Leni Wiener

A question from one of my workshop students this week is the subject of this post.  My work is dominated by images of strangers, all from my own photos.  Her question was, how do I take these photos without anyone knowing they are being photographed?

For many years I worked as a commercial photographer, and often carried my camera with me in the normal course of my day.  In the days of the old SLRs this wasn’t an easy thing to drag around.  To complicate things, the camera was so large that the only way to take pictures anonymously was to use a telephoto lens and shoot from a distance, adding more bulk and weight to the problem.  Still, my photographs often centered on strangers in ordinary moments of their lives just like my art quilts.  No big surprise there.

Today with the digital camera revolution things are much easier.  To begin with, we have eliminated the expense of film and developing, making it easier to shoot lots of pictures knowing that many of them won’t be used.  Digital cameras are small and lightweight, making it easy to slip one in my handbag or pocket and pull out quickly when needed.

Because of their size, it is often easy to hold it away from my face and snap the shot. The endless dance of the ponytail was shot this way.  I was in a local cafe having lunch with my husband when I noticed a table of teenagers nearby–one girl with her back to me was constantly taking her hair in and out of a ponytail.  The movement of her arms reminded me of a flamenco dancer and I wanted the photo.  I turned on the camera and set it so that there would be no flash, placed it on the table next to me and rested my hand on the top.  That allowed me to shoot several pictures with no one knowing.  The fact that I couldn’t “aim” the shot didn’t matter, I knew it would be cropped anyway.

Here is the photo I used (faces have been blurred to protect the privacy of the people at the table).  You can see how closely I cropped in for the art quilt:

In other situations where the telephoto is the way to go, shots don’t need to be so discrete.  Shooting from across the street, or from a reasonable distance insures that the subject does not know they are being photographed.  Of course, I am not looking to embarrass anyone or invade their privacy, so whenever I do an art quilt that shows the face of a stranger, I make certain to change the face so that it is not recognizable.  Making the face a bit fuller, moving the eyes a bit farther apart or closer, changing the color or shape of the hair is usually enough.  Here is a photo taken with a telephoto lens (again, faces are blurred for privacy), and the resulting quilt:

It is not coincidence that so many of my art quilts show strangers whose faces are not clearly visible:

and often I add figures into the composition that come from other photos, or as in the case of this art quilt, are people I know–the figure of the man standing on the rock in “on the rocks” is taken from a photo of my son and husband walking on the beach taken at another place and time:

Another trick is to have someone with me “pose” just behind the shot I really want, like this one that has yet to be made into an art quilt:

Here my husband pretends to be the focus of my photographic attention so that I could take a photo of a woman with a wonderfully expressive face (blurred until I can adjust it in the art quilt).  I will extract the woman from this photo and place her in another setting when I get to this art quilt.

There are sources of photos you can use like US government sites, but frankly you will spend so much time going through the files to find what you want that it isn’t worth it.  Of course, if you are doing art quilts of landscapes, seascapes, nature or architecture privacy isn’t an issue.

If you don’t already have a digital camera, treat yourself to one–they aren’t very expensive anymore–or use photos taken by your friends (I always ask my friends for their vacation photos, and for permission to use those I love) like this one taken in France by my friend, Peggy:

I take lots of pictures, most of which will never become art quilts.  They are saved in files for easy reference on my computer so that when I do want to make an art quilt I have lots of images from which to choose, and I can combine them and change them to fit my artistic vision.

hello out there in the blog-esphere–me again.  It has been a bad month for me, having somehow sprained my right hand and damaging the two tendons on either side of my middle finger, making it difficult to work and to type.  But I am improving, and pushing myself to get things done.

In this blog entry I wanted to focus on using unexpected fabrics.  When working on photo-inspired art quilts-or any realistic art quilts–there is a tendency to look for fabrics that have the same “agenda” as the area you want to fill.  For example, often artists will look for a fabric with feather patterns when doing feathers.  This is fine, and it works, but (in my opinion) part of the joy and the excitement of working in fabric is the opportunity to use them in completely unexpected ways.

I want to discuss specifically skin and hair when depicting people in art quilts.  People are almost always the center of attention in my art quilts, and I try very hard to use fabrics that give the artwork a layer of complexity that they wouldn’t have had if I had painted or drawn the subject.

Let’s start with skin tones.  These are not easy to find in fabric.  And many people look for solid fabrics so that skin tones will be subtle and look natural.  I move in the opposite direction.  I look for fabrics that have no agenda as skin tones.  Look at this assortment I chose for a series I am currently working on:

you can see in this assortment that there is a dot fabric, a floral, a leaf pattern and a spotted batik.  None of these look like anyone I know…

but here are three children I am working on for a series of seashore “sketches” and if you look closely, you can see the fabrics.  Because the values work, the patterns work.  And the use of heavily patterned and “unexpected” fabrics makes the finished figures more interesting.

Hair offers the same kinds of opportunities.  Here is a favorite fabric of mine for hair (I am running out of it!):

(excuse the out of focus photo–it’s early!)  This commercial fabric looks like a tie dye, in fact, the pattern looks to me like butterflies.  But here it is used as hair in two different people:

In this detail of a recently finished quilt “the boy in the banyan tree” you can see the butterfly shape fussy cut into the top of his hair.  Instant shadow and highlight, instant texture.  One cut piece does it all.

in the boy from the above photo, you can see the same fabric used again.  Here I fussy cut the lighter part of the fabric to coincide wtih the highlight around his ear.  (Also note the lighter fabric in his face is a paisley)

This indonesian batik does not look like a fabric that might be considered a good choice for hair:

(again, out of focus, sorry about that).  You can see a background geometric and spaced designs in shades of white, brown and black.  Here it is in one of those children from the beach scenes:

I love this fabric choice, even though we all know no one has geometric hair, the value works and it makes the figure more interesting, and more whimsical.  Also notice in this photo that the skin tones, due to their value, already suggest the shape and contours of his face even before the details like nose, mouth and eyes are added.

Another figure in the “boy in the banyon tree” quilt is the grandfather we see from behind.  His balding head and remaining hair are shown here:

In this case, the fabric used was a swirly batik with shades of gray, brown and taupe.  I like the movement, which (at least to me) looks like the way hair grows.  It would have taken a long time to cut all the highlights and lowlights in his hair, not something I want to spend time doing.

So I hope the next time you look at skin and hair in your art quilts, you will think outside the box and use something unexpected.