Gilliard Bressan
Gilliard Bressan is a fashion and scenic photographer who has been internationally published by PhotoVogue, U+MAG, Pitch Magazine, Sicky Magazine, Sophie Magazine, and Dreck Magazine. He won the award for best photographer from Portugal at the 9th International Photo Competition by 35AWARDS. Gilliard describes his work as “the interplay between architecture and street photography to create images which tell stories and evoke powerful emotions…a modern flâneur, as Baudelaire described, observing urban life with curiosity and an eye for the unnoticed…Finding beauty in fleeting moments and work to capture the hidden stories which the city quietly reveals”.
With a sense of urban grit combined with the allure of fashionable beauty, although Gilliard remains an eclectic photographer, his most stunning works reflect images of models superimposed or collaged against complex environments, such as dilapidated buildings. Through structural decay or the depiction of erosion, Gilliard’s models explore psychological impulses such as past trauma through scars or revealing a sense of vulnerability.
Sensual and mysterious, his figurative photography with female models reveals a theatrical presentation superimposing unique ‘characters’ against thoroughly urban environments. His collaged photography portrays various portions of the model, especially of her face, expressing emotions of bewilderment and seeking attention. Through destroyed objects, debris, and rubble, Gilliard’s models explore the fragility of civilized environments, revealing inner-characteristics based on self-reflection. The models walk, sit, strip, pose, and dance for the audience to convey their relationships with empty space. By far, Gilliard’s most interesting photography remains his dilapidated structures as they offer an interesting relationship between his fashionable models and fragile environments which reflect the psyche of the model’s impulses, desires, and fears. The viewer may use their imagination to determine what these thoughts are contained within these destroyed settings.
Scar (pictured above) reveals a woman revealing what could be a post-natal wound. She lays nude and vulnerable with her fair skin and hair contrasting against the broken-down interior for which she stands in. The loose papers and files reveal an environment which could have been an office at one time or even a clinic, revealing the anecdotal relationship between the woman’s scar and her environment.
Gilliard Bressan portrays compositions which reveal vulnerability, beauty, and urban aesthetics against an array of talented models who convey psychological reflections. He explores how forgotten environments can be discovered to be analyzed with the interaction of curious figures. These works reveal secrets of the inner workings of urban society as well as creating a shroud of mystery in regard to relationships between domains and individuality. Gilliard remains a photographer who searches for relevant subject matter with fashionable interactions which question validity of personal identity.
