This was Alan Walt and my 4th collaboration together.
Alan is a South African architect based in Cape Town who I met around 2007 when he approached me to shoot one of his end-of-year/Christmas cards which he sends out to his clients, usually late, but none the less around the December/January mark.
The end of year client card is a space for him to collaborate with artists and to create a thought provoking and generally provocative (when working with me) product of some kind to share with the people he has worked with during a year.
Alan usually comes to me with a starting point of some kind from which we grow an idea which I shoot. The 2013/4 collaboration intended to incorporate the “AWA” (Alan Walt Architects) logo into the cut out wedge of the models high heels. A play on power and rather reminiscent of Helmut Newtons nudes,- the model stands strong and dominantly. She stands on the clients brand (via the logo cut wedges in the heels) at the same time she’s incapacitated by wearing the heels as well as the blindfold.
The project morphed so that by the end we produced a 48 or 72 piece A4 puzzle from the image which would be delivered or sent out to his clients.
The below images show the camera RAW files in Bridge (Photoshops editing software) as the images get edited down to a final selection for the project.
Alan messed around with some of the images (below). He printed out the above files and cut them up to resemble the beginning of a collage shaped as a “W”. I like this idea better in hindsight and maybe we’ll still put it together one day as a print for his office.
Below is the first proof printed puzzle and lastly, I gave the model (a friend and also a photographic assistant in our space) a copy. I left the piece stacked up in a little mysterious pile on her desk for her to find and assemble when she came in to work.
