Pandora's Box

The Brief: Pandora's Box

You have been approached by a popular alternative fashion magazine aimed and young people, to provide photographs for an article about shoes. The theme of the article is "Pandora's box". The images are to fill two double page spreads and the front cover. You have been shown the layouts. All that is required of you is three images as the layout of the magazine only asks for a background image. The images are to be in colour and feature only one model that has a distinctive look. The article is not about a specific designer, therefore the model does not have to be tied to any brand. The choice is yours., but remember the magazine specialises in alternative fashion. The images are to be delivered in digital and print format. The prints are to be displayed the offices of the magazine and must be smaller than 12 x 16 inches. The digital files are to be in .tif format and must be 300dpi ready for print.

This Idea stemmed from my love of mythology and history. We all know the story of 'Pandora's Box' and how it held all the evils of the world, but do we?

Pandora was the first mortal woman on earth, Zeus asked the god of creation, Hephaestus, to make for him. She was created from water and earth, Aphrodite granted her the gift of beauty, Hera granted her curiosity, Hermes bestowed persuasiveness and Apollo granted her the gift of music. She was then given to Epimetheus the brother of Prometheus, to punish the latter for stealing fire from Mount Olympus, Zeus also gave her a Jar (Not a box?!? Shocking! It was a mistranslation as I'll explain in a moment.) she was told to never open this Jar, under no circumstances.  Yet being human curiosity over came the instructions and she opened it. When she did all of the evils that now inhabit this here world came flying out. A terrified Pandora then closed the jar trapping one last thing inside, Hope. This was exactly what Zeus planned to happen.

The mistranslation has been accredited to Erasmus of Rotterdam in the 16th Century, he mixed up 'Pithos' (a jar that can be up to the size of a small human) with 'Pyxis' (meaning box) whilst he was translating Heriod's story into Latin. This mistake has stuck ever since. I still used a box to make the theme fit with common culture.




This image is a Mixed-Media piece by the artist Howard David Johnson, here he has used a combination of Oil paint, Acrylic paint and various digital medium, this was one of the first pieces of art work I found whilst researching this brief. I really love the feeling that it creates, some of Johnson's pieces are too obviously mixed media and I find that that can annoy me a little because it make the piece seem like it can't deiced what it wants to be which of the two, three or even four media used. This piece however is a perfect marriage of these media into one very impressive piece. Some of Johnson's better pieces are his pure oil paintings. I was tempted to go for this kinda of look with my images but I decided to stay simplistic. If I was being paid to shoot this I would have gone for something a lot more elaborate and Tim Walker-esque.

Other artists have also had a crack at the theme of Pandora's Box.

Here is one I found on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshsommers/2460287287/in/photostream/


Also on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/onesharpeye/sets/72157621305121981/with/3738704744/


Here Pandora's box features as part of a series about humanity and it is featured under temptation: http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Humanity/280266


When I was editing through my images I found them quite boring, and was about to start planning a reshoot, then I remembered about split toning, I'd never tried it on a colour photograph before but it turns out it works rather well. I went for a navy for the darker tones and yellow for the paler which has given me a very nice tone range. I realised after that this is very similar to cross-processing.