Sebum Silhouettes
Can I find beauty in the dirty? Sebum Silhouettes is an attempt to cope with a dastardly dermal situation that never ceases. Inspired by the gesture of blotting one's face with a tissue to reduce the shine caused by facial oil, I sought to make portraits of individuals using the material we normally try to minimize. Mimicking the process of the tissue blotting, I asked individuals to press their face into a sheet of translucent paper which would capture the layer of oil sitting on their face. Immediately following, I smoothed powdered graphite over the sheet and shook it out. Wherever facial oil was on the paper, the powdered graphite stuck, thus making an image that can be used as a one of kind negative for photographic printing. Areas such as the forehead where there's more oil (and thus graphite stuck to the sheet) block out the light, thus creating positive images that become portraits of the individual via their sebum.