaning the subject is impossible to take in fully…the subject is both there and not there, seen and unseen, they are hidden in plain sight.

Davies’ work is featured in Exposure: Contemporary Photographers in Australia and New Zealand, and you can find more on his website and Instagram.

a photograph by Gerwyn Davies of himself in a yellow, mouse-like, full-body costume inside of a room with old paintings on the wall

a photograph by Gerwyn Davies of a black-and-white checked, abstract costume obscuring the top half of his body against a city skyline

a photograph by Gerwyn Davies of himself in a bright orange, abstract, full-body costume inside of an apartment room

a photograph by Gerwyn Davies of a brightly colored abstract costume obscuring the top half of his body in a seaside landscape

a photograph by Gerwyn Davies of himself in a gold, abstract, full-body vinyl costume inside of a room with old photos on the wall

a photograph by Gerwyn Davies of himself in a black, full-body vinyl costume, with his foot up on a stool

a photograph by Gerwyn Davies of a brightly colored abstract costume obscuring the top half of his body in front of a brightly painted building

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