Flora Borsi Analysis

In a similar way to my concept and starting point, Flora Borsi has created the series, “Animayed”, in which she intends to find the common grounds between the human world and the animal kingdom. She manages to evoke the uniqueness of each animal, whilst also showing the communion between humans and animals. As well as the fact that I am inspired by her concept, I like her use of overlaying an animal with a human in a way that acts as a comparison between both people and animals. Through the colour schemes and alignment of subjects, Borsi is able to show common ground in both factors.

      In order to grab the viewers’ attention and entice them into wanting to find out more, Borsi has printed the photo as a large 2D piece which is approximately 27x23 inches. Despite the fact that it is a flat format, the huge scale acts as the selling point to the audience. I believe that she has also used this size as it leads to more detail being showcased, leading to a more successful use of textures in her work. Whilst the textures in the fur are quite crisp and rough, the smooth skin of the human acts as a juxtaposition to the fur; this juxtaposition is a way of showing a difference between animals and humans rather than just making the piece about the common ground. This contrast also shows the uniqueness in both animals and humans and despite the fact that we have resemblances, we are all different.

      Furthermore, her use of composition is another way of capturing the audience’s attention. Borsi uses a vignette in the composition to frame the subjects, which as a result acts as a spotlight on the subjects. This in a way, highlights the key message in which Borsi wants us to understand and empathise with her. Meanwhile, the positioning of both subjects shows a common facial feature between animals and humans as the eye of the rabbit is acting as the other eye of the human. This use of positioning further reinforces the concept and highlights one of the common grounds between the animal kingdom and human world.

      Additionally, in this photo, nearly every component matches in colour, which places a common theme through the composition and concept (this is the same in the majority of the pieces in “Animayed”). The colour in this composition is mainly made up of quite earthy, dull tones, for example: browns, blacks and greys. These colours are mainly based off of the animal in the piece and the colour of the subjects’ hair. However, there is also a lot of contrast in tone in this composition due to the positioning of the light, leading to an increase in the differentiation between the shadows and highlights. This use of lighting is known as, “hard lighting”.

      Finally, another factor which I like from Borsi’s work is her unique use of a shallow depth of field. This creates a slightly intimate atmosphere with the audience and further implies how close animals and humans are together. On the other hand, this use of depth of field could also be used to place the viewers into the scene as humans see through a shallow depth of field, meaning as we focus on one subject, everything else around it would be blurry and obscure. This technique allows us as the audience to witness the similarities in person and therefore changes our perspective on the matter.

       To conclude, I am going to use her work as inspiration to somehow fuse in double exposures of animals and humans into my project whilst also combing influence from my other chosen artists. As my theme is about the similarities between animals and humans, I need a common theme or aspect throughout my work and I think the colour palette through this piece is an example of what I could do; for instance, the fact that each subject in the photo has a small amount of the same colour means that the viewer can see common features more successfully. I will use Photoshop to create double exposures, however I also think that her style also resembles that of layering on top of each other, so I could build experimentations which will allow me to improve my layering skills and maybe even result in a stimulus for a final outcome. 

Source 1 - https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/657455245574067475/