Portraits are the most common style of imagery that surrounds us on a daily basis. It’s on your phone, books, television, walls, and even your bathroom. What inherently defines a ‘portrait’ isn’t really a direct answer most of the time. You can say a person within an image is a portrait but one might argue that a statue could be a portrait or a photograph of someone’s bedroom is a portrait.

 A photo of someone’s bedroom is actually a portrait and the direct inspiration of this project. Bedroom Fashion is a series of photographs dedicated to capturing the essence of the subject within the boundaries of their most intimate space. Henry uses a combination of lightning techniques and fashion hand picked by the subjects to express themselves to the audience.

The parameters set out for this project was to create several unique portraits all completely different to each subject. The project is a hybrid between portraiture and fashion. In a sense of fashion the clothes are present to be displayed uniquely in different environments but have deeper meaning as it’s present within the boundaries of the wearers personal space, which is a direct reflection of their personality. 

This idea of photographing subjects and bringing out the individual’s characteristics through the lens has been an ongoing idea present within my portraiture work. Continuing that idea of being able to capture somebody for them and emerging the audience into the portrait almost allowing them to feel like they personally knew the subject. 

The inspiration for this series came from Menno Aden’s Room Portraits series. Aden is a German photographer who created an entire series of photographs of interiors in Berlin. These were portraits of people’s bedrooms, classrooms, bars, stores, apartments, and even a car park. There’s a sense of surveillance present within each photograph and even more when we see the insides of a person’s bedroom.