Juno Calypso- Self-Portraiture TPG Develops talk

Juno Calypso is a self-portrait photographer whose personal work is about feminism, isolation, loneliness and alter-egos. I decided to sign up for her talk with TPG Develops as her work is relevant to my practice and I wanted to know more about her practice.

Her starting process of photography was through selfies as a teenager and then through college and university self-portraiture, where she learned a lot about the genre. When she was younger there wasn’t a selfie culture or social media (except myspace) so it wasn’t a trend to take selfies as there is now.

Once she started university, she experimented with set design, which was all shot at home. This is relevant to my work currently as I am having to work from home due to covid, so it shows that strong work can be made in domestic spaces. I also have an interest in set design within my project using fabrics so this is also something I wanted to learn about how she did.

Juno gave advice on how to set up self-portrait shots, and what equipment she uses- she uses a remote shutter to take the photographs and a flashgun as the additional light source. She also suggested using storyboards as a lot of commercial brands ask for one, and to keep additional skills you already have (drawing, painting, graphic design etc). This was interesting to hear and I may try to draw a storyboard for shoots in the future and it was helpful knowing industry tips.

Some advice for post-graduation she gave was to network, start collectives, show work to friends, don’t rush for success and find a mentor. These are all things that I will be doing to prepare myself for freelance work.

Overall, I found Juno’s talk to be informative and I enjoyed hearing about her practice and she gave me some good tips and advice in regards to self-portraiture which I will use for my own work.

Juno’s website: https://www.junocalypso.com/

Screenshot from Juno’s zoom talk