Henry Mullins
Images are not my own.
Henry Mullins moved to Jersey in 1848 from London. He was the first professional photographer to come to Jersey and establish a portraiture business when photography was still new. Many of Mullins’ images are held in the Société Jersiaise photo archive depicting Jersey people from his era. Henry charged Jersey’s residents half a Guinea to have their portraits taken by him.
Overview of his work
Mullins is known for taking environmental style portraits. His style appears to be very formal and proper which is typical of the early days of photography he worked during. His approach, much like his style, is also very formal. As you’ll see in the mood board on the left, he positions his subjects in the centre of the frame, using very polished backgrounds. This style of portraiture is quite limited compared to candid portraiture as not being able to naturally see people in action means we learn less about subjects through the image.
Analysing his image
Visual: In this image we see a man in the centre of the frame. The background is a plain white colour which shows that the photographer wanted the focus to be on the person himself. The subject is positioned at an angle where we see the left side of his face facing the camera. Something that immediately catches my attention is the person’s attire. It appears as if he is wearing some sort of military uniform as we can visibly see many medals on the uniform.
Conceptual: I think that Mullins wanted to emphasise the fact the man was military involved as his clothing is the only distinct part of the image which gives some indication to the person’s identity, history and story.
Technical: The subject is at the centre of the frame and the image is black and white due to the era this was taken in.
Yury Toroptsov
Images are not my own.
Yury Toroptsov is a native Russian photographer based in France. He spent 6 months in Jersey due to a photography residency. His project “fairyland” was commissioned by the Société Jersiaise. Yury decided to name the project “fairyland” after seeing a float from the Jersey battle of flowers parade with the same name. He then researched the concept of “fairyland” further by visiting the Jersey archive to find out that one of the 1937 battle of flowers floats-created by the Vibert family- had the same name. He then found negatives of cattle photographed in the 1900s, and saw that cows and bulls in that era would have names like “fairy maiden” and “fairy boy”. His Video goes into a little more detail about his inspiration for the project, and explores the whole concept of “fairyland” in depth.
<a href="http://”>Video
Overview of his work
As you can see in the mood board above, Yury took a more modern approach to portraiture. Unlike Mullins, his subjects appear to be photographed in seemingly normal surrounding and not appearing overly “clean-cut”. I think this approach to photographing people allows audiences to understand and be able to more realistically see the people in the photos. You can also see that Yury also takes more candid images of people, and he also captures objects in to show Jersey’s identity. I think that Yury’s style is a lot more contemporary, which could perhaps appeal to a more younger generation.
Analysing his image
Contextual: This is an image of a person walking down a street in Jersey.
Visual: In this image we can see a lady walking down the street. She is wearing formal attire which probably means she works in finance as this was something that intrigued Yury about Jersey as he mentioned it in the video linked above. The image is taken from far away which means we can’t see many of the lady’s features. We can also see a shadow from the person as the sun is beginning to set, which further supports the theory that she works a finance job as this is the typical time a person working in finance would finish.
Conceptual: I think that Yury wanted to show the “finance” aspect of Jersey in a more fun and mystical way to fit in with the “fairyland” theme. I think he manged to do this well in the image with the shadowing and the different lines and textures in the image created by the road and brick wall.
Technical: The woman is positioned in the middle of the image and the photographer appeared to use natural lighting from the sun.