Works from autumn 2009: Paraphrasing Pierre-Louis Piersons photographs of the Comtess of Castiglione

These works are from a course in paraphrasing we had at Gerlesborg School of Fine Art last in autumn 2009. I chosed to paraphrase Pierre-Louis Pierson's photographs of the Comtess og Castiglione.

Facts about her from Wikipedia: She was born Virginia Oldoini in Tuscany, Italy. She married Francesco Verasis, conte di Castiglione in Italy when she was 17. The comtess achieved notoriety as a mistress of Napoleon III of France, which resulted in a divorce from her husband. During her romance with Napoleon III she met the photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson who photographed the royal court. She wanted him to take pictures of her so that her beauty could be preserved in the photographs. Her poses in many of the photographs were concidered dary in its time. For example her gaze in the camera and photographs of her bare legs.

I saw the picture with the mirror the first time when we had a art history lesson at Gerlesborg. What I liked about the picture was that she by looking in the mirror meets the eye of the beholder and not by looking directly in the camera. When we had the course in paraphrasing I then started to experiment myself and learning how to set my digital camera so that I could achive the same light as in these old photographs. Since theres a hugh difference between photographing then and now I only used natural daylight to somehow get the same feeling.