Week12 NEW YORK!!!

Ok, so just got back from a fantastic week in New York!!! :) had a great time with great people. It was however an educational visit so we had to cram a lot of gallery and studio visits in between all the shopping and sight seeing that had to be done!

Our hotel was a 5 minute walk from Times Square and every night groups of us would go off and explore. Last time I was in New York I was only 16 and so can't really remember it, plus we were kids and had to be chaperoned everywhere! but this time I took it all in and appreciated every second of it.

We arrived pretty late cause our flight was delayed, but not only that when we got to the hotel our lecturers discovered that the whole booking had been cancelled!!! so there's like 40-50 students all knackered and getting more and more p'd off as we had to be up at 8.30 the next day to start our packed itinerary! the hotel finally sorted the situation and we could all go to our rooms and sleep.

The rooms were really nice, some nicer than others i have to say, but mine looked out onto the Empire State building, that was pretty cool :)

Everyone looked a bit tired in the morning, but we were all so excited that we just kinda forgot about the major fiasco from the night before. We all went for breakfast to this nice cafe and took a walk to our stop on the itinerary - Platon's Studio :) very excited to meet Platon. I researched him before coming to New York and discovered he's a British photographer and that I really like his work :) he has an incredibly powerful style and has photographed some even more incredibly powerful figures.

PLATON

We all piled into Platons studio and were absolutely awe inspired by his fantastic series of portraits he had displayed on his walls from pretty much every celebrity and political figure. We had a good few hours there, it went so quick as I was just mesmerised with what he had to say, he is such a good speaker and seemed so confident about himself and his work. Truly Fantastic :)

He talked about his first ever portrait, which was with Anthony Hopkins for his silence of the lambs promo, he said that he practiced the night before with the lighting set up etc, he saw on the news that Hopkins had attacked a photographer and so Platon was bricking it!! but when he got there he started to talk to Hopkins and admitted he was nervous which meant they connected on a personal level as Hopkins himself admitted to being nervous.

"Honesty was the beginning of the journey - don't put on an act" - Platon

Platon is one of the most inspiring and enthusiastic people I have ever met, I felt like I actually wanted to be him, or just have his life!! - so jealous.

He gave us so much valuable information that I will never forget and take with me throughout my career and hopefully pass on to other people who will be as equally appreciative of it.

• be prepared to have a work ethic
• find a unique visual voice/style
• guide yourself
• get close to your subjects
• get closer
• connect with your model on a personal level
• use body language to your advantage
• take inspiration from everything

He has such a distinctive and unique style, it would be pretty easy to pick out a Platon print from a bunch of ordinary photographs of the same subject. He uses one light which he places directly in front of the sitter, he then positions him self between the sitter and the light and uses a wide angle lens from a low view point to create these unusually distorted and out of proportion images and he makes it work because he is Platon :)

PHIL TOLEDANO

We also had the fantastic opportunity to meet British photographer Phil Toledano, who's work I actually came across a few weeks before whilst researching for my 'incongruous' project. so to get to actually meet him was so exciting. myself and a few others turned up to his studio mega early, he let us in and we just had a little chat until everyone else turned up. He is such a lovely guy and still sounds very British :) he talked to us all about his projects and living and working in New York.

The photo to the left his from his body suits series, i actually saw the real suit, stuffed up high on a shelf out of the way, i was just like "wow, thats the baby suit"!! haha.

He also spoke about his very personal and emotional project 'days of my father' which almost brought a tear to my eye as i looked through his book and read each caption. It must be very hard to publish images like these and make them so public, but i think that also helped him be able to deal with it all.

CHRIS VERENE

On the last day of our visit we had a talk with American photographer Chris Verene, who was born in a small town in Illanois, which became the subject for most of his images for the first 20 years of his photographic career. He has had many of his work published and has a very distinctive gritty style. I found his documentary project of his family back home very interesting as it shows the community atmosphere over two decades, most of it not changing very much.