WORDS AND MAKEUP EMILIE LOUIZIDES - PHOTOGRAPHY LAURA ZEPP – VIDEOGRAPHY MAXMILIAN SKACH – MODELS JUSTIN TAILOR & SATONE JOHNSON
F Word's Contributing Beauty Editor and makeup artist Emilie Louizides reaches into the archives and shares with us a beautiful project that explores topics of intimacy, communication and human behaviours when applying makeup to her subjects. Here's what she had to say...
As long as I’ve studied makeup and worked professionally as a makeup artist, I’ve noticed that cultural, historical, and academic facets of beauty are often overlooked or dismissed. I’ve strived to identify the substance, credibility, and meaning behind and within makeup and makeup artistry in order to question the belief that it is based solely on superficiality. While pursuing an MA in Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries at Central Saint Martins, my expanding interest in relationships, combined research on human behavior and dynamics, and my own experience communicating and bonding with new people on a regular basis as a makeup artist led me to a new perspective on makeup artistry being intertwined with intimacy.
About a year ago, I had the pleasure of doing my civil partner Justin’s makeup and a stranger’s named Satone. Justin and I had the opportunity to rediscover the intimacy we already share as a couple while Satone and I were able to discover intimacy for the first time. The aspect of touch, close proximity, sitting face-to-face, and the act of creating something amplified the experience and allowed us to connect in a way much more profound than if we had been ordinary strangers.
Makeup artistry has the ability to serve as a powerful, change-making method. This newfound awareness has helped significantly with alleviating my own frustrations that have come from other people’s ignorance and dismissive attitudes toward the beauty industry. This work challenges the status quo of makeup and makeup artistry by investigating what it is, who it’s for, and how it can be used, all while helping people to feel seen, heard, valued, and motivated to be individually creative and uniquely expressive.
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