Fairlie great re-creation of artwork
School teacher and photographer takes Getty photo challenge to the next level
What do the famous painting of Whistler’s Mother and Netflix have to do with each other? Ka¯piti College school teacher and photographer Fairlie Atkinson has taken the Getty Museum photo challenge to the next level.
With museums around the world closing their doors, and no chance of seeing artworks in the flesh, Getty Museum in Los Angeles came up with a creative way to share art with the world while in lockdown which has since gone global.
Posting on Twitter, the museum challenged people to re-create their favourite painting while in isolation with objects and people in their home.
Seeing posts going around social media, Fairlie thought the attempts she had seen were very clever and decided to take it up a notch, using her photography skills to re-create the paintings for a lockdown project and adding her social commentary.
Living in Paraparaumu, Atkinson and her partner have four children between them and also have two exchange students living with them during the school year.
“I talked to all the kids and teens at home and said I wanted to do something similar during lockdown using only the things that we had on hand and also making a bit of a comment on some of the issues in lockdown with supply chains, panic buying and binge watching,” said Atkinson.
“It started out as my idea and turned into a collaborative project with the whole family.” Choosing images was important as Atkinson wanted to showcase how the world we live in now is not so different from times in the past where there was great societal disturbance with the exception of the advancement in technology that we now enjoy.
“I wanted images from eras so fundamentally different from the one we live in now but also that shared instances of great societal upheaval such as plagues and wars.
“What we are experiencing now is unprecedented in our lifetimes in New Zealand.
“How we have handled it was something I wanted to capture, just as the paintings capture those things from the eras they were painted in.”
Images include the Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer which has been re
created to include a facemask, now a regular sight in today’s society.
Self-portrait at the easel ,a selfportrait by Sofonisba Anguissola, has been re-created to include a picture of a Covid-19 graphic on the easel rather than the famous devotional panel depiction of the Virgin Mary and Jesus as a child.
Arrangement in Grey and Black No 1, better known as Whistler’s Mother, by James McNeill Whistler has been re-created with Netflix featuring as the background image on the wall.
“I tried to pick things I thought would lend themselves to social commentary but be also easily recognisable. It wasn’t easy and I tried a number that were not as successful as I had hoped so I discarded them.” With Atkinson and her partner working fulltime as teachers and finding online learning is taking up more hours than face to face instruction, she had to manage her time well to complete this project.
“I’ve done 15 images over the last three weeks and am just finishing off the last five. “I hope to have 20 done by the end of it . . . if I do it outside of lockdown the impetus and purpose for it will be lost,” she said.
I tried to pick things I thought would lend themselves to social commentary but be recognisable. Fairlie Atkinson