The Birthday Party by Vee Speers
Vee Speers was born in Australia and has been living in Paris since 1990. Her portraits have been published and exhibited world-wide, gaining a lot of recognition and supporters. She seems to have a fascination with the trickery of appearance and the power of masks/costumes.
Vee’s most recent work, which is showcased here, is titled The Birthday Party. It’s a series of short stories linked by the theme of an imaginary birthday party. She wanted to use the birthday party backdrop to address both our collective human experience of war and our need to retreat from it into fantasy.
Overall i think it all works because of the simple backgrounds, costumes and hair-styles, she has also used subtle hand-tinted color techniques on top of the original black-and-white Polaroid prints to added effect.