Even Athena, the Godess of War Cried is the sad story of war!

In 2018, I was grateful to work with the stunning Christy Taylor for her glamour headshots as she was one of the Miss World Australia 2018 national finalist. When she contacted me and booked me for her headshot I thought I really can involve her in one of my fine art portrait projects. The challenge was choose one of the ideas I had and prepare everything for the shooting day in those 3 days before the appointment. I decided to accept the challenge, so I contacted her and she was excited to be participated in the project. I had something in my mind that I wanted to work on after I got back from Europe.

The Idea

In 2017 I had a trip to Germany and France and visited a war memorial in Douaumont, near Verdun: Douaumont ossuary. It is a memorial containing the skeletal remains of soldiers who died on the battlefield during the Battle of Verdun in World War I. When we arrived it was a pouring rain and foggy day. The sky was dark and grey.
The memorial contained more than 130000 unidentified soldiers from both nations who dies in only one day and most of them were so young. On the inside of the ossuary building, the ceiling and walls are partly covered by plaques bearing names of French soldiers who died during the Battle of Verdun. People were walking there so quietly, still you could hear their footsteps, making the atmosphere more sad and emotional. Many were crying in silent. I had the experience of living 8 years of my childhood in war. So I was touched as soon as I stepped in. I couldn’t help myself to not crying. It was indeed a very sad moment. The story of war is an endless story and they are and will be many memorials for innocent people who have died or will die to defence their country.The sad part of all these wars is they have been fought over political or religious power, in a simple word, just power. I took many shots from that place. But this one which I used as the background was the best to describe the sad story.

Execution

So when I was planning my project with Christy, I made the hat with golden soldiers of plastic green soldiers you could fine in reject shops. And I painted them in gold. I also made the dress a day before the photo shot. Finally managed to make everything ready on-time. So I was also lucky that Jimmy my talented makeup artist, got the idea and prepared Cristy very quickly after I finished her headshots for Miss World Australia. We only had 20 minutes to set up the light and shoot. Cristy just made everything happened perfectly by acting like a real goddess!

“Even the goddess of war cried”, which I have inspired from Athena, who is an ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, handicraft, and warfare, implies that even she cannot tolerate all the injustice and massacre. The gold colour used in the makeup, refers to the golden times of Greek era and more importantly to the cause of wars, to gain or keep the power! And the pouring red, from the goblet in Athena’s hand, is also a reference to overflowing blood of innocent people.

Behind The Scene

This image was awarded Silver at AIPP APPA 2018, WPPI 2019 the Annual, and Portrait Masters 2019.

Many Thanks to Conny for the beautiful background.