Ben Hopper
patreon
The (status of the) projects Patreon helps me create
🕑 Added 2018-04-09 15:23:42 +0000 UTC(public post)
I decided to tidy my About section where I had a detailed list of all the projects I'm developing using Patreon. This post will now be linked from the About section and I will update it every now and then.
This is pretty much an index of everything that I'm working on. My past, present and future. The finished projects, the work-in-progress and the Research & Development.
At any given moment I'm juggling between few different things in the background. This post will be where I update their status.
PS, if you're one of my patrons on here, tap yourself on the shoulder because you have a direct influence on all of this with your support! ;)
Updated April 9, 2018.
FINISHED PROJECTS
In a box: "Growing up and having started photography in sunny Israel, I got used to shoot a lot of my portraits outdoor, on locations.
When I moved to London I realised how limiting the weather can be. I couldn’t shoot outside as much as I used to.
For the first 3 years, I lived in a shared flat North West London.
With no studio space I can use on a regular basis, I tried to make the best of what I had; my room, the kitchen, the bathroom.
This is a selection of the images I created inside the shared flat I lived in between 2008 and 2011.
I call it ‘ In a Box’.”
There are currently 7 images published from this project. You can imagine there are more. Patreon will help me to dig back into the archives and publish a whole-complete collection of this body of work.
I just got here: “On the 1st of November 2008, 2 weeks after my arrival in London from Israel, a wonderful lady called Sarah Jane whom I met on Facebook prior to my move took me to a Halloween party at the legendary fetish club ‘Torture Garden’. Mesmerised by this experience, I contacted Torture Garden after the party and ended up photographing parties for them and other amazing dress-up underground parties around London for the following 5 years. I consider these images and this period of my life as introduction to anything I can today refer to as 'Ben Hopper’.”
The images have mostly been laying around untouched for years. Many of them unpublished. Using the freedom all of you patrons will give me, I will edit the thousands of images and gather them into a final selection.
PUBLISHED & IN-PROGRESS PROJECTS
Hex 000000: The works represent a photographic study of colour and human textures. They also represent an expression of mood, a reflection of myself. Hex 000000 is the computing code on web pages and image-editing programs for the colour Black. The name was chosen to focus on colour, rather than ethnicity.
Naked with Masks: Why do we cover our bodies but display our faces?
“Naked with Masks” is bold bodily communication, a parody of the self-censorship we all succumb to everyday.
Originally created for ACT ART 8 where it first premiered as "Naked Girls with Masks" in London (UK) 2010.
I've been working on Naked with Masks in the background and been planning some profound changes to the intention behind this body of work. Bringing older subjects, different genders, people with obesity, deformities and directing it to a more story-based series. People who would never pose naked if it wasn't for the mask. What does nudity mean to them? Why is nudity such a big deal in our society? Do we grow up learning to feel embarrassed with out own bodies? These are some of the questions and issues I'd like to explore. Patreon will help me reach new people, new masks, new locations and new stories. The project is aimed to be finalised as a photo book.
Transfiguration: Like a mask, the layers of body paint and powder disguise the identity and release something animalistic from within.
It also creates a sculptor / painting looking figure, more abstract and less human.
‘Transfiguration’ explores the process of capturing live movement, photographing international contemporary circus artists and dancers in interesting and provocative ways.
Transfiguration may be the first project I will manage to turn into a photo-book. With unpublished work I've done in Montreal in 2016, photographing 30 subjects in a much bigger studio than my personal studio in London, enabling us to try bigger human structures, aerial straps work and more. I am planning to make the last few sessions before I am starting to work on the book edit. Patreon will help to focus on this process.
Natural Beauty: Although armpit hair is a natural state it has become a statement.
Why is that?
For almost a century we have been brainwashed by the beauty industry, encouraging hair removal.
By creating a contrast between common ‘fashionable’ female beauty and the raw unconventional look of female armpit hair thoughts are intrigued and a discussion is made.
Natural Beauty is probably my most notable project to date. It's been circulating the internet and received impressive chunk of press. It's safe to say it's been seen by more than 20 million people around the world and changed how many perceive female body hair for the better
I'm still making work for this project including some new existing unpublished work. Patreon will help devote time and reach more models that sometimes can't come all the way to London for a shoot.
Hackney Wick Portraits: “I've been in Hackney Wick since late 2011.
It has been an enriching experience from day one.
I created so much work here. Countless portraits in my studio. New work that has taken me to more abstract places. Experimental and new.
The vibe and the local people keep inspiring me.
I've been lucky to befriend and work with some great individuals around here.
I've also received countless opportunities to expose my work, opportunities that would not worked the same anywhere else.
Here's a series of photos; a selection of my favourite people around Hackney Wick.
Some are loved for their help and friendship. Some are admired for their sheer coolness.
Some are both. ”
There's a list of remaining people I want to photograph to wrap this project up. Just never got the chance to do so when I was busy running around after work to pay basic bills. This is what Patreon is for.
The Illustrated: A collaboration of my photography with various graphic artists. Drawing, illustration, graphic design, typography etc. Main mediums: digital, paper, skin and wall murals.
The Illustrated is a project I've been meaning to to tackle more efficiently. I'd like to do more work and I'd like to create a proper online hub for everything created so far. Showcasing the different artists in a better way. The project is aimed to be finalised as a photo book.
Dancers on Rooftops: Where ever there's a rooftop, a dancer and a camera.
Dancers on Rooftops is one of my favourite projects but I had a hard time developing it further. With travel supported by patrons, I could find new dancers and new roofs around the world and keep working on this project. The project is aimed to be finalised as a photo book.
UNPUBLISHED & IN-PROGRESS PROJECTS
The Inner Outside: The Inner Outside is a project I’ve been slowly working on in the background since 2013.
The project aims to find a new way of highlighting some of the world's most unique tattoo pieces, both traditional and modern.
The images are inverted and processed digitally to simulate a film negative, resembling to an X-ray radiograph, showing the ink as glowing white on darkened skin and revealing details otherwise hidden to the naked eye.
In the summer of 2016, I quietly previewed some images I’ve taken for the project in collaboration with my tattooer friend DotsToLines.
The images were printed on giant aluminium boards and were on display as part of a magnificent group show called “ Tattoo Forever”. The show was a celebration of tattoo culture and took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (MACRO).
With the patrons support, I'll be able to reach all of the subjects I wish to photograph.
Organic Electronic: Conceived by artist/musician Reeps One, Organic Electronic is a collaboration between multi-disciplinary artist and VJ Zach Walker, musician/producer Linden Jay and myself. Organic Electronic is of the most interesting projects I've been working on over the last few years. A combination of music, science, art and all in-between. Using the principles of Cymatics we can show you how sound looks or more precisely, how our sound looks.
With the patrons support, we'll have the time to focus on editing and publishing this body of work. We will then seek exhibition opportunities.
Pantyhose: A series of images that digs into my own sexuality, sense of intimacy, insecurities and trust. It examines a social say about consumerism, identity and artist's responsibilities.
This project has been in the works for few years and I couldn't find the right moment and circumstances to edit and publish it. With the patrons support, I hope to focus and find the right path to bring this project to light.
RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Circus Africa: The project will give a contemporary insight into Africa’s current story of Circus Arts. Among the participating countries are: Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Madagascar, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and more.
The final result will include:
- A series of photographs compiled into a high-end photo book.
- A documentary film, shown at independent film festivals around the world.
- A traveling exhibition presenting both the photographs, film and book.
Duende: He points to the man with the camera. “This is Ben. Me and Ben, we're doing an experiment today.”
Work begins, but a photographer is not invisible. He is inside the eye, a distraction that cuts the line of its vision.
Three thousand moments, caught and framed. They are looking for one thing, though it has no shape.
When you see it, what do you see?
If nowhere else, maybe find it in the eyes. The gaze passes by as it draws the angle of an artist’s intention.
And maybe, again, it is not the eyes.
What you can’t see you can only feel. The body knows it at once and the skin is sensitive.
A mystery is pacing in the background, spelled out by knives or awakening in a blue glimmer. The mass of a collapsed shadow knows it; the column of light reveals elements of its reflection.
There is only one word for it.
In 1933, three years before he was shot and killed close to the Fuente de las Lágrimas, the Fountain of Tears, the poet Lorca addressed an audience in Buenos Aires to tell them of the duende.
“The duende is a force not a labour, a struggle not a thought. I heard an old maes- tro of the guitar say: ‘The duende is not in the throat: the duende surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet.’ Meaning, it’s not a question of skill, but of a style that’s truly alive: meaning, it’s in the veins: meaning, it’s of the most ancient culture of immediate creation.”
Most people have experienced the duende, even if they don’t know the word. In a- menco, where men and women speak often of the duende, it is a spirit, perhaps also a demon, that inhabits the dancer at the mo- ment of performance. We sense it in artists when they become more than themselves – when they step outside their skins or cross the threshold of rational thought.
The duende can be found in every art. And yet, intimate with pain, death, the body and the soil, it has much in common with circus, where true artistry lives not in technique but on technique’s other side, past the suffering of repetition, beyond the limits of exhaus- tion and the mind.
Duende is a project conceived by the photographer Ben Hopper in collaboration with the writer John Ellingsworth. Put in words its goal is simple: finnd the duende, capture it.
In practice the project is like chasing a ghost. We know where it lives, we think we know who it haunts. As we plan the approach we’re pouring over thousands of photographs in search of accidental sightings.
Duende began with a research phase that focuses on developing a methodology for the project through a series of experiments following different thematic lines – movement, extremity, the gaze, and so on.
The research will also explore different formats to combine imagery and text, lay down plans for the project’s eventual dissemination, and produce a prototype for online presentation.
Words by John Ellingsworth.
The Ben Hopper Podcast: I've been inspired by so many people during my life time. I'd like to create a series of recorded conversations with some of my favourite artists, creatives, mentors friends and general inspirations. With the patrons support, I'll be able to start produce this content.
There are more projects on slow-cook in my head. Once I have this channel set up, everything will flow!
Ben x
Comments
Amazing and Starling Photography Documentaries
I'm not a fan of women's arm pit hair.
