Tree Woman

For my next shoot I want to look into a more true to heart subject. The majority of people on earth experience some sort of skin problem, whether this be acne, esma, dry chapped skin and in my next shoot I want to look into an extreme skin disease called Epidermodysplasia verruciformis. This diseases rots the skin and makes it appear like tree bark. With this subject being a very real subject in most peoples lives I need to find a strong link with it and fashion. This will be hard due to the model industry being very prejudges against height weight and the way you look, a skin diseases would defer a models career.Therefore I am going to have to make my model wear her diseases like an outfit.

While researching into how I may be able to produce an image where my models disease makes up the outfit itself I came across surrealist photographer Levi Van Veluw. Veluw used textures to make his clothe this subject, to make it appear like they have abstract skin and in a sense like they have this disease which I am trying to portray. The way that Veluw extremifys the skin adds to more of a surreal art image, treating this mans body like a work of art rather than a possible skin diseases. I do feel that I need to use the same basics of Veluw to extremify the situation and give my subject her name 'Tree Girl'.

I have also for inspiration looked into some of my own personal work, this mainly to give myself an idea editorial wise how I could make up the disease and extreamify it. In this image I elongated the tree bark up several arms to bring to life the tree and make it appear surreal. The main question for me is could this technique work with my fashion image? Could I do something like this? I do believe that if I did chose to edit my photograph using the same techniques as in this image due to my experience I would be able to get the most out of the image and truly make it surreal. This though is something I will need to practice and play with in post production to see if this would work with my fashion image which I am planning to shoot.