Cosplay and Identity

When you are a cosplayer, one thing you hear all the time is "the things we do for cosplay". We're not getting paid for our services, yet we spend huge amounts of time, money and effort to create elaborate costumes to wear for a few days. The costumes are hardly comfortable either - when I cosplay as Grell, he wears his coat looped over his arms. This, combined with the arm garters he wears and carrying a chainsaw for the day, mean that by the end of the convention, my arms are very very sore. And Grell's costume is reasonably comfortable - I met a professional cosplayer in Auckland last year, who, because her costumes are so elaborate and she is usually welded into her armour, goes to conventions and does not eat and drinks very little water (because she cannot take her costume off). She mentioned an event in America where she cosplayed as a Bioware character and collapsed. A gentleman came to protect her from cameras, when she came to she discovered that he was the owner of Bioware. Horrified that the costume design meant that she could not get out of the costume, he asked that she be consulted on all their game designs so that they would be easy for cosplayers to get in and out of.

Because I am participating in the cosplay events, I have a unique perspective. I consider that cosplay is leaning and breaking through the fourth wall between the media (video games, anime, manga) and becoming something else - performative art. I want to capture this, using photography and digital art. I also want to capture some of the moments where the line between cosplay and becoming the character is slightly blurred - for example, at Hamilton Armageddon, while I was taking a break, I saw two Harley Quinns and a Joker from Batman. While the Joker was causing trouble (I think he had picked up another cosplayer and was running around with her), the two Harleys were just standing together, casually chatting as though it was nothing out of character. Even though they were not perfoming at that moment, were just relaxing, there was something about the scene that was so quintessentially the characters - as though they had almost unconciously become the characters.

Currently, I am working on finishing my cosplays so I can start photographing them. I am also researching poses I want to use and backgrounds I want to create using digital art.