Week 13: Corner Portraits of Cultural Icons by Irving Penn

Tuesday, October 14, 2014 Ching Lea Yee 0 Comments

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 Dalí, 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/





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Week 13: Self-Reflection for Project 3

Tuesday, October 14, 2014 Ching Lea Yee 0 Comments

What are some of the challenges that I faced when doing this photography project?

 The street barber that I was photographing was shy and not very willing to look at the camera or pose for the camera. 

 There were many vehicles who were parking illegally and I had crop them out of the frame at the street barber place. 

 I had to go back and reshoot for the peranakan beaded slippers series as the Ms Irene Sng (the sister of the owner Robert Sng) did not really liked me to photograph her, but she told me to go back the next day as her brother was usually the one doing interviews or appearing in photographs. 

 I had to arrange the tools of the trade for the peranakan beaded shoes to take photograph, I was not prepared for that.

 I am also having some trouble thinking of a title for my project and also how I would design the book cover.
What is the concept for this project?

 My concept for this project was to photograph vanishing trades in Singapore. The idea is that the jobs have very few people who are doing it at the moment and they have no successors to taked over them. Bother the street barber and the peranakan shoe-maker are very passionate about their jobs and they would do the trade as long as they can.
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