For my “Response to Persona” project I chose to focus on the main scene that makes you question whether Elisabeth and Alma are different people or the same person. The repeated speech they each give about the restraints and expectations of motherhood and “motherness” as well as the splitting image of their faces together are what stuck with me most from the film. I decided to focus on the “split face” moment in Persona - but instead of splitting the image down the middle I decided to combination print the portraits over each other to create a sort of “hybrid face”.
The photos are lined up to merge towards the middle 50/50 split of their faces, moving from a seperate portrait, to the other individual entering the frame, to a 75/25 split portrait, and finally the halfway split of their faces (and then back again in reverse for the other model). I also contrasted my models by having one wear white and the other black, white the white-based model posed against a dark background and the black-based model posed against a light background.
Here is the speech from the movie that I am referring to, as although it didn’t directly influence this work I think there is a lot that I may potentially pull from it in my work later on:
A party, wasn't it? It was late and rather noisy. In the early hours, someone said to you… "Elisabet, you have everything as a woman and as an artist...but you lack motherliness…”
“You laughed because you thought it was ridiculous...but you couldn't stop thinking about what he had said. You grew more worried... so you let your husband make you pregnant. You wanted to be a mother. When you knew it was definite, you became afraid... afraid of responsibility, afraid of being tied down, afraid to leave the theater... afraid of pain, afraid of dying, afraid of your swelling body. But all the time you acted, played the part of the happy expectant mother. And everybody said, "She has never been this beautiful." You tried several times to get rid of the fetus. But you failed. When you knew it was inevitable you started to hate the child...and wished it would be stillborn. You wished that the baby would be dead. You wanted a dead child. It was a long and difficult delivery. You suffered for days. The baby was delivered with forceps. You looked with disgust at your screaming child and whispered, "Can't you die soon? Can't you die?" The boy screamed day and night, and you hated him. You were afraid. You felt guilty. In the end, relatives and a nanny took care of the boy... and you could leave your sickbed and return to the theater. But the suffering was not over. The boy was seized by a massive and unfathomable love for his mother. You resisted desperately because you felt that you could not return it. You try and try...but the meetings with him are cruel and awkward. You can't do it. You're cold and indifferent. And he looks at you. He loves you, and he's soft, and you want to hit him for not leaving you alone. You think he's repulsive, with his thick lips and ugly body and his moist and pleading eyes. You think he's repulsive, and you're afraid. No. I'm not like you. I don't feel the same as you.”
-the photos were taken with my 35mm camera (Fujica St-801) with Kodak 400TX film. I took them in the lightroom using studio lights and my camera’s flash.
