For project 3 I wanted to research more on portrait photographers. One that I came across was Diane Arbus.
Diane Arbus (New York, 1923-1971) revolutionized the art she practiced. Her bold subject matter and photographic approach produced a body of work that is often shocking in its purity -- in its steadfast celebration of things as they are.
I feel that for portrait photography there is an agreement to risk trust and acceptance of each other between the photographer and the subject. For Diane Arbus, she was interested in them for what they were most specifically. She did not want representatives of philosophical positions or life styles or physiological types, but unique mysteries. Her subjects surely perceived this, and revealed themselves without reserve, confident that they were not being used as conscripts to serve an exterior issue. They were also doubtless interested in her.
What I like about her portrait photography is that there is a powerfully individual presences that exist in her pictures that transcend the abstractions of role. Her subjects were often seen with disguises, costumes to conceal from the casual viewer a more intimate truth.
Identical twins, Roselle, N.J. 1967
Untitled (6) 1970-71
Teenage couple on Hudson Street, N.Y.C. 1963
Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962
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Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a pro-war parade, N.Y.C. 1967
A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C. 1966
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evelyne-politanoff/diane-arbus-photography_b_996233.html
Since my final project will be focussed on portrait photography of people in vanishing trades, I wanted to research more on photographers who do portrait photography and try to learn from them. One example that I found was corner portraits of cultural icons by Irving Penn.
Irving Penn is one of the most prolific photographers working in the 20th century and one of the most famous fashion magazine photographers of his era. Irving Penn shot this series of minimalist studio portraits back in the 1940s and ’50s that were celebrated for capturing the personality behind the celebrity.
In portrait photography there is something more profound we seek inside a person, while being painfully aware that a limitation of our medium is that the inside is recordable only so far as it is apparent on the outside. The starkness of the setting, the low-key lighting, the subtle choreography of pose and gesture that both hints at the interior life of the subject.
I will try to apply this for my project by getting my subject to pose for me, and I hope to achieve their personality through their poses with their tools of trade. It could be a sense of pride in their job or even expressing their love for their trade.
Irving Penn, Marcel Duchamp, New York, 1948.
Irving Penn, Georgia O’Keeffe, New York, 1948.
Irving Penn, Truman Capote, New York, 1948.
Irving Penn, Martha Graham, 1948.
Irving Penn, Salvador DalÃ, New York, 1947.
Irving Penn, Marlene Dietrich, December 23, 1948.
Irving Penn, Spencer Tracey, New York, March 23, 1948.
Irving Penn, Igor Stravinsky, New York, April 22, 1948.
Irving Penn, Gypsy Rose Lee, New York, 1948.
Irving Penn, Joe Louis, New York, February 15, 1948.
Sources:
http://flavorwire.com/211107/irving-penns-fantastic-corner-portraits-of-cultural-icons/
The Singapore International Photography Festival 2014, with the theme of The Infinity, celebrates the endless possibilities that ideas and collaborations can bring. It is the first time that I am going for the SIPF and I visited 3 of the exhibitions this year at the Deck, National Museum of Singapore and Chapel Gallery at Sculpture Square.
1) How are the photographs in festival presented? What choices did the curators make in the display of the works? are the photographs grouped in a certain way?
The photographs in the festival are presented in a way that each location showcases a type of photography. For example, Deck has more landscape photography, National Museum of Singapore has more portrait photography and the Chapel Gallery has more photojourlism and documentary photography. The photographs at each of the hall of a location is grouped according to a series of artists like whether the theme is about places, or people etc. The photographs themselves are displayed in many ways such as an outdoor site specific installation, or within a frame with white borders around the photographs, or mounted onto foam board.
2) Name a series that attracts you the most? who is the photograph? What is his or her work about? Explain what you like about it.
TOWARDS A NEW INTERIOR by Ang Song Nian (b. 1983, Singapore) is my favourite series of the exhibition. Towards A New Interior serves as an experimental study of space and situation which explore and exploit the conceptual space between presence and absence. With images accompanied by written accounts and a real-life site specific installation, this work seeks to draw out relations between human beings and the things around them, invoking human presence by highlighting their absence.
I love how the curators have exhibited this series outdoor as it creates a juxtaposition between the name of the title of the series itself. However, it relates closely with his series still as when the photographs is diplayed outdoors, it links to the idea of exploring the space and situation and making use of it to show the interaction between human beings and the inanimate objects.
3) Is there any series of photos that explores the topic of work or leisure?
Yes. Traces of time by Carrie Lam. “Trace of Time” is a visual translation of a journey that transcends the borders of time, space and memory. It attempts to impart new meanings to old photos and to document those that changed as well as those that remained. In 1979, Carrie Lam's 28-year-old mother embarked on a journey with an Olympus camera. In 2012, my 26-year-old self began a new journey that brought her back in time, following in her every footstep through the pictures she took. She went back to the same place that her mother went in the photographs and retook them with her inside them. Then she framed the photographs so that she would seem to appear at the same place with her mother then at the same time.
4) Write some of your thoughts about festival. What do you think of the festival overall. would you visit the rest of the exhibits or attend the film screenings on your own time?
I feel that the festival was very intriguing and it also gave me inspirations on other topics that I can explore for future photography projects and also it has made me fall in love with photography deeper. I would visit the other exhibitions and film screenings during my holidays.
Since for Project 3 my focus will be on photographing people at work, Ms Ho has recommended that I look into the works of August Sander as a reference for photographing people and their occupations. In this series, we can see how the tools of trades of the people were often included into the composition of the photograph in order to bring the context to the subject matter. I will be using a similar method when photographing my subjects by making them pose with their tools of trade. I like how the subject in August Sander's People of the Twentieth Century series look directly into the camera and this creates a connection between the photograph and the person viewing it. Thus, another element to note in photographing portraits is eye contact.
People of the Twentieth Century, the collective portrait of German society made by German photographer August Sander, has fascinated viewers from its earliest presentation in a 1927 exhibition and the controversial publication of a selection of 60 images in the book Face of the Time published two years later. Despite Sander's dedication over five decades to the idea and compilation of this portrait atlas of the German people, the project remained unfinished. Nonetheless, his photographs remain compelling, in part because he chose to categorize his subjects by profession or social class. The images are thus representations of types, as he intended them to be, rather than portraits of individuals.
Sander believed that society was organized into a hierarchy of occupations. One section of his project is dedicated to the skilled tradesman, including master craftsmen, industrialists, technicians, and inventors. Subjects associated with intellectual or "white-collar" labor were usually photographed indoors in three-quarter-length poses, while master craftsmen were portrayed in their working environment with the tools of their trades. Portrayed as he emerges from the dark basement of a building, the coal carrier in the image above belongs to the lower ranks of labor and is symbolically associated with the bowels of German society.
Sources:
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/sander/
