The Stencil:

This stencil was spray painted by Banksy on to a concrete wall in Stratford, East London, and another similar stencil was created for Banksy’s ‘Turf War’ exhibition in 2003.

The Location:

The model in this image is the daughter of a friend of mine who is a local fashion designer in Hamilton. She was about 6 months old when this image was taken and I was very lucky that their newly renovated living room was absolutely perfect for this image, and that the little girl looked amazing and was a trooper throughout the shoot.

Wardrobe/Props etc:

The wardrobe for this image consisted of a plain white brushed cotton onesie I bought from a department store in Hamilton which wasn’t too hard to find. The Jemima toy just happened to be there in the frame when I was doing the lighting tests, so I decided to just leave it in because it looked great.

The blocks however, ended up being a bit more of a saga for me. I had initially thought I would just buy the individual letter blocks that I needed, but the ones that were available were sold in a whole alphabet set so I would need to buy at least two full sets which was going to be super expensive. The other option was to just buy some vintage sort of blocks that didn’t come from a set, but the only ones I could find online were in America and that was going to be quite expensive too. The other issue was that they were really colourful and didn’t really look like the blocks in the stencil so I decided to make my own from scratch.

I went down to a local hardware store, went out to the building supply area, chose some pieces of wood and had them cut into 4.4cm x 4.4cm cubes which I took home, sanded down and painted myself. This process was a lot more difficult and time intensive than I was expecting and I ended up having to buy more wood because I made and painted about 3 sets of these blocks before I was happy with how they looked.

It took me a while to figure out what sort of font was used in the stencil (I know nothing about typography) but once I did, I found a stencil alphabet online. I printed it and then cut out the letters I needed with a craft knife. I picked the cleanest side of the blocks (no knots or imperfections) then sellotaped the letters on to the block, lightly pressed it against a black stamp pad and then hand painted over the black area with black poster paint.

This was super time consuming because the printer paper was so thin and the stamp ink bled through the joins within the letters making it very difficult to paint a perfect letter. Despite this, I was really glad that this photography project required me to do a bit of stencil work- it definitely made me appreciate how much skill is required to create the intricate, difficult and detailed stencils that Banksy produces time after time.

The Shoot:

The model was lit with the b1600 and the octabox which was handheld instead of being mounted to the light stand so that the base of the octabox was touching the floor and the light was directly across from the baby. I also decided to paint the sides of the blocks black instead of creating a black shadow with the lighting because I thought it would work better for the overall image.