Environmental Portraits

“An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. The term is most frequently used of a genre of photography”.

Here a some examples of environmental portraits:

 

Arnold Newman

Biography of Arnold Newman on http://arnoldnewman.com/biography

“Arnold Newman was born March 3, 1918 in New York City.  He was raised and attended schools in Atlantic City, N.J. and Miami Beach, FL. He studied art under a scholarship at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL from 1936 to 1938. He died in New York City on June 6, 2006. Generally acknowledged as the pioneer of the environmental portrait, he is also known for his still life and abstract photography, and he is considered as one of the most influential photographers of the 20th Century.

Newman began his career in photography in 1938 working at chain portrait studios in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and West Palm Beach, and immediately began working in abstract and documentary photography on his own. In June of 1941, Beaumont Newhall of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Alfred Stieglitz “discovered” him, and he was given an exhibit with Ben Rose at the A.D. Gallery in September. There he began working on experimental portraiture, developing an approach that is widely influential in portrait photography today. In June of 1942, he returned home to Miami Beach, FL because of the war. In 1945 his Philadelphia Museum of Art one-man exhibit, “Artists Look Like This,” attracted nationwide attention.  Well established, he moved to New York in 1946 and opened his studio and became a member of the American Society of Magazine Photographers (ASMP.) Newman’s new approach to portraiture began its influence through key publications in America and abroad.  Exhibits and purchases of his work by major museums quickly followed. In 1949, he married Augusta Rubenstein, and they had two sons, Eric, born 1950, and David, 1952. His wife died in 2009. They are survived by their two sons and four grandchildren.”

Examples of his photography:

Mary Ellen Mark

Mary Ellen Mark

“Mary Ellen Mark was an American photographer known for her photojournalism, documentary photography, portraiture, and advertising photography. She photographed people who were “away from mainstream society and toward its more interesting, often troubled fringes”. – Wikipedia

Examples of her photography:

My Plan

For my photo shoot I plan to take photos of my friends, teachers and peers in their every day environment, so at school doing what they normally do. This photo shoot will take place at school. I will put these photos into black and white as I think it will make the photos stand out a bit more. I will use natural lighting and the portrait mode on my canon camera. I will design my photos like this as I want to show what happens in peers and teachers school lives.

Contact Sheets

Red – No

Orange – Maybe

Green – Yes

Final Photos (Unedited)

I really like how these turned out originally but I edited them into black and white for the final outcomes.

Final Photos (Edited)

I’m really pleased with the final outcomes of these edited photos and I will revisit this style of photography.