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| MIFF executive director Jaie Laplante & portraiture artist Shayna Batya unveil MIFF 2014 Poster at CU1 Gallery |
Miami International Film Festival (MIFF) has selected Manchester-born, Miami-based environmental portraiture artist & photojournalist Shayna Batya as the official poster artist for its 31st edition (March 7-16, 2014). For the 4th time in MIFF history, a photograph will represent the Festival.
Shayna Batya’s image is a behind-the-scenes moment shared with a character during a local film shoot where she utilized bold contrasts of natural light and dark (chiarascuro) to affect the portrait, and in a collision of two worlds (real and fabricated), you don’t know if it’s real or not.
The photograph is a documentary shot from a fictional film set, using only natural light – which combines the 2 major forms that MIFF celebrates (features and documentaries). And finally, it embodies MIFF’s theme of “Every Character Under The Sun” – there’s no doubt, that this man’s character is as deeply ingrained as his “scars”.
Artist statement: “One can tell so much or so little from a portrait photograph. Photography allows a viewer to guess if an image is “real” or not…Like film, a portrait photograph mirrors reality in a way that can be so convincing, it feels ‘real’. Everybody has a story, everyone is a character.” – Shayna Batya
