Kim Ayres - Staring Back

Bookshop Gallery

1 May - 31 May:

Staring Back : Portrait photography by Kim Ayres.  

What’s in a face? Challenging the perfect image

Ordinary people are frustrated by glossy magazines portraying images of the ‘perfect’ face, and many people say that they hate photographs of themselves. Photographer Kim Ayres set out to challenge our contemporary views of the portrait in his exhibition Staring Back.

Castle Douglas photographer, Kim Ayres asked readers of his website ‘Are you scared of your face?’. The answer was an overwhelming ‘yes’, many of the respondents didn’t like what they saw in their own pictures. Comments such as ‘I hate having my photo taken’ and ‘I’m not so much scared of my face as I am of my smile. When posing for photos and smiling, it feels so unnatural’ were typical. Kim explores these feelings, and turns them on the viewer.

Usually portraits invite the viewer to inspect every little line, crease and hair. An individual is free, even encouraged, to observe in a way socially prohibited in everyday life. They might be intrigued, curious, or even judgemental. Staring Back gives power back to the subject.

What happens when the face being so intimately viewed stares, unapologetically, right back? The viewer is no longer in command, unexpectedly feeling like a voyeur who has been caught out. It is this strange emotional mixture of being invited to look, while feeling perhaps we shouldn’t, that is being explored in the exhibition.

Kim Ayres says ‘Very few people embrace their faces, enjoy them or are at peace with them”.

We need to stop comparing ourselves to some impossibly smooth skinned youth and embrace our lines, textures and all the aspects that make us uniquely us.

We need to stop worshipping the culture of plastic beauty and celebrate the life lived.

I love the landscape of faces and how they grow, develop and change over time.’

Staring Back asks the viewer to rethink contemporary notions beauty, and the sitters to once again be proud of the faces they inhabit.

An exhibition catalogue is available containing all the images in the exhibition, price: £21.95

Visit Kim's website at: www.kimayres.co.uk