Impersonators are a unique group of artists whose entire career aims to mimic that of another. Why become someone else? Why do we need another Elvis…. or another 1,000 Elvises? Dolly Parton once lost a Dolly Parton impersonator contest. If the goal of impersonation is to exactly replicate someone else, can one Dolly Parton impersonator be better than another, better than the original? Can impersonation be art, or is it simple entertainment? The art of theater involves the replication of a script or character as well. However, theater also begs the performer to draw something new out of an old character. Is this possible with impersonation? Furthermore, is it ethical?
I hope to photographically explore the world of impersonation. To unearth the motives, goals, successes, and failures of the profession, and to better understand what to me is a bizarre and fascinating career path. Do these people have other jobs? Is impersonating a passion to pursue on the weekends, or is it a lifelong career? What kind of a person becomes an impersonator? I expect to uncover a wide range of answers to these questions, and hope to express that to the viewer.
I often find that with documentary work, my aesthetic develops naturally with the subject. However, based off of my limited knowledge of this group of professionals, I imagine the images I make will be colored by saturated stage lighting and dim-lit dressing rooms. I want to capture these performers at their best and their worst: getting into and out of costume, in their element performing, nervous beforehand, relaxing after, having a morning cup of coffee. I want to find out just when the performance stops for each individual. Are their private residences speckled with photos of Johnny Cash or Elvis? Or are they totally nondescript?
Artists I look to for guidance include Martin Parr, Alex Prager, Ashley Kauschinger, Daniela Rossell, Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, George Platt Lynes, Jeff Bark, Jeff Brown, Julie Blackmon, Lauren Greenfield, Philip Lorca di Corcia, Sandy Kim, Tina Barney, Wes Anderson, and Robert Frank. I imagine a vibrant but hopefully limited color palette for each image (a la Alex Prager, Wes Anderson, Martin Parr, Philip Lorca di Corcia, Jeff Bark, Jeff Brown), with the best lighting I can achieve on the spot. Perhaps it will be a combination of studio and ambient light, in a similar vein as Philip Lorca di Corcia and Tina Barney. I hope to capture the humorous, vulnerable, and often grotesque action in a similar manner to documentary giants Martin Parr, Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, Lauren Greenfield, and Robert Frank. In my experience photographing performers, I find that the theater is rarely contained by the stage. My goal is to find just how far it reaches in the lives of these specialty actors.
Should this work also be a documentary? That’s not a question I can answer yet. Once I develop a community of performers, photograph them, learn their stories, I will know if it is proper material for a documentary. I’m intrigued by the idea of dabbling in video and would love to explore both technically and conceptually. I could even see myself doing short video portraits of performers to start and see where that takes me, but would first like to build a relationship with my subjects via still photography. When I see a beautifully shot documentary like Mala Mala by Antonio Santini and Dan Sickles, I get a strong itch to do video work. To sum it up, I’d like to shoot stills as I get my feet wet, but keep video on my radar and eventually shoot it as I see fit. As with other documentary projects I’ve worked on, I think these things happen best organically.
Libby Danforth 