Arnold Newman was an american photographer who primarily worked in portraiture however also occasionally created abstract still life composure’s. More importantly however he coined the phrase and is the founder of environmental portraiture. This usually features a subject looking directly into the camera with the background being pivotal to either their identity or livelihood. There are however photos which don’t follow this pattern and his photos rarely include action shots. These photos are a great way of portraying ones personality and/or interests and the facial expressions are a good way of showing whether or not they enjoy their work/home life and so even a lack of emotion in a photo is able to portray strong emotions.

Due to the time period of his photography most of his work is done with film, although he had access to high end film cameras and so had the benefits of high quality images and glass while still having the subjective ‘benefits’ of film photography such as the light Gaussian grain in darker areas and interesting interactions with light when using a large aperture. The use of film also results in small imperfections in the image which I believe gives the photo more character as these markings are near impossible to accurately replicate digitally and are unique to the image. The majority of his images are done in black and white. I believe this allows for greater use of contrast and tones and results in images that look more structured and sharper. This creates a strong sense of drama in his images.