Sean Conroy

Exploring the story of Eros and Psyche through my discipline of Photography, Film and Video.

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Story Project Statement

I have decided to explore the theme of story through reimaginings of the greek tale of Eros and Psyche. I am mainly looking at the section of the story where Psyche is married to a man she isn't allowed to look upon. Through this I am looking at themes of Beauty, Vulnerability, Mortality and self image 

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Eros taking flight upon being seen. Here I used red coloured plastic as an experimental technique for abstracting the image.

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Abstracted Beauty

Here I have used Thick layers of Vaseline to create an almost painterly look. This of course carries into the incredible beauty of both Psyche and Eros being abstracted with the darkness.

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I experimented with placing cyanotype inside of camera obscura. There was definitely a faint representation that came out on the cyanotype, unfortunately after washing the cyanotype the image almost entirely disappeared. This could represent Eros flying out the window and disappearing into the sky upon being seen by Psyche.

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Cyanotype

Here I created a series of cyanotypes. The first of an abstracted nude, The second of a yonic seashell, and Third a combination of the two along with flowers. 

The series evokes the themes I have been focusing on in relation to Eros and Psyche; vulnerability, sexuality, beauty and mortality.

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Psyche’s view of Eros

This set of photos depicts Psyches view of Eros as a vague idea of what he may look like. The use of red lighting symbolises Passion and Vigor, showing that Psyche only knows this abstract being through a relationship based around passion. Vaseline was used over the lens as an experimental technique for abstraction.

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Negatives I created for use with Cyanotype

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Eros and Psyche cyanotype

a video of my cyanotype process for creating camera less photography in relation to Eros and Psyche.

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Photographing the yonic seashell disembodied from the figure. Once again exploring themes of vulnerability, eroticism and sexuality in relation to Eros and Psyche. The use of Vaseline as an experimental technique is again used throughout these pieces as a form of abstraction.

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This is a series of Photographs that was inspired by the themes of Intimacy and Sexuality which are both themes present in the story of Eros and Psyche. 

I used the object of a seashell for its yonic appearance. I believe it to look quite inviting and erotic. I placed the seashell over my navel in this series as the navel  has often been associated with eroticism through history in various cultures. The first image uses the Vaseline technique that has been present in my other works in relation to this brief.

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Inside Teiji Furuhashi's "Lovers" in Virtual Reality (360 VR Video) | AR...

Lovers by Teiji Furuhashi

This piece by Furuhashi explores intimacy and relationships. I interpreted it to be about the idea of what a relationship should and shouldn't be, as dictated by society. In the interview that plays over this clip Furuhashi talks about ideas such as the expectation of monogamy in a relationship, and how even though he doesn't project his own likeness in the piece, he is still very much present in the work. This piece depicts couples coming together but seemingly never fully connect, I think this perhaps represents the idea that once two people come together in a relationship they expect to become one but in reality they both remain their own separate entities. I also see the work to be about how peoples history of being vulnerable with others shapes who they are and who they become. “Lovers” is especially technically impressive considering it was created in 1994. It is also very poignant as the artist died of aids related illnesses shortly after the interview.

I find this piece to be interesting and relevant to my own work for its perspective on expectations within relationships.

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Abstracted Self Portraits 

Here I have photographed more self portraits in relation to themes of Intimacy and vulnerability. Once again Vaseline is used to create an abstraction. However in this series I have introduced a purple satin sheet. The colour purple represents Royalty and Grandeur (as Eros is a god), Power (to show the uneven power dynamic), and Mystery (as Eros will not reveal himself to Psyche). 

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Abstracted Self Portraits 

This is a series of timed self portraits. I rubbed Vaseline over a plastic sheet and but the plastic sheet in front of the lens. This created interesting  impressionistic style photographs. I chose to photo myself nude to reflect the themes within the story of Eros and Psyche; Intimacy and vulnerability being two big themes within the story. These photographs represent the vague image of her husband that Psyche may have built up in her head from spending every night with him. they also show Eros’ inability to completely open up and show himself to Psyche. This brings up a lot of questions as to why Eros is unable to reveal himself to Psyche. Does he feel shame? Is he afraid?

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Capturing beauty in the darkness by illuminating the subject with the flash. This reflects Psyche illuminating the beauty that is Eros using an oil lamp.

In the future I could print out a series of night time photographs and distort the images using various techniques and chemicals. this would represent Psyche accidentally spilling hot oil on eros and distorting his beautiful face.

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Psyche: The Mortal Being of Eternal Beauty

I photographed my friend Casey ( @k00262172 ) through a thin sheet of plastic with Vaseline rubbed over it, to create a somewhat distorted image of her. The images have a dream like quality to them which illustrates the idea of Psyche being so unbelievably beautiful that people stopped worshipping the gods in favour of her.

I then experimented with how to present the images as shown here. The first places Psyche between two images of blooming flowers. Flowers of course symbolising beauty and the ephemeral nature of mortality, highlighting Psyches mortal status. 

In the second piece I decided to overlay the images to create a more ethereal feeling to the photo.

Then in the Third piece I simply arranged the photos side by side in a photographic sequence.

“Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from the eternal” is a line from the Italian writer Dante Alighieri known best for his work ‘The Divine Comedy’. I felt this line best accompanied the photos as it suggests the theme of the piece. The line was hand written, inspired by how Duane Michals hand writes poetry and Philosophy to accompany his photographs.

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Eros and Psyche

Psyche, a mortal girl, is known to be so beautiful that people begin to worship her like a goddess. This upsets Aphrodite the goddess of love, as people begin to forget about her in favour of this mortal girl instead. Aphrodite orders her son Eros to go down and make her fall in love with an ugly beast.

Upon seeing her Eros wonders how he could be so cruel to such a beauty, and scratches himself with one of his love arrows, making him fall incredibly in love with Psyche.

No man wishes to marry Psyche as they are happy to admire her but know they are unworthy of such beauty. Worried about finding their daughter a husband, Psyche’s parents seek out the oracle of Apollo fearing they must have angered the gods in some way. The oracle tells them that Psyche is to marry a horrible creature that even some gods fear, and instructs them to take Psyche to the mountains for their marriage. They follow the instructions and bring her up to the mountains.

Zephyrus carries Psyche with the west wind to meet her new Husband. Psyche is taken to a pretty meadow where there is a nice house located she goes inside, this is where her new husband is. She never sees him, only ever hearing and feeling him in the darkness. He always leaves before sunrise but she begins to look forward to when he returns. He always forbids her to look upon him.

She becomes pregnant and is very happy with her new life. Her family become jealous when they here how nice her life is, so they tell her not to forget that her husband is a horrible beast and is planning to eat her and her baby. They suggest a plan to Psyche. One night Psyche decides to carry out this plan, she waits till her husband falls asleep, she then gets up and gets an oil lamp and a dagger. She is ready to kill the him, but upon illuminating him with the oil lamp she sees the most beautiful creature. It is Eros himself that she has been married to the whole time. She is so startled by this that she accidentally wounds herself on one of his love arrows, she falls deeply in love with him, and her feverish passion she accidentally spills hot oil on him. He awakens and flies away in an instant. 

Pan finds Psyche roaming the earth looking for her love, they have an interaction where she acknowledges his divinity, and continues on looking. Psyche wanders home where she informs her sisters of the creatures true identity that she discovered following their plan, her sisters both become jealous again and decide to climb up the mountains and ask Zephyrus to take them like they did Psyche. The two sisters jump hoping to be caught by the west wind but instead fall to a brutal death.

Eventually Psyche finds that she must complete a series of trials in order to be reunited with her love. and the story continues on.

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John Dugdale

Dugdale is one of my favourite artists working with cyanotype. In the early 90s Dugdale was diagnosed HIV positive, he fought off multiple bouts of pneumonia for months. His immune system went down to only 4 T-cells. While in the hospital he documented everything around him, the stories of the patients he shared with, his surroundings, the holistic methods many patients tried. Eventually after a long battle he managed to get his T-cells back up and he was able to go back home, although the battle had left him blind and half paralysed. When he got back home he phoned up a gallery and began working on an exhibition. He began creating art with vintage photography techniques. He would set up the camera and pose as he wanted his friends to pose, ask them to focus it, then they would swap places and he would capture the image. He didn’t want the images to be horrific or gruesome, but still wanted to portray his experience from HIV and the treatment of HIV+ people. The photos are nudes as he believes “Life is transient. Once you leave this world, you fly into the universe without clothes. I want people to learn you cannot protect yourself by hiding behind clothes.” His first exhibition after coming out of hospital was titled “Lengthening Shadows Before Nightfall”

“I wanted to show the essence of what it is like to be a human being. When I got out of the hospital, I didn’t want to show all the all the horrifying things that I went through, like going paralysed, having seizures, and almost swallowing my tongue. I wanted to show the beauty of life and how one should act around illness”

Today John is proud to now have 520 T-cells. Many people feel sad that he has no sight, but Dugdale clarifies that he is happy. Content with the path his life went in, he knows it all happened for a reason and he’s glad it did.