Levi Van Veluw - Human Landscaping

Book Ref: Lewis, R & Moore, S. (2008). Chapter 7: Photography . In: Cengage Learning The Power Of Art. 3rd ed. London: Cengage Learning. p126-127.

Video Ref: 'Landscape 1', Levi Van Veluw, 2008. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3ijV7kDg5M Accessed: 24th Oct 2015

Image URL: http://blog.sans-concept.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/04/levi.jpg

As my project is based around organic matter and the main focus that of the natural landscape it seems only necessary to combine both the natural landscape with that of the human face and find an artist who does just that as a means of inspiration. Levi Van Veluw is just one example of such an artist as he takes physical materials for the purpose of human landscaping. Veluw's work explores heavily the themes of identity and our mortal place within the world, as a result he constructs otherworldly landscapes through the use of self portrait. Mostly using his own face as the canvas to create his work by placing 3 dimensional objects onto the skin to construct a physical representation of nature on his own body. Human landscaping is very much the key theme within his work whereby the final result is that of a single photograph combining his creation of he landscape with that of an ultimate physical embodiment. "Landscape 1" took roughly 13 hours to create and construct, materials such as moss, plastic animals, tree miniatures and shrubbery were glued to the face to build up the landscape. Veluw considers normal landscape photography a boring art form and therefore creates his own representation through the medium of performance art. This series in particular shows our attachment to nature through a physical representation.
I found this series of work from Veluw particularly inspiring for creating a landscape based makeup look as it took a very literal interpretation and made the overall concept more abstract and visually engaging. The most inspiring images were actually that of the bottom two which don't necessarily show landscape in a direct and obvious manner such as the upper two images, but instead are more of a close up/texturised interpretation of the earths features. The first image appears to be that of bark from a tree whereby Veluw has completely wrapped himself in shreds. Both the eyes, ears and mouth are covered by the bark which to an extent removes his human features rendering him featureless and unidentifiable. Despite this he can still be identified as a person but implies that nature is dominant over people. This is a similar case with the next image which creates the same effect but through the use of stones and pebbles, this is a contrast to the first two images which are visibly human thus creating the illusion of the human world and nature being at one with each other instead of dominant.
In regards to inspiration for my own work I doubt that I will take my designs to such extremes predominately due to the fact that this work blends more into a prosthetics department as opposed to editorial. That being said the use of materials to recreate organic matter is particularly inspiring and something that would most defiantly aid in recreating landscape features onto the skin.