City of Angels, date unknown
Jon Duenas was born in 1996 in Houston, Texas but is now based in Portland, Oregon. While at college he took a digital photography class on the art of photography. He is a fashion and editorial photographer. He is known for his double-exposure portraiture. His work is inspired by nature – forests, mountains, rivers, oceans, deserts. Duenas has “…always been fascinated with the idea of a person’s connection with their environment,” and his series of double exposure photography called ‘Deux’ layers stunning landscapes over portraiture. These ‘dreamscapes’ have a beautiful and ethereal feel.
Duenas uses a variety of cameras in his work including a Mamiya 645 Pro, a Canon EOS 1n, or a Polaroid SX-70. He uses Kodak Portra 160 or 400 for colour and Kodak Tri-X 400 for black-and-white, and for Polaroid’s he use Impossible Project PX70. He shoots film because he feels he is not able to replicate the colours and tones of the Kodak film using digital processing and printing. His process for taking double exposures is to look for an open sky and shoot the model’s profile and then keeps a mental picture of the first frame so he knows how to compose the second one. He then searches for an interesting landscape for the second frame. This frame will add further interesting lines and textures to the overall image. To get a clean silhouette, he overexposes the background while still retaining some shadow on the model to fill in with the second frame.
The image above was taken using the Canon EOS 1v and Kodak Portra 400 film. The photo is a double exposure done manually in camera, with one exposure being of the model, and the second exposure being of the city of Los Angeles, California. Evoked by the double exposure, this image has a surreal magical air about it as if the model is floating above the city.
Duenas’ work is available to buy from the Etsy website and his work can be found in various blogs and websites including the internet newspaper, ‘The Huffington Post UK’
Representation 