b. 1978, Akron, Ohio
Jen Davis is a Brooklyn based photographer. For the past eleven years she has been working
on a series of Self-Portrait’s dealing with issues regarding beauty, identity, and body image.
She has also been exploring men, as a subject and is interested in investigating the idea
of relationships, both physical and psychological, with the camera. She received her MFA
from Yale University in 2008, and her BA from Columbia College Chicago in 2002.
Jen is represented by Lee Marks Fine Art and ClampArt.
Jen Davis photographed herself over an 11 year period as a self love project. Being unhappy with her body, Jen Davis decided to make a difference, so she decided to take photographs of herself to help herself fall in love with her body. During this time she experimented with various men, photographing both the psychological and physical relationships they shared. Watching her timeline you begin to feel her emotions, her pain, her courage, everything she is feeling she manages to portray. Jen Davis ended up having gastric band surgery.
Jen Davis is one of my favourite photographers, I can definitely imagine myself doing work like hers in the future, I am all for self-love and this, to me, is the best form. I decided to research Jen Davis as I can relate my work with hers if I do the bedroom shoots, I’d like to focus on other people but her photographs inspire me and would definitely temp me to do self-portraits.
Jen Davis does not only photograph herself but also photographs the men in her life, so she will take photographs of them in their beds. What I love most about these photographs is that no photographs is consistent to the next. All the lighting is different, there are different beds, different colour bedrooms, so on.
I would love to photograph people in their beds, I don’t want them to be posed as such, I’d like them to be as natural as possible with natural lighting.
Even if I do not carry on with this idea throughout this project, as always I will always have Jen Davis in mind for future projects.
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