Choosing My Images

During this project, I’ve had the opportunity to interpret portraiture in my own way. Over the course of this unit, I have been experimenting and trying out various ideas. After looking into many photographers, and done a number of photo shoots, my main idea was to look at people and their work places. Originally, I was going to look at people and a hobby of theirs which represents them the most. However after brainstorming ideas and thinking about different environments could be used in portraiture, I decided to go for the work environment.

As time went on during this unit I was able to print a few work prints from the photo shoots then decided which image I felt would best fit in as my final image. Below are the three main images which I printed bigger.

As I gathered all of my contact sheets and work prints, I decided to choose the image which I felt best represented the title and worked out best compared to the others. My final image is the work print displayed on the left. I chose this image out of everything else because I shot it differently compared to the rest. I thought more about this photo shoot and the way I wanted the employee to stand.  When you look at the photo up close, you can see the depth of field where I had the employee to be the main focus, making the work place blurred and not stand out as much.

Overall, I thought it was tough to choose one final image out of all the photo shoots that I had shot previously. However, If I had to do portraits again, I would look at different photographers who focus on their personal lives such as Sally Mann or combine old photographs against newer ones and merge them together such as photographers Bobby Neel Adams or Ulric Collette.

John Delaney : Hoboken Passing

”One thing that really emerges from the images is the dense texture and detail in the backgrounds, which are just captivating as the characters ”. This quote stood out to me the most whilst reading through some of John Delaney’s work.

When looking through a photographers work, I tend look at the images first before reading the text. However, as I was going through the British Journal of Photography, I noticed the quote above.  John Delany is a photography who I recently came across whilst reading the British Journal of Photography. Hoboken Passing is the series of photographs which I have been looking at and came across the image below. The Hoboken Passing is about Delaney exploring the survivors from of a neighbourhood transition. Identity and uniqueness is what John Delaney described this as.

Looking at the image below has opened my eyes since reading the quote the John Delaney said. When looking at portraiture, I tend to have my main focus on the person in the picture rather than the background. Nonetheless, I still look at the background to help me identify more about the person who is being photographed.

The image below is simply yet interesting. The use of colour that have been shown represent the image well as it is set in an American diner. I feel that when Delaney took the image at the time, the person wasn’t prepared for their photo to be taken . However, I personally find the unexpected image can turn out better than what you’ve planned to do.

A number of images that John Delaney has taken has helped me to develop my own work and think about what I could change and do next time If I had to do another photo shoot.

Hoboken Passing: The Hoboken Originals

Reference: Delaney, J. (2012). Hoboken Passing. British Journal of Photography. 159 (1), 18-19.

August Sander

August Sander is one of many artists who I have come across towards the end of the project. He is known for being a German portrait and documentary photographer alongside landscape,architecture and street photography. As well as that, he also released his own book, Face of Our Time in 1929. Sander started getting into photography by assisting another photographer who was working for a mining company at the time. With the help of his Uncle, he was eventually able to start gathering equipment and set up his own darkroom. Unfortunately during World War II (1942) he had to move to a rural area away from Cologne, saving most of his negatives he had shot before. However, his darkroom was destroyed in 1944 due to bomb raid.

He had many ideas with the work he was doing, then eventually got the idea to document people around him a series of portraits. As I researched into Sander’s work, one of his images caught my attention the most which was ‘ Pastrycook’, shot in 1928 which was also a part of Sander’s series, ‘ Man of the Twentieth Century’.

The reason for admiring the image is the simplicity of it overall. The image took place in a workplace which is what I have been looking for the project. The lighting of the image caught my attention the most in the photograph. The person who is being photographed stood out to August Sander because of the similar shapes. With the Chef’s round head, it is mirrored into the pot that he is stirring as well as his stomach being so round.

Pastry Cook, Cologne, 1928

Looking at the chef, the direct attention went to his figure. Wearing a white coat against a dark kitchen background caught my eye the most as it is not lit very much, besides from the streak of light beaming on the floorboards. As I came across a number of photographs that he had took, I noticed a common theme which was the way each person in an image was positioned which was standing up. I feel that he wanted to capture people’s full figure and the surrounding of them which presented where they were.

With some of my own images, I have decided to mix it up and experiment different ways I could present that person outside of their work place. I felt it was important to capture the title of a workplace in the image, whether its in front of the shop or wear an item of clothing which shows that they currently work there but are not allowed to be photographed directly outside of the shop.

However, the image of the Chef has given me more ideas for the future and think about what the meaning of the image is about, for example, the shapes that are seen but you wouldn’t notice straight away.

Reference: August Sander. 2012. Biography. Available at: http://augustsander.com/. [Accessed 04 May 15].

Humans Of New York

Humans Of New York has been well known in the last 4-5 years worldwide. It all started off when Brandon Stanton created a blog and Facebook page in 2010, where he started posting a couple of images each day of people he would stop in the streets of New York and photograph them. He then would talk to them about their life, later writing a paragraph about what they said.

I’ve come across many photographers over the years, but coming across ‘Humans Of New York’ on Facebook has opened my eyes when it comes to talking about a stranger’s background. Looking at well known photographers work through books and the internet is interesting. However, with a lot of images we assume what the meaning behind it is about, whereas Brandon Stanton has personally asked strangers on the streets of New York to tell him a couple of lines about their life and what they’ve been through in the past.

A few years after starting the page on Facebook, Stanton now has his own book.

Unique, different and fascinating would be the words to describe his work. Brandon explores different parts of New York to capture certain people who stand out to him. There has even been one or two people who he photographed before and met again!

I personally admire the work that he has done over the years and the way he has presented it. He looks at portraiture in his own way, capturing people up close and from a distance. However, I also felt that looking through a number of his images could help me towards my project as I will also be taking photos of strangers on the streets outside of the shops where they work.

Refrence: Coffey,M. (2013). Humans of New York’ storms bestseller list.BestSellers. 260 (1), 10-11

Jessica Fulford Dobson

Jessica Fulford Dobson is a successful portrait photographer across the world. She has won many awards as well as coming 2nd place in the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize in 2014 for her work on ‘Skate Girl’, a series of images where she was located Kabul. Skateistan was created by an Australian skater, Oliver Percovich in 2007. This project brings younger people together through skateboarding in Afganistan.

The idea for this series of work was to capture Afgan girls skating in their local area, back in  2012.  Being able to focus he work around Skate girls gave Jessica access to schools in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif.  With Dobson being on her own for this project, she was accepted by the young girls to photograph them. However, being on her own also allowed her to use natural lighting and travel to a number of locations. Although the particular skate park had darker lighting than outside, Jessica personally admired that because she was able to capture the girls natural personalities.

Jessica Fulford Dobson – Skate Girls Of Kabul (2012)

As searched through the series of images based around Skategirl, I felt that all the images stood out to me. The reason for this being is the simplicity of the portraits. The portraits capture the natural beauty of young girls and their hobby which they enjoy to be apart of. The natural lighting works well and looking at the variety of images that Dobson took, the young girls seem pleased to be apart of Skateistan. However, I personally felt that these images could help towards my project because Jessica shot these images in the girl’s living environment, so it relates to the similar theme that I have been looking at throughout this project.

Refrences:

https://www.saatchigallery.com/current/skate_girls_of_kabul.php

Photographer Jessica Fulford-Dobson Captures the Joy of Young Afghan Skateboarders

McClure,R. and McCabe,E. (2014) Taylor Wessing Portait Prize 2014. United Kingdom: National Portrait Gallery Publications

John Londei

Shutting Up Shop (Late 1970s)

Like many artists, John Londei explores different area’s of photography from black and white to using the studio and photographing famous, old, young people and so on. Londei studied at the Medway College of Art where he found his passion for Photography. He is also an award-winning advertising and editorial photographer.

”Shutting Up Shop” is a series of images where Londei shot images over a seventeen year period which started in the early 1970’s. These images were based around small traditional shops but have now disappeared over the years. There are a wide range of shops featured in this series from tea shops to tobacco and flower shops. A lot of the images were taken around London but also across different regions in the UK. These photographs have been held at The National Portrait Gallery and The Museum of London as part of solo exhibitions.

Looking at the series of work which Londei created, I am inspired to recreate images similar to the one above. Vintage shops spark my interest the most when thinking about a shoot similar to Londei’s work. I feel that photographing old shops would be interesting

because of the unique antiques that are shown in the display windows. However, I also felt that photographing an employe from the shop would be intriguing simply because of how they dress for work as some places may or may not have a dress code.

Overall, Londei’s series, ”Shutting up Shop” has inspired me to recreate his images in my own way. I will be scouting for a number of locations which have vintage shops. Simple and unique is what I would describe these particular images that are related to this series.

Reference: John Londei Photography. 2013. Shops. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.johnlondei.co.uk/index.php?filename=index. [Accessed 01 March 15

Londe, J (2007).Shutting Up Shop: The Decline of the Traditional Small Shop. London: Dewi Lewis Ltd. 20-25

Midterm hand in

This week, I had to hand in my work that I have done so far for this project. For the project, our task is to have two final colour prints, alone with contact sheets and research based on six different artists of my choice. The projects theme this semester is based on Portraiture. Many ideas come to mind when looking at portraiture and how I can interpret it in my own way.

After brainstorming many ideas, I narrowed it down to three main ideas:

1) People holding an object which represents them (eg. a guitar)

2) People and their careers- work environment

3) Dressing up in peoples clothes- comparing to what they looked like in old photos.

During a group tutorials and talking about my proposal, I decided to go with my second choice which was to look and people and their work environments. Once I chose my final idea, I started looking into a number of photographers who have done work similar to my idea. I eventually came across John Londei, a photographer who did a series of images called ‘Shutting Up Shop’. This series is based on owners and employes being photographed outside of their work places. For fourteen years, he focused on this project ( alongside others) and looked at vintage shops in particular. As well as that, he photographed tobacco, tea, music and other various shops.

Using a medium format camera for the first time was quite scary ( due to the fact I had never used one before!). However, once I had done one roll of film I found it easier as I went along. Doing colour prints this time around is much more complicated than the black and white darkroom. On the other hand, I enjoy it more because I get to learn more complicated stuff, and i’ve discovered more techniques that are useful such as the use of filters.

Overall, I felt that my final two images related to John Londei’s work. I preferred one of the images to the other, but I am hoping to improve that in the future.

Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz is one of many well known American photographers and is considered to be one of the best portraiture photographers across America. Leibovitz enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1967, where she originally wanted to study painting but later found her passion for photography.

In 1970, she took the job opportunity to work with The Rolling Stones magazine. She later went on to work with Vanity Fair in 1983. Working with the Rolling Stones magazine had given her the opportunity to express her creative style. Leibovitz started as a staff photographer for two year then got promoted to be chief photographer.

One of the most famous things that she is well known is for photographing well known icons such as Johnny Depp, Julie Andrews and John Lennon. As well as that, she has even photographed Queen Elizabeth II in 2007. She photographed John Lennon and Yoko Ono for the cover of the Rolling Stones magazine only a few hours early John Lennon got shot and died on the same day. However, in the last couple of years, she has been known for photographing well known icons and recreating modern day Disney stories from Peter Pan, to Robin Hood and Cinderella.

Over the year, Annie Leibovitz has held her work in many exhibitions and has published a few books. Travelling all over the work, her work has been seen in Paris, London, America and many more places. With a number of her series, she looks at different issues between people, For example, ‘Women’ is a series which is based around women and how they are judged by their appearance, one of many series that was well known to the public because of the meaning behind it. The quote below explains how Leibovitz felt about women being judged on their appearance.

“Women are judged by their appearance as mean are not, and women are punished more then men are by the changed bought about by aging. Ideals of appearance such as youthfulness and slimness are in large part now created and enforced by photographic images.” Sontag, S (2001).Women. London: Random House. 22-23.

Reference: Sontag, S (2001).Women. London: Random House. 22-23.

Leibovitz, A (2008). Annie Leibovitz At Work. London: Johnathan Cape. 180-189

Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize is one of the most well known exhibitions to be on show in London.This exhibitions is a way of discovering new contemporary photographers around the world. This year there were over 4,000 photos to choose from and came to the decision of giving first prize to David Titlow, for Konrad Lars Hastings Titlow

Walking through the exhibition is overwhelming. Being able to discover so many more photographers and see their view of other people is fascinating. The images are eye-catching and grabbed my attention as soon as I walked in.

Many artists stood out to me at this years exhibition such as Chris Frazer Smith, Karan Kumer, Tom Jamieson and Sami Parkkinen.It was interesting to see how other photographers interpreted portraiture in their own way. For example, Tom Jamieson photographed two men in the army, so he looked at people and the career/lifestyle. This photograph was part of the series ‘Maidan’, taken in 2014. The series is based around protests happening in Ukraine.

Tom Jamieson – From the series : Euromaidan Protestors in Kyiv,Ukraine. (2014)

Another image which stood out to me at the show was by Chris Frazer Smith, who is known for being a commercial photographer. For this exhibition, he presented a photograph called ‘Drying Off’. This was taken of his daughter and two friends after a small party. I personally felt that this image was very eye catching because of the use of colour, emotion and tonal qualities. Having this image being shot in England, many people would know that weather is not entirely great! This was the perfect moment to taken an image and capture the facial expressions. The colours stand out because of the contrast between the dim background which was shot outside, and the bright colours shown on the towels. As well as that, the use of texture is very detailed and I felt that the softness that was used for the face’s and back garden worked well together.

Chris Frazer Smith – Drying Off ( 2014 ) 

Overall, I personally liked the chosen photographers that had their work displayed for this exhibition. The variety of different portraiture styles was useful to see and get an idea of how I can visualise portraits my own way.

Refrence: National Portrait Gallery. 2014. The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.npg.org.uk/photoprize1/site14/index.php. [Accessed 15 February 15].

McClure,R. and McCabe,E. (2014) Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize 2014. United Kingdom: National Portrait Gallery Publications

Timeline Task

This week, I had the task of researching two photographers ( that were chosen for me) for part of a timeline which will be presented on the walls. This timeline goes back as early as the 1800’s up until today. The photographers that got chosen for me was Nadar and Orlan who are both French artists.

Looking over my peer’s work on the wall, I realised that there were many photographers who I have never heard of and some which were well known such as Nick Knight and Martin Parr. It was interesting to discover a large variety of artists who have look at portraiture, especially those who were around in the 1800’s/ early 1900’s.  Looking at photographers in that era got me to thinking how they would manipulate their images, as they did not have photoshop or any kind of editing programme!

Another point which came to mind was the way different photographers looked at portraiture. Typically when I think of portraits, the first thing that comes to mind is a front shot of a person’s face. However, with some artists, that is not the case.  Scanning through the many artists on the wall, some images are shot from a far away point, presenting a model’s whole body rather than just the head and shoulders.

This task was interesting to take on. I was able to discover a large number of photographers who I have never heard of. As well as that, from looking at photographs from the beginning of the timeline up until today, it was fascinating to see how much technology has change and how much manipulation can be done on a image these days.

Below is an image of the timeline that myself and class created at the beginning of the week: