Michelle Sank was born in Cape Town, South Africa. She left there in 1978 and has been living in England since 1987. Through her images she tries to get across the issues around social and cultural diversity and she has done this within many different photography projects. Some of Sanks most recent achievements were a UNICEF honorable mention in 2012, a gold award in San Francisco International Photographic Competition in 2013, winning the Kuala Lumpur International Photo Awards in 2016, and a honorable mention at the IPA Awards in 2018. She also has done a multitude of solo and group exhibitions.

photo analysis;

The photograph that I have chosen to analyse is this photo of, it appears, a young girl in her own bedroom from Michelle Sanks ‘My Self’ photography series. Visually the colours in the background of this image are mainly grey and white, appearing very subdued and creating quite the contrast between the extravagant harsh black and bright pink clothing that the subject is wearing. You would assume that the young girl is upper class due to the detail and quality of both her clothing and makeup, both of which would be seen as glamorous, suggesting wealth. The positioning of the model could also suggest this as she is sat up extremely straight with very good posture. Technically, this photograph was taken from an angle straight on the model, creating simplicity and ensuring that she is the main focus point and subject of the image. The concept behind Michelle Sanks ‘My.Self. project was to document diversity between young people living in today’s society and what it means to be a young person in today’s society, she wanted the subjects photographed in their bedrooms so that the items around them became metaphors for their individuality and cultural contexts. Contextually I believe that Sank has done this extremely well, with the ‘out there’ clothing and cushions behind the subject possibly suggesting that she can be ambitious and outgoing, with the trophy’s on the shelf above her giving the viewer the impression that she does achieve.

LIFE AND WORK:

South African photographer, Michelle Sank, lives in England and is fascinated with the human condition. Her work, as a social documentarian, explores physical and human landscape through social and cultural diversity. She recently released her third monograph, The Submerged, through Schilt Publishing. Michelle has numerous bodies of work, many exploring people living on the edge of society, captured on the fringes of communities. She is drawn to the human performance in and the architectural definition of, place.

Her photographs have been exhibited and published in England, Europe, Australia, Mexico, South Africa and the U.S.A. She has undertaken numerous residencies for prominent galleries in the U.K. and Europe. Her work is held in numerous collections such as The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas and The Woodstock Centre for Photography, New York. In 2007 she was a winner in The Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery, London and her work will be featured in the 8th International Biennial of Photography and Visual Arts BIP2012 which will take place from March 10 until May 6, 2012 in Liège (Belgium).

EXAMPLES OF WORK:

CRITICAL ANALYISIS:

VISUAL:

In terms of the visual aspects of the image, it is fairly simplistic in set up in both composition and color. The main focal point of the image is the lady sitting in the center of the image in a nigh gown staring straight out the window. The bleak looking city in the background in the image provides a contrasting image to the lady who seems to appear fairly content and happy judging by her facial expression. There are 3 very clear positionings in the image, the foreground, mid-ground and background, giving the image a sense of depth. The color scheme of the entire image is very muted, from the gloomy city to the light olive sofa and soft pink nigh gown of the lady, it keeps the image balanced and doesn’t immediately give a focal point. Another interesting point of the image is the mid-ground, where you are able to see various different items adding another focal point in the image. The top half of the image is fairly light compared to the bottom half of the image, due to the lady and sofa blocking out the natural light which is hitting from the right, top hand side of the image.

TECHNICAL:

In terms of technical set up, I can imagine Sank using a tripod throughout her series of works as there is always a constant level maintained in her work, where the camera is at eye level with the subject of the image, she never utilizes varying angles and her shot sizes are also quite constant. Using full body shots in her work. The lighting in her images are also fairly soft, therefore the exposure of the images are likely to be in the mid range (400-800), making them neither over or under exposed. Sank also exclusively uses natural lighting in all her work, including this one, her images are quite often set in the outdoors. Michelle almost certainly also asks her models to pose as in most of her work, they maintain very intense and constant eye contact with the camera, this image is a little different as there is no eye contact, but the position of the lady doesn’t seem natural, suggesting that this has been posed.

CONCEPTUAL:

“What’s on their walls is a metaphor for their identity and personality,” says Michelle Sank, whose latest project My.Self is a series of portraits of young people in their bedrooms in Sandwell, England.

When Michelle Sank approached young people on the streets of Sandwell, asking to take portraits of them in their bedrooms, most were happy to be photographed. It was trickier to negotiate with their parents, who were sceptical for obvious reasons. “I had to explain why it was so important for me to photograph them in their bedrooms,” says Sank. “What’s on their walls is a metaphor for their identity and personality”.

CONTEXTUAL;

Throughout the book, Sank has inserted questionnaires printed on sheets of yellow paper, with handwritten answers to questions like “List 5 words that describe your image/the way you dress”, “What would you like to be doing in 10 years time?” and “How do you feel about living in the Black Country?”

What’s intriguing is that the interviews don’t correspond to the people in the portraits, leaving it up to the reader to imagine who is speaking, and also giving a wider representation of young people in the Black Country. In doing so it raises the question of our urge to judge, and especially to judge young people – whether it’s from the way they look, or what they have to say about themselves.

Hedley Hinault and Joyce De la Hay

Joyce

-She walked to school from Greve de lec.

-She went to church on a Sunday.

-No one was allowed on the beaches, and the Germans were in all the hotels like the Prince of Wales.

-You could only go fishing if you bought a German with you.

-During Liberation she was at home because there wasn’t a way for her to get all the way to town.

Hedley

-Left school at 14.

-He was made Herdsman by his father.

-During the occupation, farmers had to grow so much wheat in order to feed the Germans and everyone else.

-The wheat was cut and stacked.

-He was too young to carry the stacks so he did rounds with the cider. One day the German guard that was sent was really young and had his eye on the cider.

-Hedley kept offering him glass after glass till the German was passed out drunk.

-He got his father who told everyone what he’d done in Jersey French.

-They all took and hid some of the wheat.

-After that, they always sent two Germans instead.

-Liberation he rung the bell at St Lawrence church till 1 pm then went out with a girl to see Liberation but it was so busy they couldn’t see anything.

From kitschy to grotesque, this series ‘Common Sense’ documents modern consumerist culture. These vivid and often lurid photographs are both funny and sad, taking a forensic look at everyday items. A smorgasbord of over-the-top visuals, highlighting everything from tacky clothes and jewelry to different kinds of junk food.

Common Sense is a portfolio of 350 colour laser copies of photographs taken by Parr between 1995 and 1999. The portfolio was produced in an edition of ten; Tate’s copy is number nine in the series. The pictures were taken in the UK and abroad and depict images of global consumerism in tight close-up and lurid colour. They are designed to be displayed in a horizontal grid of at least three images by four. The artist has specified that it is not necessary to display all the photographs in the series when the work is shown. The selection of images can be arbitrary.

Common Sense was first shown in 1999 as an exhibition staged simultaneously in forty-one venues in seventeen countries. This earned Parr a Guinness World Record. To coincide with the exhibitions Parr produced a book, also called Common Sense, in which 158 images from the series were reproduced.

The photographs were taken with 35mm ultra saturated film which produces vivid, heightened colours. The pictures depict the minutiae of consumer culture, fragments that show the ways in which ordinary people entertain themselves. There are details of garish clothing and accessories, women’s faces heavy with make-up, and piles of merchandise in tourist shops, cake shops, sex shops and car boot sales. Fast food is a recurring theme: a child’s grubby hands clutching an over sized donut, rows of lollipops, plates overflowing with fried breakfasts and bowls piled high with ice cream. An overweight woman grips a hundred-dollar bill between her teeth. The images capture the feel of disposable culture in the developed world.

Parr’s pictures both reinforce national stereotypes and demonstrate how consumer culture has made international boundaries more indistinguishable. Because the images are tightly cropped, in many cases it is impossible to discern where they were taken: a balding head beneath a purple baseball cap and immaculately manicured false nails would once have appeared typically middle American but are now prevalent in other parts of the world. In other instances, small details immediately situate the image: a cup of milky tea on a red checked tablecloth is ironically British.

The proliferation of images in the series is simultaneously exuberant and repulsive. The excess Parr depicts is mimicked in the accumulation of details he presents. His hypersaturated colour contributes to optical overload. The images hover between hedonistic celebration and a cloying sense of disgust for what may be seen as the more debased aspects of contemporary culture. Parr’s vivid eye for comic and often cruel juxtapositions of images is evident in his choice of paired images in his book: a sunburned body next to raw meat on butchers’ hooks; a poster advertising chips next to a crawling mass of maggots. Pictures of discarded food and rubbish pecked at by pigeons can be read as contemporary memento mori images. Occasionally, Parr’s emphasis on overconsumption (a Spice Girls t-shirt stretched taut across a fat midriff, teeth flecked with scarlet lipstick) is tempered by images which suggest a gentler, slower-paced culture on the wane: a pensioner in a cloth cap, a pair of feet in socks and sandals.

The work’s title plays on the double meaning of common as vulgar. Parr began his career as a photojournalist and the images in Common Sense are examples of the candid, detached approach typical of observational photography. His dissections of contemporary mores can also be seen in the tradition of English satirists dating back to William Hogarth (1697-1764).