Meet Torgeir Pilskog R酶rvik, Fashion Photography Award Winner at GFW22. He studied Fashion Photography at Falmouth University.
How do you feel about winning a GFW22 award?
Winning the Fashion Photography Award was incredible. There are many truly professional Fashion Photography universities in the UK and the competition to win has been hard.
This is the reason why it means so much to be the one who was chosen by the jury to get the price. The trophy is a validation that people enjoy what I make and that it is not only me who thinks my FMP topic is interesting.
What was the inspiration starting point for your award-winning FMP?
What became the starting point for my entire Final Major Project was Mark Zuckerberg's press conference in October 2021. During this live broadcast on Youtube, he officially announced that Facebook changed its name to Meta. He also spoke in detail about the concept of "Metaverse" and Meta's visions regarding the Metaverse in the future. What Zuckerberg talked about inspired me to do proper research regarding the virtual future and to begin creating my FMP.
What skills did you learn and develop during the production of your FMP?
I worked with my FMP for six months. During this half year, I learned an incredible amount of new skills. I pushed myself all the time and experimented with techniques like VR, AR, 3D scanning and virtual clothing. I also worked a lot with old techniques such as camera obscura, pinhole camera and darkroom. Shall I highlight one of the skills I learned, the 3D software Clo3D was particularly a great help. By learning this software I had the opportunity to dress my models' in virtual clothes.
What were some challenges that you faced in producing your FMP and how did you overcome these?
The biggest challenges I had when I produced the book were to implement new technology and new visual techniques without affecting the aesthetics of the images in a bad manner. For example, once I used 3D elements in an image, it became difficult to maintain a traditional feeling in the photograph. The challenge was to mix old and new techniques naturally. To learn how to solve this problem I wrote my dissertation on this topic. My dissertation also questioned why we do not produce more fashion images using CGI in today's society.
Are there any messages or major themes in your FMP that you want people to take away? If so, how did you choose to communicate them?
When people see and read my book, I want them to reflect on the society of the future. We are entering a new era where the virtual area is becoming more in focus. Technological inventions such as VR glasses will also become a much more important part of our everyday lives. Many people do not like this development and I think my book can be an element that helps to educate the reader. In the book, I visualize what I think the future will look like and I do this in a dystopian and critical way. I show how I think the physical world will end up looking. I also show how I think people are going to change when they only meet each other digitally.
What is an aspect of the fashion industry that you want to help improve or have a positive impact on?
Within the fashion industry, I want to show how powerful virtual clothes can be when using them in fashion images. In my home country Norway, not many have heard of virtual clothing so I want to help more people get a feel for this phenomenon. I think virtual clothing is more efficient, more creative and more environmentally friendly.
What form does your FMP take? Is it a collection of clothing, book, presentation, etc? If relevant, how did you source the materials for the project?
My FMP is presented as a book and an exhibition. I work with an amazing professional and friendly printing company that gave me a lot of freedom of choice when I printed the book. After several meetings at the printing house, we finally came up with a book I am truly proud of.
To make the exhibition for the book, I worked physically for a long time. I built a holder for the book and I made reels for a Viewmaster which was exhibited in the exhibition. The main work in my exhibition is a picture of a priest. The priest was print on a soft fabric. I got this printed in a printing house we have at the university.
What are your plans for the near future (further study/ internship/ work?) now that you've finished your BA?
The plan next year is to work on projects in London and Oslo. I want to photograph images for customers where we use elements such as virtual clothes, AR and 3D. I will also assist other photographers when I have time for this.