// A N N A   D I   P R O S P E R O //

Anna di Prospero is an Italian photographer who has been working on a self-portrait series called With You, where she appears alongside family members and friends. i like that even though it’s a self-portrait series she isn’t necessarily the star of the images – but the focus if rather about her relationship with these important people in her life. however you may interpret it, the images themselves are absolutely beautiful – with an amazing rich colour palette that runs through the entire series.”

Anna’s images pair rich landscapes with intimate portraits in a bid to form both aesthetically pleasing and contextually thoughtful images. Many of her images make use of the double exposure technique which combines multiple layers of photos to create a final composition. Often this process makes use of landscapes and textures overlaid with forms and figures as seen below in Anna’s own work.

Much of her work is shot though a window such as the above creating a seemingly natural double exposure which makes use of reflections occurring within the image. This photographic technique and style creates a double image within a single frame where two photos can be seen together rather than separately. The landscape above shows an urban garden and swimming poor reflected onto herself and her family member. Perhaps by linking each part of her family to a particular area or setting an emotional link is created between person and place. 

Other examples of Anna’s work feature what could be seen as ordinary double exposure techniques such as digitally – or manually – layering two images over each other with a difference in opacity rather than relying on natural reflections and lighting. In the two photos above, flowers have been overlaid across the figures forming unusual compositions. The muted colour palette in Anna’s work helps to carry her aesthetic and supports her overall theme of identity and confusion within the midst of reality. Using her family as models within each of her tableau images, Anna finds herself in the people who mean the most to her.

Water plays an important role in many of Anna’s images representing a different reality which she tends to be being pulled out of or falling into. The second image here has a strong symbolic reference of the help and support given to her by her family and friends who literally pull her out of the deep water she is trying to escape from.

// I T A M A R   F R E E D //

Born in 1987 in Manhattan, Itamar Freed studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design where he received his B.F.A in 2012. His work has since taken him to London where he is now studying at the Royal College of Arts on the photography program. Freed’s work conjoins reality with the artificial. Staged figures create unusual scenes often with an uncomfortable tension lying behind them. There are three main regions of his photographic work taking him from New York in America to London for his studies and the Israeli wilderness where his home studio lies. Freed’s photographic aesthetic takes much of its style from the techniques of historical painters which draws parallels from his photographs to traditional paintings within art history. His use of colour, natural light and composition blur borders between dreams and reality with open compositions. There is often more than one focus point within each image drawing the eye of the observer to  range of areas within the compositions.

“Freed’s photographic ambience exists as if in a threshold zone, beyond the bounds of specific time and place. Using the photography medium to preserve, to freeze, to grasp life and seize time.”

“My photographic work draws upon a return to the classic paintings of Art History. Through the use of color, natural illumination at its extremes, open composition and multiple vanishing points that simultaneously draw the observer’s eye to different focal points of various events, the borders between dream and wakening are blurred.”

The image below has a number of focal points within its unusual composition. The woman marks a clear part of the photo and creates her own line of sight following the curvature of her body across each of her limbs. There is a sense of fragility about her with a strong sense of vulnerability at her exposed state. Her head starts in a mess of tangled grass and branches but following along her body you arrive at her feet which are immersed in red and orange flowers. There is something to be said about the inclusion of this section of colour, red itself has multiple symbolic readings from lust and passion to danger and poison.  The bird in the background also creates a focal point along with a series of questions. Why is it there? What point is the artist trying to make with its inclusion? The background fades from a  dark, almost blackened tone in the background to a lighter mix of greens and browns in the foreground. This image interested me in particular because of its strange combination of focal points within the strange composition. The collective metaphors and symbolism in the image add a mixture of emotions which support this image and its meaning.