Hannah Starkey is a British-based photographer whose work is both performative and staged. She works with models within carefully considered settings and locations in order to recreate everyday scenes in a cinematic style.
Hannah Starkey - Work Exhibited at Saatchi Gallery
The element which drew me to her work was the considered way she positions the figure within the frame and the evocative and contextual mood conveyed through the use of this. Having executed two initial shoots I decided that there was something lacking in my images and it wasn’t until I remembered the work of Starkey that I decided a human presence would give the images a new context, allowing them to be more readable to a greater audience.
Due to the restrictions of Covid-19, travelling with models to widespread locations proved to be virtually impossible. Therefore, I made the decision to place myself as the subject - using a Bluetooth shutter release to capture the images and a great deal of trial and error!
The bed and my own night-gowned presence remain two constants within all the images, aiming to engage the viewer by allowing them to enter the images in a way that is significant for them.
Bluetooth shutter release and my night-gowned self