How local photographer Jade Froud creates her eye-catching work
I first saw photographer Jade Froud’s work at the University of Suffolk degree show back in June and was immediately drawn in by it.
The images made me stop and look twice – at first they look like the paintings of old masters, but look closely and you’ll notice that one woman is clasping a pack of fags, another is taking a selfie.
Jade’s reimagining of well known paintings not only made me think about the vast changes that have taken place in our culture, but also the changes in how women are now represented in modern artwork.
I was so intrigued by her images that I reached out to Jade on Instagram to ask her how she came up with the idea for her Modern Renaissance series.
“I started my final year at University wanting to create adverts and design magazine covers, using my own photography as the cover photos, but there was only so much I could do,” explained Jade.
“After loads and loads of trials with putting different images together and creating something new, I finally made a piece that worked. I created something that combined something classic and something modern.”
“I played around with editing modern objects with classic renaissance paintings in Photoshop until I made a piece of two images that complimented each other.”
“The first image I made was ‘The Girl with the Pearl Earring’ with the Beats and that’s what kick started the series. I simply overlaid the images over each other and played around with the opacity, blending and shading around the beats to fit the shape of her head, and then overlaid another layer of ‘crackling paint’ to the beats and then again, blended it all together to make it look like it was part of the painting.”
I think my favourite of Jade’s work has to the ‘The Girl with the Pearl Earring’ with the headphones. But I also love the subtlety of the piece with the Chanel earring.
To see more of Jade’s work, head over to her Instagram account. She is currently exploring other types of photography including at car shows and experimenting with lomography. I’m looking forward to seeing what she does next!
