For the second part of my personal investigation, I wanted to look more into portraiture and explore the different techniques and styles within it. I decided to do this because I have always loved portraiture as a style of photography, I love making portraits and I equally love viewing them. My style of photography has always been capturing moments, as I never really plan out exactly what I am going to shoot, I just work with what is around me and create my images from that. So, the idea of having specific ideas of what I am going to take photographs of is intriguing and quite exciting. I have decided to start this by researching into other photographers and their style of portraiture, and creating my own work based on theirs to experiment with their technique and style.
RESEARCH
GUNNER STAHL
Gunner Stahl is a 26 year old photographer from Atlanta, Georgia. He is known as a hip hop photographer, and his portraits of the worlds top rappers have earned him 500,000 Instagram followers and worldwide acclaim. He is known for photographing solely on film.
I chose to look at Gunner Stahl because I personally love his work and I have followed it for a few years now. I love this work because it relies purely on his subjects. I feel like he is a modern day Chi Modu. The rappers he takes photos of are the reason he is so popular and the images that he captures of them seem so private, which is rare for these artists who's lives are so public. In almost every image, it is just Gunner and the subject. I like this because it seems different to most photos of popular artists. To get an image of the artist as private as this, most people would have to arrange a photoshoot and hire a studio etc. But Gunners work seems to consist of snapshots taken at the perfect times, not styled out for a magazine or anything like that. Maybe its the use of the film camera, but I feel like its because he just is at the right place at the right time. I studied some of his portraits and went out to take my own after.
I chose to look at Gunner Stahl because I personally love his work and I have followed it for a few years now. I love this work because it relies purely on his subjects. I feel like he is a modern day Chi Modu. The rappers he takes photos of are the reason he is so popular and the images that he captures of them seem so private, which is rare for these artists who's lives are so public. In almost every image, it is just Gunner and the subject. I like this because it seems different to most photos of popular artists. To get an image of the artist as private as this, most people would have to arrange a photoshoot and hire a studio etc. But Gunners work seems to consist of snapshots taken at the perfect times, not styled out for a magazine or anything like that. Maybe its the use of the film camera, but I feel like its because he just is at the right place at the right time. I studied some of his portraits and went out to take my own after.
MY RESPONSE TO GUNNER STAHL
For my response to Gunner Stahl, I went and took portraits of artists backstage at a show, just like he would. From left to right;
DJ Parv0, Horus, Wavy Jone$,
Pouya, Shakewell and Baby CoCo.
I really enjoyed doing this and taking photographs of these artists that I am personally a fan of, it was a great experience and I'll always have these images. Shakewell and Parv0 reposted the images to their instagram accounts. In terms of the actual images, I feel like I was successful in capturing most. The images of Parv0, Horus and Wavey Jone$ seem quite staged to me and perhaps its their body language or my failure to engage them, but I feel like these could have been better.
DJ Parv0, Horus, Wavy Jone$,
Pouya, Shakewell and Baby CoCo.
I really enjoyed doing this and taking photographs of these artists that I am personally a fan of, it was a great experience and I'll always have these images. Shakewell and Parv0 reposted the images to their instagram accounts. In terms of the actual images, I feel like I was successful in capturing most. The images of Parv0, Horus and Wavey Jone$ seem quite staged to me and perhaps its their body language or my failure to engage them, but I feel like these could have been better.
In my opinion, my most successful image was this one of Shakewell. He seems the most confident and comfortable and I believe I really did capture a private moment, as I was backstage with him in his dressing room after he had just performed, he had just taken his shirt off and was wiping the sweat off his body, saw my camera out and just posed, and I obliged by taking the image. I feel like this process was close to what Gunner Stahl does with most of his subjects and I feel like the results proved that.
Richard Ansett
Richard Ansett is a 53 year old award winning photographer known for his provocative images. He has had his work featured in the National Portrait Gallery, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Smithsonian institution and more. I came across the portrait of the mother holding the child in the garden in the images below and I was immediately intrigued. I looked at his website and browsed through the exterior and interior portrait tabs, his work felt very unique to me. I liked it because to me, the images felt like they had been taken as posters for a new TV series, but somehow they also felt too professional for that. But in a way, it could be. Each of these images is a look into the subjects lives, shown by the settings that Ansett has chosen to shoot them in. It seems as if all of these subjects are in their own habitat, doing their own thing, and Ansett has intruded in on them. Showing the full body of the subject in the image with enough space in the foreground and background to make it feel like they are submersed in their own world, instead of it typically being just a backdrop.
MY RESPONSE TO RICHARD ANSETT
I think my response to Richard Andsett did not go well. I tried to capture my subjects in places where they seemed to be at home, their own environments. I chose not to photograph them in their own homes because I didn't find it interesting. I always meet them at the places I have photographed them in, so I chose to do it there as it has become an environment for us, in a way. The images I had taken did not suit my style and, even though I felt like it was good to be out of my comfort zone, I decided that I didn't enjoy the process behind taking images like this and I wasn't particularly pleased with the outcomes.
I felt like the image below was my most successful one. I liked the layout and my subjects body language against it, and the small pocket of light that she is standing behind really intrigued me. The other elements of the image that I liked was the lamppost next to my subject, I just liked the difference in height between them. I felt as if this was the best photo I took from responding to Richard Ansett and it certainly was my favourite image from my response.
Davis Ayer
Davis Ayer is a photographer based in Los Angeles. I decided to look at his images because they were right out of my comfort zone. As soon as I clicked on his site, I gauged that his style was very surreal, and the names of his projects expressed this. With names like 'Specimens', 'Time Travel' and 'Acid Washed Dreams', you would expect his work to be quite alternative and surreal. I chose to look at the series 'Time Travel' where his subjects aren't the focus of the images, their bodies are. I thought this was interesting and quite different to my usual work and the other artists I had studied, as the subjects in their portraits were the sole focus of the images. Ayer projected vibrant images onto the naked bodies of his subjects, resulting in some stunning outcomes. I immediately wanted to respond to this work with my own as these portraits were nothing like I had seen before
I did enjoy responding to Davis Ayer very much. The process of working with the projector was fun and I liked putting my own spin on his idea of projections, projecting vibrant anime images instead of natural images. However, I felt as if the style of these portraits wasn't really for me. I like my subjects bringing meaning to the images by being themselves, and the idea of using their body as a canvas and projecting whole other ideas onto them completely defeats the purpose of that. For that reason I decided I would not incorporate this work into my final piece, but I am glad I tried it out and decided this for myself, as usually. I would have just written it off without exploring it.
In terms of my most successful image, I felt the one below was the best. I loved how the word 'RAGER' was shown across my subjects body, and the colours projected onto her make the image seem quite dark and cold in contrast to the other, more vibrant images.
Nan Goldin
Nan Goldin is an American photographer. Her work has explored LGBT bodies, the HIV crisis, the opioid epidemic and just moments of intimacy. I chose to look at her work because I feel like her work has so much meaning that most wouldn't be able to gauge at a first look. Her images seem like snapshots at first, but when you begin to understand what is going on in the images, who her subject us and what they're doing, the image suddenly has a much clearer point to it. I have always liked how Nan Goldin takes portraits that are out of the ordinary, but she does it in a way that isn't over the top and equally isn't too subtle. This way of working has always intrigued me and I decided to look into it more. I gathered a few images from multiple different works of hers, as I didn't want to stick to one theme.
My Response To Nan Goldin
I responded to these images by taking some portraits on my film camera, with one on self timer. I found it quite hard to respond to Nan Goldin. The 'snapshot' style of portraiture is my style, but my subjects are always 'too ready'. I tried to just capture moments, the first image is of my classmates looking at art, the second is of me and a friend on camera timing and the third is a friend of mine backstage at a concert. I felt as if I captured these moments well, but not like I fully incorporated Goldin's work and the ideas behind it into my own. I knew I didn't have to photograph the exactly what Goldin had, but I found it hard to find moments to capture, but maybe thats because I was looking for it too much. I took an image on self timer to try and capture what was going on for me in the moment, but I didn't feel like this was successful. I am glad I looked into Goldin as her work has always interested me, and responding to it with my own work helped me think about the images I was going to take.
My FINAL Project
voyeuristic tendencies
For my final project, I decided to take a number of images inspired from the works of the photographers I had researched.
The final images I selected were these:
Exhibiting 'VOYEURISTIC TENDANCIES'
I knew I wanted to have something interactive for my audience when I exhibited this series of images. The whole idea of portraits and images being visually pleasing for someone is about it being pleasing to one individual when it might not be to another. I wanted to let people decide what they wanted to see themselves.
I started looking into exhibitions which I felt like were interactive, and one I came across that intrigued me was Daido Moriyama's 'MENU' show at the Tate Modern in 2012. The show was a one day only event and consisted of the audience choosing a number of images out of 90 that Moriyama had laid out, these 90 images were all from different points in his career. People who went to the exhibition chose images from this, and had a personal photobook made from these images. I thought that letting people choose their images was a brilliant idea, but I didn't want to leave them with photobooks.
I began looking into unique ways of exhibiting images. I liked some uses of a projector, but I felt as if it was still quite boring. I decided I wanted my photos to stand out against the rest, and I could do this by incorporating extra light into my exhibition. After all, photography is all about the use of light. I thought about placing LED lights either above or below my images to give them more of a standout look, but I decided against this. I then thought about placing my images onto a lightbox, and I felt like I could incorporate my idea of interaction into this.
So I began looking into exhibitions using light boxes and I came across Corinne Mariaud, a photographer who exhibits her portraits against light boxes. I loved the idea of this and I thought they stood out in a way that they couldn't if they were just stuck up on a wall. I decided that I was going to incorporate ideas from both Corinne Mariaud and Daido Moriyamas exhibitions, using the idea of a choice of what you would like to see and making that choice stand out.
So I began looking into exhibitions using light boxes and I came across Corinne Mariaud, a photographer who exhibits her portraits against light boxes. I loved the idea of this and I thought they stood out in a way that they couldn't if they were just stuck up on a wall. I decided that I was going to incorporate ideas from both Corinne Mariaud and Daido Moriyamas exhibitions, using the idea of a choice of what you would like to see and making that choice stand out.
For the final exhibition of these images I chose to print them on A3 acetate and put them on a lightbox. I then let the people viewing arrange it to how they wanted, which I felt like represented the whole idea of voyeurism in photography, the viewers making my own photos how they want to see them. Some chose to overlay them, some didn't. I feel like the outcome of this exhibition was succsessful. I let my photos be overlayed and changed by my audience to see what they like, which is what I wanted to do.
My favourite use of the overlay was the one below. I love how the flowers looked over my subjects face, and without knowing it I started analysing the meaning behind my own work. I felt like overlaying the flowers onto my subjects face had given these two images a completely new meaning, which is exactly what I was going for with this exhibition. I wanted people to create their own meanings for my photographs by arranging them in this way, and this image is a perfect example of how that was done, because it started to make me, the photographer, think about my own work in a subjective way.