DESTROY BY RANKIN

Images found on the official 'Destroy by Rankin' website

These are a series of photos by a photographer who goes by the name of Rankin. It was for a project called 'Destroy', made to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of a charity named Youth Music, by taking the pictures of 70 musicians and celebrities and "destroying them". The year of this event was in 2009, so it can be wise to suggest that these photos may have been taken in the same year (or possibly earlier to prepare for the event).

These photos would have been taken by the photographer, and then possibly manipulated using either a graphics software such as Photoshop, and using different techniques, such as Guassian Blur, or made a copy of the photograph and painted over the faces.Or, in one case could have hand cut a the subject out of the picture, and  inserted a  newspaper article in place of the subject. This may have been done to emphasise the beauty of these  pictures being "destroyed", and the identities of the subjects are therefore taken away. Where there are paintings, there hasn't been much use of tone or texture, but they seem to be somewhat flat (meaning that he, or someone else could have most likely use acrylic paint).

With these photos, it would be wise to suggest that these are portraiture, but they could also be classified as contemporary, because it's a modern way of showing off portraiture. The reason as to why the photos are made they way they have, is unknown but may how the subject views themselves. For instance, cut out figure replaced by a newspaper may feel like he has lost his privacy altogether, and that it has become a huge part of his life, or the people whose face have been painted over may represent them having to be who they really aren't and replace it with a different personality that is sure to be appreciated by others, hence the meaning of feeling 'destroyed'. Because of the unknown reasons, the title of the piece leaves it open for imagination and different interpretations, something that differentiates from a book, where the feelings and events are "spoon fed" to the audience.

When first seeing the works, I was quite disturbed, because of how the subjects faces and figures were taken away, almost like some sort of nightmare, where I was surrounded by many defaced people, and I was the only one who wasn't (I have weird dreams).  But despite this, I do like the photos because it's a different way of showing the possible feelings of the subjects, instead of going along with the traditional way of just showing their facial expressions. And because of this, I would like to use this method in my piece, when showing photos of my subject's family and of herself.