Gustav Hoiland

By: gustavHoiland

Jan 28 2010

Category: ocean travel, self portrait

1 Comment

I took my time setting up this shot. I wanted the last of the containers end where the wall begins to create a bunch of rectangles – one full of green and red containers, another with wonderful clouds, and a third mostly grey space.  I think my intention was to get the profile of my face entirely in the grey box but…. this happened and, well, it was a nice surprise.

Surreal?  Maybe that’s taking it too far.  Also I know very little about surrealism, so I’m hesitant to get into art-speak here.  What I think I know, though, is that there’s often some fantasy element in surrealism, and usually something strange.  While nice clouds aren’t quite fantasy, they establish this scene as being outdoors, underneath some fantastic sky.  There’s a bunch of containers… what?  Both of those seem removed from that bright white line that is the boundary after which there’s some gray gradient going on.  Finally, the piece of the head. Something about it screams STATUE to me.  It’s so frozen, being the only thing in crisp focus in the entire shot.  Everything else has this haze, yet there’s this incredible 3-Dimensionality in that face with the shadows, the lips, even the sprouting whiskers.  And then it just fades into complete black.  Very strange.