Themed Portraits

 The Cycle of Violence

The theme to my portraits is domestic violence because even though tons of awareness has been raised regarding the matter, abusive behavior at home is mostly safeguarded from general visibility. Women make up excuses like they tumbled down the stairs or call themselves clumsy or prone to accidents but won't accept that they're being abused, be it to hide from the world that they're a victim of violence or to protect their partners out of love, which further enables their abusers to mistreat them. These series of portraits show us the cycle of violence! 

I used my DSLR Canon EOS 70D with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens and slightly edited the pictures and made them monochrome to add a more dramatic effect to the series. 

Settings:

F-stop: f/1.8 

ISO Speed: 1600 

Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec

Settings:

F-stop: f/1.8 

ISO Speed: 1600 

Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec

Settings:

F-stop: f/1.8 

ISO Speed: 1600 

Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec

Settings:

F-stop: f/1.8 

ISO Speed: 1600 

Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec 

Settings:

F-stop: f/1.8 

ISO Speed: 1600 

Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec

The first portrait is meant to symbolise the subjects partner being violent but she ignores the red signs until the second picture, where he finally strikes her. The third portrait symbolises her being in immense emotional distress and the fourth portrait shows us that she's hiding what she's going through from the world, putting on a brave, happy face. The final portrait shows the subject smiling with flowers in her hand showing that she's accepting her partner's apology and forgives him for his violence, even though you can tell from the portrait that the girl is traumatised from this experience.