In 2007, National Geograhic award winning fine-art portrait photographer, Jared Collins, relocated his studio from New York City to Ubud, Bali where he set out to create a dramatic series of images documenting the most distinctive Balinese women adorned in ornate ceremonial costumes.
To produce this special collection of images, Collins spent more than 6 months traveling throughout Ubud and the surrounding villages for castings where more than 2,600 candidates were seen. Ultimately, only 21 of them were chosen to be photographed based on their physical characteristics and their disposition.
Collins had expected that the age of the models would likely range from 18 to 21 years old, but during the casting process, Collins came to discover that by the time the Balinese women had reached their late teens and early 20´s, something had gotten lost in them - "their energy wasn´t strong enough." Only the kids that he had seen still had "it," and instead of shooting models between 18-21 years old as he had initially expected, the ones that were photographed would in fact range from 5-10 years old. Once the models were decided upon, Collins then personally styled every aspect of the costumes and accessories from head to toe for each subject.
It was extremely important for the project that the costumes and crowns were true to the classical ways of the past and the models were particularly beautiful. Even though much of the costuming Collins chose was designed for dance ceremonies, the models did not necessarily have to be dancers by training so to speak, but they did have to represent the island exceptionally well.
In order to accomplish the carefully styled look for each model, Collins collaborated with a talented make up artist from Denpasar who also happened to have one of the the largest and most complete costume collections for traditional clothing on the entire island. She allowed him to go into her extensive collection to style each and every model individually to create the best look for them.
Styling alone took more than a month of 7 to 10 hour days. After Collins came to the determination as to what the costume and accessories for the model would be, make-up was then tested on each model. It is important to remember that these were kids that they were working with and it was not unusual for these styling sessions to have 3 girls at a time sitting around for 6, 7 or 8 hours. It was truly incredible how patient they (and their partents) were.
Some of the kids had to return 2 or even 3 times because after Collins reviewed his reference pictures from the styling session, he decided that he didn't like their look and would continue to bring them back for styling until the look was just right.
Photographing the models was done over a period of three straight 9 hour days with no break on any of the shooting sessions. This was the longest casting, the longest styling and the longest shooting session Collins has ever conducted for a single fine art project.
All of the images that will be seen in the exhibition at Tony Raka Gallery opening on December 26th were made using fully manual photography, nothing digital whatsoever, and each photograph is painstakingly printed by hand in Collins´ darkroom. Because Bali did not have a darkroom when he first arrived there, Collins had to build a darkroom from scratch and hand carried or imported every single piece of equipment as well as shiped in all of the chemistry in order to create the ability to make the fine art prints. This fully working large-format darkroom is the only one of its kind on the island.
In part, what makes these photographs so special is Collins´ signature process of printing. Using a light sensitive liquid emulsion, he paints this chemical onto a fine piece of watercolor paper and then projects the negative onto it. The result is an image that looks more like a hybrid of painting, drawing and photography. Along with Collins´ specialized style of shooting and his aesthetic, this is what gives these images their unique texture and look. "With this type of printmaking, no two prints are ever the same and each one is truly an original. Each will have it´s own characteristics and subtleties."
The medium of traditional manual photography is barely 150 years old, but it is already in it´s sunset and it´s impending death is of tremendous concern to Collins. It is becoming harder and harder to find the supplies needed to create images on negatives and even harder to find the materials to make manual prints.
It is immediately clear when viewing one of Collins´ portraits that these are very different from an ordinary photograph. It is his hope that these photographs will allow people all over the world to see both the preservation of the Balinese culture as well as the medium
which was used to create these images - both of which are in jeopardy of being lost to modernization.
