Coming Unstrung

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BRITISH JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY MAY 2011BRITISH JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY MAY 2011

It’s almost with a kind of gleefulness that Lucy Newman confesses to her works being an exercise in deception that regularly borrows techniques and styles from portrait photography and transposes them onto still life subjects to bring them to life. Story telling and the drive to create always having been important factors in her life photography has become another extension of that drive to craft stories, be it through words or images.

While she regularly wanders into other subject areas the vast majority of her body of photographic work consists of various takes on doll photography, many of which, thanks to the almost androgynous nature of her subjects play on gender stereotypes and draw the viewer into a world of her creation. It’s easy to mistake her subjects for real people because of the attention that’s paid to scale and other signs and signifi ers, especially the angles from which she chooses to shoot, making them look like they belong in the world around them and putting them into their own context. Lucy focuses on creating a fi ctional narrative within her photographs, which are often accompanied by short 200-300 word fl ash fi ction. Instead of focusing on simply recording a scene exactly as she sees it Lucy fi nds great enjoyment in playing on the perception among many outside the art world, that photographs should simply be a record of events. Instead she approaches her camera as a painter and editing software would their canvas and brush, using it as tool to draw her ideas from her mind and into a tangible form.

The idea of putting the dolls into their own fi ctional world is one common among the people who participate in collecting this particular form of doll -known as Asian ball jointed dolls, or ABJDs. It could be said the collectors often live vicariously through their dolls and the works of fi ction they create around them to emerse themselves in their hobby.

Coming Unstrung

MAY 2011 BRITISH JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY

The same way in which some people loose themselves to MMO’s like Second Life and World of Warcraft, it’s this escapism that Lucy plays on in her photography and is part of her latest body of work.Her current project ‘Unstrung’ is an exploration of how the recent government cuts and austerity measures have impacted our personal lives and the hobbies we enjoy. Throughout the photography and quotes taken directly from people within her own hobby she explores how these measures have effected their enjoyment of

their past times, with the state of the economy spending habits have naturally changed. With a secondhand market and many within the hobby who supplement their incomes with commissioned work such as creating clothing and wigs for dolls the entire hobby has taken a hit. With this in mind Lucy has switched her focus to the people behind the dolls she usually focuses, taking an entirely new approach to her own work.

Stylistically Lucy draws much of her inspiration from fashion photography, delighting in the

contrast within the fi eld of shoots that vary wildly from whimsical and utterly surreal to as commercial as can be. She varies from making use of very controlled, very deliberate studio lighting right through to simple, natural light often making the best of very different lighting conditions to get across the feeling she’s attempting the portray. Light she says is key to every photograph she takes.

On the subject of fi lm verses digital Lucy is unabashed in admitting she much prefers to work digitally.


While Film has an undeniable quality to it she fi nds the sheer level of control available in post with digital is a huge draw for her work, considering the way she edits simply another facet of her style that gives her work it’s overall look and feel that would not be possible directly in camera. A former graphic designer elements of design often slip into her work, including use of bold, strong colours and a fearless approach to negative space in compositions.When it comes to more specifi c infl uences Lucy often cites the like of Lillian Bassman and James Natchwey as among the most important. While stylistically and in subject matter she doesn’t draw direct infl uence from either it’s more their approaches and attitudes towards their work that she fi nds incredibly inspiring. Bassman being well into her nineties and still shooting every day and Natchwey’s passion and empathy for his subjects. The other aspect of Bassman’s work that Lucy draws inspiration from is how she went against the grain of mainstream fashion photography in the 50’s and instead followed her own artistic vision, creating images that strayed so far from the norm through experimenting in the darkroom that they could have easily been paintings or illustrations rather than photographs and yet she still achieved. It’s this disregard for the status quo and the mainstream that Lucy fi nds so appealing.

When asked where she sees herself in the future and what projects she has in the works she is keeping the details close to her chest though she harbours ambitions to pursue a career as a professional photographer, taking part in exhibitions and producing an even larger body of work, including more books, for which she says she has many ideas already in the works.

There’s no doubt that Lucy’s work is unusual in it’s choice of subject matter and a potential for further growth as an artist and a photographer so only time will tell if she will succeed and push that potential to whole new levels.


Coming Unstrung

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