Studio Portraiture - Initial Ideas

I am now steering away from environmental and diving into the realm of studio portraiture. During the length of this assignment, I will first be exploring into the nature of portraiture, seeing how other artists/photographers have mastered the skill in representing someone or even themselves in the confines of a photograph. In addition to this, I intend to gather a broad range of research centered around the different styles of portraiture, making reference to  traditional as well as contemporary methods which will eventually help me to visualize and develop my own individual idea.   
This assignment also gives me the rare opportunity to work with either 5x4, medium format or 5D camera's. The choice purely rides on whatever device I desire to use however in order to comply with the assignment brief guidelines I must show a demonstration of my understanding specifically on how the 5x4 operates and the various techniques that can be applied. This then leds onto the last expectation of me, where I've been instructed to produce the minimum of two final images, one print in black and the other in colour.


My intended idea for this project will indeed raise the bar even higher from the work I've produced in previous assignments, but then again I'm always up for a challenge. The inspiration behind it stems from my love for horror movies and in particular one of my all time favourites - Frankenstein. I've always been fascinated by the thought of merging various peoples faces together and then even more mesmerized by the extraordinary result that occurs. From the combination of faces, a new one is formed and that's what I want to explore deeper. I want to challenge the conventions of a portraiture even further by creating images of people that don't physically exist but are actually the end product of multiple portraits merged together. Whenever we see a photograph of someone, most likely all of us automatically assume that the person is real so my other reasons for going ahead with this idea is to assess whether this philosophy is true in how we interpret portraits. If it's a portrait of someone who's not famously recognisable how are we to know that they are a real human being? In some respects this concept is going against the the theory of portraiture but I also feel that it will prove to be quite a interesting experiment when other people view my work.