Week11 Simon Norfolk

I am currently writing an essay based on the content and form of documentary and reportage photography.

The work of Simon Norfolk has interested me greatly. His images depict the war torn landscapes of Iraq including skeletons of bombed out buildings. He has reverted back to the traditional use of the large format camera so he can carefully compose his images in order to create maximum impact. They are beautiful and stunning in clarity and detail, but without the typical shock or trauma perhaps expected with war photography.

I love how his work is reminiscent to landscape painters from the late eighteenth century, he has chosen to capture his images in this way in an attempt to draw the viewer in, which I think works exceptionally well. At first glance you may not be aware of the finer details and the tragedies that occurred here, I certainly wasn't.

Due to most reportage photography being captured by amateur bystanders with camera phones, professional photographers in this line of work are having to alter their approach and are seeking appreciation within the art world but printing the images for gallery walls and photo-books.

“When you see this picture in a gallery from 20 metres away, you think, “God, that's gorgeous!” It's only when you look at it in detail that you realise you're looking at a place where people were slaughtered" – Norfolk

Week10 Chris Floyd

British photographer Chris Floyd, came in as our guest speaker, he has made a name for himself by taking brilliant photos of stars such as Naomi Watts, Oasis, Paul McCartney, and Lily Allen. Floyd’s technique is truly one of a kind; he keeps his shots simple but at the same time stylish and fun. He started out in the 1990’s as a music photographer, his first big break through being Oasis before they made it big.

As he was growing up, Chris had many influences; his main photographic influence was David Bailey. Baileys subjects and style encouraged Chris to want to produce similar images. Chris was also very much into the popular music of the time and so he combined his love of music with photography. During the 1990’s the music industry still had money for band promos and magazine articles and so Chris found himself inundated with job offers.

Chris went to New York where he felt he changed and learned how to become, in his eyes, a better photographer. He discovered how to tell a story in a reportage style and how to sum up a whole story in one image. Whilst in America he had assignments to photograph the American/Mexican border, The Election Campaign 2004, Sports story for ESPN and Rodeo portraits.

Chris uses a Hassleblad camera with a digital back and carries a portable lighting kit with him for his location portraits.

He gave us some great advice which was “make what you can out of what you get, make a connection and ‘break the ice’ on a human level” – this is actually pretty inspiring advise. He used it for this promo shoot for Kung Fo Panda with Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Black and Lucy Lu. Jack was joking about how he looked pregnant, so Chris went with that idea for this shot. An ‘on the spot’ decision.

I really enjoyed our talk with Chris, he was a really nice guy, funny and down to earth and not afraid to take the mick out of himself – he openly admitted to partly becoming a photographer so he could talk to girls.

week9 Freddie Helwig

Today we had guest speaker Frederike Helwig come in and talk about her photography, she is a Fashion Photographer living in London and has done a lot of work for ID, Dazed & Confused and Vogue and many more.

I have never tried fashion photography and in some ways I feel slightly intimidated by it, even though I felt this way I went to this lecture with an open mind hoping to learn something new. That is exactly what happened. Frederike’s photography has a very distinctive and almost raw style, she uses a flash unit that fixes to the top of the camera and simply points and shoots, this creates an almost 2D ‘pop’ effect, she likes to include a sense of humour within her work asking her models to do outrageous poses.

One of the best tips she gave about how she came to discover her style was to just take lots of photos and pick one that is the best and shoot again in that style, then pick another few and so on, this seems fairly simple and obvious but makes so much sense, with this technique, over the years she was able to define her style.

She talked about this image, it is of actor Adam Brody, she decided to use a dog as a prop for this series which works really well as it gives the images added interest, she shot all her images on one street and asked Adam to do various poses, for this particular image, the dog was yawning so she quickly asked Adam to yawn too.

she told us that she always improvises and tends to come up with ideas for the shoot on the day. Before the presentation I had preconceived views on fashion photography, mainly that the photographers are a bit ‘stuck up’ but Frederike seems really down to earth and she brings an element of fun to her style. She has definitely changed my opinion.

Week8 William Eggleston

still gathering research for my essay and found William Eggleston as a great source. Eggleston started his photographic career using traditional black and white film. He later began to experiment with colour and built his reputation as a pioneer of colour photography. His images tend to be of mundane, everyday and often trivial subjects, literally photographing the world around him. To Eggleston, everything is equally as important; every detail deserves attention. This new way of looking inspired a new generation of photographers. Since the 1960s and 70s, photojournalism and documentary photography has found more of a market in the art world in art galleries and photo books.

Week7 Robert Frank

I am currently researching for my essay based on documentary photography, the question I have to answer is:

‘There are very few contexts today where an image can use the visual language of documentary and reportage and not potentially lose its message. I think its almost impossible not to be circumvented by style.’ (Charlotte Cotton) what are the implications of this statement for a documentary or reportage photographer working today?

One of my sources is photographer Robert Frank, he produced his famous photographic book “The Americans” in 1958 and was awarded a grant to travel with his family across America to photograph its society and culture. Frank started out with an optimistic view on the country but he noticed flaws and soon became interested in capturing the tensions within these bleak and lonely places. His use of unusual focus, low lighting and cropping meant that his work received a lot of criticism.

“…But the quality of Robert Frank is a quality that has something to do with what he's doing, what his mind is. It's not balancing out the sky to the sand and so forth. It's got to do with intention.” Elliott Erwitt

I love Frank's style, it is extremely raw and very simple but each image has so much depth and meaning.