Reviews |Canon ‘Decoy’ project challenges photographers’ pre-conceptions

Canon ‘Decoy’ project challenges photographers’ pre-conceptions

Canon ‘Decoy’ project challenges photographers’ pre-conceptions
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Canon Australia has debuted a new video highlighting a novel project called Decoy in which it invited six photographers to a portrait session… but with a twist.

In Decoy the six photographers were invited individually to come photograph the same model. As the photographers each spoke to the model, he gave them a different story about his background.

To one, he was a recovering alcoholic. To another, a psychic. A millionaire. An entrepreneur, and so on.

Little did the photographers know that each story the model gave was false, and Canon was actually recording them the whole time.

The video was designed to show how our pre-conceptions of people can guide our image-making and lead us down certain paths.

As Canon says, ‘A photograph is shaped more by the person behind the camera than by what’s in front of it.’