JULIE POCHRON: UMAMI

Umami definition: a category of taste in food (besides sweet, sour, salt, and bitter), corresponding to the flavour of glutamates, especially monosodium glutamate.

I am looking at photographers who take a different look into the self-portrait or portrait in general as my images for this project are essentially a portrait of the person, without it literally being a portrait of the person and I think that Julie Pochron's Umami is a great example of another example of this. She doesn't just take a self portrait solely of her face, she takes the portrait of a part of her body and takes from it and relates it to an item of food by overlaying it within the image. Pochron does all of this within the image by shooting in-camera multiple exposures and she then prints large scale analogue type c prints. She is interested in combining two types of photography together: food and fashion and therefore creating a totally different experience within a self portrait. 

Her personal statement about the work: 

My muse—she is the rebellious play of my subconscious. She embodies the divine and the grotesque. She fuses the obvious with the esoteric. My muse sends rhythms, and from them I create visions that redeem the use of the feminine form.

Images of 'woman' bombard us—sexy women, pouty women, rich women, fulfilled women. My innermost desire runs parallel to these, persuading me to buy what they sell, to become what they are.

But my muse recognizes the mirage and saves me.

She digests these apparitions and reforms them, leaving icons of solid strength and beauty in their place.

They are shown in a series and would be shown within a series at exhibition/book and so they would work together like this. I think they work effectively on their own or in a group and so I don't think this project would be too hard to put in either.