Bill Gekas is an artist born and living in Melbourne, Australia. A self taught photographer that learnt the technicals of photography using a 35mm film slr camera from the mid 90′s and switched to digital in 2005. His inspiration are the old master painters – e.g. Rembrandt, Vermeer, Raphael etc. and exactly this inspiration determines the style of his pictures substantially.
“Many of the ideas come from my appreciation of the works by the old master painters. Caravaggio, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Raphael, Velazquez etc. But I also find I get a lot of inspiration from watching foreign films where the cinematic scenes play a prominent role. Fusing these worlds together help create an atmospheric portrait. Of course any film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet also raises inspiration to create, and I always keep a notebook with rough sketches and ideas by me.”
“This style is usually defined as fine art portraiture and you’ll find it lacks the more candid, high key, usual smiling expressions by subjects of modern portraiture that is in current vogue at the moment by many portrait studios. This is a more emotive and creative style of portraiture which a certain type of audience finds appealing.”
“Portraiture came into becoming my main genre about the same time in 2005. Up until then I really was shooting a bit of everything but after discovering some amazing portrait works by the great past photographers I realized that the subjects in these well known photographs although were complete strangers had connected with me, the portraits were eerie, almost surreal and that’s when I knew it was going to be portraiture, portraiture with a fine art aesthetic and a creative flair where I could fuse historical references be it light, props or atmosphere with a more modern contemporary expression from the subject. “
Many thanks to Bill for his permission to report on his work here. For more infos & photography inspiration by Bill, you can visit her homepage and his portfolio´s on the bottom link:
These photos are superb!! So Vermeer like. You are a wonderful artist. And your model is perfect. Thank you.
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