Crochet needles in hands, a man with a beard with red polka sweaters just crossing your eyes but did you notice that everything behind him has the same pattern including the seat he is seated in?
It’s none other than the theme from Joseph Ford the man behind the lens. He calls this as “knitted camouflage” for his new project “Invisible Jumpers.” During his discussion over the phone, he stated that: “His clothes are real but they blend seamlessly with the scene. You need a double-take to figure it out.”
Further, it is a dream come true as it took 4 long years to make it happen for the Brighton city genius. He brought his perception by dressing animals, fruits with crochets which represent their surroundings and color.
He depicted portraits of a man wearing a jumper fastening down the front which color co-ordinates with the tile behind, a cute dog covered in a green-themed cover which portrays a bush he smells and so on.
For every single picture, Joseph joined hands with a professional knitter Nina Dodd from his city who worked hours to bring his vision into reality. The inspiration was drawn from Nina says Ford. He also said: “We first met for an unrelated series, and she showed me a sweater she’d knitted based on a bus seat. I thought it was visually brilliant. We set out to find a model and did that first composition.”
Creating the photographs was equal to a “labor-intensive process.” He traveled to fascinating places to get the right pictures. So he made sure to take a sample of him to find whether it would be ideal for the model. He also took pictures of the empty locality to get an insight in order to match with color, smoothness, and quality. With these, he used his drawing skills to get what he wanted.
Besides, the shooting process took a long time and he said: “To ensure the jumpers really blended, I’d have to repeatedly adjust the model’s position and clothes.” “It could easily take a half a day to get the balance right.”
The book had the faces of “British DJ Fatboy Slim, who stood with a big smile, Parisian graffiti artist Monsieur Chat and Spanish graffiti writer, painter and illustrator Popay, who posed with their own works.”
“Working with imaginary is quite enthralling,” says Ford, who keeps coming up with such unique ideas for each of his projects as these imaginaries make you go out of the box to get what you desire. Adding to this, “I like to take photos that have that effect on people, and really enjoyed using people to create that effect. The human element makes them all the more interesting.”
However, it was not easy to bring the perfect edit to a picture as it was quite tricky. Some of them had knitted spaces seen clearly but it was apt for the theme which was wanted.
Unlike his peers, he usually makes use of editing and CGI whereas for this it was not except for correcting colors during his post-shoot work.
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