Character+Portrait+Gallery

= =

Character Portrait Gallery
Jay Gatsby party till dawn, leave no darkness for the true voice to sing and in the morning, wash it clean the heart lying at the bottom of each glass, the single spot that can't be scrubbed away

Nick Carraway a vessel for the one true word, the sole honest voice tell them what i have seen. leave no leaf unpainted by my ink. Jordan Baker balancing the world on my little chin, waiting for the night to begin who shall i be tonight?

Myrtle Wilson neither here nor there, melting into obscurity running into the headlights, just to be recognized

the Partygoers we go there to see, we are there to be seen dressed to the nines, crying to beat the band hear us sing, four french bobs resting softly on each open shoulder

The idea to create character portraits was quite clear from the start. I love the medium, and I wanted to see what would come of a little experimentation. To me, it seems the characters in The Great Gatsby have a talent for putting on a show. Masks and false fronts make it quite difficult to read the actual characters. Playing with the idea of a mask, I chose to show only parts of characters and choose symbols for these people instead of portraying the people themselves. The elusive Gatsby himself, for example, is a little heart in a shot glass because his partying serves to fill a void, or perhaps to make up for past misdeeds in acquiring his vast wealth. Each picture is meant to read differently to different people, as there are many interpretations to the characters of Gatsby's world. I put a little phrase under each to point out the symbols, or at least the reasoning, behind each portrait. ~Thea Berthoff

reference: Fitzgerald, F. Scott. __The Great Gatsby__. New York: Scribner, 1925. Blum, Dilys E. __Shocking! The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli__. Philadelphia, PA: Phila. Museum of Art, 2003