ABOUT DANIELLE
I don’t do my work to shock or gore for gores sake, I’m simply making visual comments on life and the human species. The evening news is far more upsetting than anything I could ever produce – and that is fact. My work is purely fiction based on reality.
I don’t know why I chose to do portraits, when I was little I used to make everyone move out of the way so I could photograph the landscape. Now I do the complete opposite and usually have no background at all and just a person as the subject.
The hardest thing for me and my style of work is getting the right reaction and expression out of my models. I normally don’t use professional models, just everyday people who are usually nervous and uncomfortable in front of cameras. People’s natural reaction is to smile when you put a camera in-front of them. But I have to stand there shouting at them “act like you want to fucking kill me” and so on…
The above shot took me ages to get, but after the reaction it got it made my models much more willing to not look ‘conventionally photogenic’ but photogenic in the way that has more impact and emotional reaction. There is beauty in everything, just not everyone sees it.
To me portraits are not meant to be just how we look aesthetically, but the experiences we go through that make us who we are, how we feel emotionally, how our subconscious and minds work.