Picture This How Pictures Work

Picture This How Pictures Work, 2000, Molly Bang, San Francisco: Chronicle Books LLC. ISBN: 978-1-58717-030-0. I purchased this book in my charity shop. This is a great little book that takes you back to basics. Using just shapes and colours, Molly Bang deconstructs composition and examines each element that makes a good picture work. The

Planning and preparing for assignment 1.

Due to the COVID epidemic getting photographs of anyone outside my household is proving very, difficult; so for my first assignment I have elected to keep it simple and use my wife and myself as the subjects. The photographers and their projects that have inspired me are Larry Sultan, Pictures of Home (1992) and Tina

Assignment 1 – Environmental Portraits, ‘My Other-half’

Assignment 1 – My Other-half “Identity comes from both the observer and the observed.” – Shaun Mullins. In this project, I wanted to create environmental portraits that in some way express the different sub-identities that make up the overall character of a person.  I believe that our identity / character is not defined by one

Larry Sultan

Larry Sultan, 1946 – 2009. An American photographer, he began as a conceptual photographer. In 1977 he and a photographer called Mike Mandel published a collection of photographs they found in government archives that they titled Evidence (1977). They then created large billboards to slow down traffic. Sultan later produced photographs of his parents and

Sally Mann

Sally Mann, born 1951, American photographer famous for her large-format black-and-white photographs. She fist photographed her young children then moved on to landscapes suggesting decay and death. Some of her photographs of her children would not be considered acceptable in today’s society due to their nudity and subject matter. Candy cigarette, (1986) by Sally Mann.

Tina Barney

Tina Barney, born 1945, American photographer, famous for her colour portraits of friends and family in New York and New England, printed in large-scale. Barney’s point-of-view was most definitely as an ‘insider’ in her collection, Theatre of Manners (1997). Mark, Amy and Tara, (1983) by Tina Barney. Beverly, Jill and Polly, (1982) by Tina Barney.

Exercise 1.1a – Planning & Preparation.

The brief for this exercise is to produce five portraits of strangers from a variety of backgrounds. They must be classed as ‘Other’ so that they may differ by a significant respect from myself. This could be by age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic background, social class, etc. I am also to keep notes of contact

Porträt 1986-1991

Porträt (P. Lappat), 1987 by Thomas Ruff. Porträt (M. Roeser), 1999 by Thomas Ruff. Porträt (A. Kachold), 1987 by Thomas Ruff Ruff’s project Porträt 1986-1991 is a collection of photographs made like passport I.D. photos, only Ruff used a large format camera and printed the photographs size 1600 x 1205 mm at a printing quality for

Thomas Ruff

Portrait 1986 (Stoya) Photo by Thomas Ruff, Tate Collection. Reference: P78091 Display Caption – Tate Ruff believes that photography can only capture the surface of things, conveying what he describes as ‘the authenticity of a manipulated and prearranged reality’. In 1981, he began a series of colour portraits of his friends and fellow students at

Reading Task – The photographic works of Diane Arbus – My thoughts

Much has been said and written about Arbus and her work, but I wonder if too much has been read into her photographs?  The images used to critique her work style all appear to poses those elements of the sublime, they have that something, that punctum that Barthes coined (1) and which all photographers strive