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Initial studio portraits with a mix of 1 and 2 point lighting. They didn’t come out in the quality or style that I had hoped for so I decided to re shoot more portraits. However there are some interesting lighting effects that came out of this photo shoot.

Final outcomes

I then moved on to using colour lighting in the studio to create a different style of image. It was difficult to get a good quality image as the coloured lights created a blurry image. However I ended up with some good quality photos that I was able to edit.

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Final images

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I experimented with the saturation and contrast with these images to make the colour stand out. With the last three I also made the exposure a little bit longer to get a blurred motion effect

Jeff Wall was born in 1946 in Vancouver, where he lives and works. Jeff Wall is renowned for large-format photographs, ranging from subjects in urban environment settings, to nineteenth-century historic painting inspired Tableaux pieces. He studied art history at London’s Courtauld Institute – with his interest in contemporary media to create one of most influential ideas in contemporary art. He has exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany, touring to Mudam Luxembourg (2018); Pérez Art Museum, Miami (2015); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, touring to Kunsthaus Bregnez, as well and many other destinations.

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A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) 1993

Wall carefully stages the scenes in his photographs, intricately designing every detail to achieve his desired final visual effects. Ironically, the final images often appear to be mid-action, spontaneous, and candid moments such as ‘A Sudden Gust of Wind’ (after Hokusai) (1993). This Tableau was created after Hokusai’s scene in a woodcut print where the painting shows seven individuals caught off-guard in the wind at different points along a narrow path.

ANALYSIS:

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CONTEXTAL/CONSEPTUAL:

TECHNICAL: 

The lighting of this image is generally quite light, clearly taken with a daylight source of lighting. You can see this lighting is natural, reflecting the focus of the photograph. The image looks to have been reasonably exposed, with a high contrast between the soft grey clouds in the sky , and the dominant branches of the tree, reddish tones of the ground and deep brown earth edging the river.

The aperture of the photograph looks as if is around f/16 as there is a large depth of field. The shutter speed seems to be quite long, maybe 1/1000 as the image seems to be underexposed and quite focused and sharp, especially with the moving pieces of paper in the air. The ISO also seems to be low as the image was taken in daylight, so probably around ISO200.

VISUAL:

Similarly to Hokusai’s print, on the left, there’s a woman with her scarf blown around her face. Paper is being dispersed by the gust. Two men hold their hats to their heads while a third gazes up into the sky, where his hat is being carried away by the wind. Two narrow trees bend by the force of the wind, releasing dead leaves which mingle with the floating papers. however, Hokusai’s image is a print rather than an image.

The colour of the image is generally quite dull, with very ash tones colours coming from the grey/blue sky and river, as well as maroon reds from the tree leaves and soil in the fields. The contrast seems to be high as shadows coming from the edge of the river seem to be almost black, contrary to the bright white floating papers in the wind. the composition seems to almost exactly reflect that of Hokusai’s artwork ‘Ejiri in Suruga Province’

who is JOACHIM SCHMID and what do they do?

JOACHIM SCHMID is a berlin based photographer, who has been taking photographs since 1980. SCHMID began their career as a freelance critic and a publisher of Fotokritik. Once they ceased the production of Fotokritik, they began to work on their own work, mainly using found and archival photographs. SCHMID‘s work has been internationally exhibited. They create work that was once mundane but now is intriguing and captivating. JOACHIM SCHMID uses lost and thrown away images that he has found in the street in Berlin.

moodboard of JOACHIM SCHMID’s images

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analysis of JOACHIM SCHMID’s image

The lighting in this photograph is very bright, almost too bright as it flattens the features and creates no shadows or contrast. For this picture, the lighting would have been a flash head light, as the light is bright and there are no shadows. This photograph is in black and white. The tones are very flat and there is not a big tonal range, as there are no very dark darks. This photograph has no texture, which also links to the reason why it looks flat and 2D. There is a contrast been the two halves as the patterns they are wearing clash and dont work well together. The pairing of the images creates confusion for the viewer as they will not know why they have been put together and the significance of the reason too.

how am i going to link to JOACHIM SCHMID?

• photograph individuals and use an archival image of them as the other side of the photograph.
• photograph individuals and use a found image of a person that relates to what they identify as, eg. race.
• photograph individuals and use a picture of a family member as the other side of the photograph.
• use archival images of people that identify as something similar and mix the photographs up.

Gregory Crewdson (born September 26, 1962) is an American photographer. He photographs tableaux of American homes and neighborhoods. Crewdson’s photographs usually take place in small-town America, but are dramatic and cinematic. They feature often disturbing, surreal events. His photographs are elaborately staged and lit using crews familiar with motion picture production and lighting large scenes using motion picture film equipment and techniques. He has cited the films Vertigo, The Night of the Hunter, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blue Velvet, and Safe as having influenced his style, as well as the painter Edward Hopper and photographer Diane Arbus.

Crewdson’s photography became a convoluted mix between his formal photography education and his experimentation with the ethereal perspective of life and death, a transcending mix of lively pigmentation and morbid details within a traditional suburbia setting. Crewdson was unknowingly in the making of the Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art, earning him a following both from his previous educators and what would become his future agents and promoters of his work. The grotesque yet beautifully created scenes were just the beginning of Crewdson’s work, all affected with the same narrative mystery he was so inspired by in his childhood and keen eye for the surreal within the regular. Fireflies, has become a standout amongst his collections known for their heightened emotion and drama compared to its simplicity of color and spontaneity. the exploration of form within his own work was evident within his transformation of how the photo was taken rather than just focusing on the subject.

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The creation of the self defined American realist landscape photographer and his peculiar style originates from Crewdson’s long appreciation for 20th century melodramas and literature, specifically Hitchcock and Ralph Waldo Emerson. These films drove Crewdson to challenge the essence of light and force it in a new direction in Twilight, a dramatic, highly pigmented collection of images that channel dusk to the subject of the photograph. Crewdson wanted to focus even more heavily on the suburban lifestyle that is the focus of his main movie inspirations. Known for their methodical yet rhythmic use of language, Hitchcock and Emerson developed a new challenge for Crewdson by changing language to visuals in the most effective way. The look of sadness and contemplation on the subjects faces was something most major galleries had never seen, intentional sadness yet in such a bland and unexpected way. Similarly, Dream House captures the same “moment between moment” of thought from the subject from creative angles and cryptic perspectives.

Gregory Crewdson’s most recognized and iconic collection is Beneath the Roses, similar to his previous projects, its haunted urgency and profound dislocation from the audience is uncomfortable yet familiar. Branching off of his previous collections, Beneath the Roses was aimed to capture cinematic production in the stillness of one picture. With a budget similar to that of a small movie production, each image involved hundreds of people and weeks to months of planning. Crewdson’s interventions into the streets of typical American suburbia became a nuance interpretation of reality of lifestyle focusing on the most dramatic emotions and complex moments of silence and thought for the subject.

Crewdson explored the idea of challenging tradition with experimentation of his title outside of the U.S. at the abandoned Cinecittá studios outside of Rome. Known for its mysterious stillness and emptied character, the set was new to Crewdson’s typical use of subject and storyline but reflected the same balance and organic nature of a created set turned into an art piece. The simplicity of Sanctuary’s development contrasts Gregory’s tendency for detail and specificity evoking a more compelling landscape that was already created for him and caught the attention of White Cube, Crewdson’s European agent in London. By converting these cinematic scenes into ordinary life, he explores a new and unfamiliar genre of his own focused on naturalizing a manmade scenario in a world already based on the artifice of American lifestyles.

After years of exploring the idea of cinematic photography, Sanctuary was Crewdson’s return to photography, his original hobby and technical training. Most recently, Crewdson has created Cathedral of the Pines, similar to Beneath the Roses and Twilight, a distanced interpretation of exaggerated drama by an intervention into natural in its most synergetic state. The collection was shown at Gagosian Gallery in New York City. The collection returns to his early photographic origins in Becket, Massachusetts set deep in the woods far from familiarity of subject and setting.

WHAT IS A TABLEAU VIVANT?

Tableau vivant is french for ‘living picture’, and is a static scene containing one or more actors or models. They are stationary and silent, usually in costume, carefully posed, with props and/or scenery, the setting may also be theatrically lit. It works to combine both theatre and the visual arts. A tableau photograph can be achieved through staged photography, where a scene is set up, with models, posed, artificially purposefully lit, propped, set designed by the person taking the photo.

EXAMPLES:

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HISTORY OF TABLEAU PHOTOGRAPHY:

‘Tableau Vivant’ was first used in the eighteenth century by French philosopher Denis Diderot to describe paintings with a certain type of composition. Tableau paintings were natural and realistic, and had the effect of walling off the observer from the drama taking place.

In the 1860s, the concept of tableau reached a crisis with Édouard Manet, a French modernist painter, decisively rejected the idea of tableau as suggested by Diderot, in his desire to make paintings that were realistic rather than idealised. He painted his characters facing the viewer with a new vehemence that challenged the beholder. In the 1970s, a group of aspiring young artists such as Jeff Wall and Andreas Gursky began to make large format photographs that resembled paintings, that were designed to hang on a wall. As a result these photographers were obliged to take on the very same issues revealing the continued importance of tableau in contemporary art.

TABLEAU VIVANT IN PAINTINGS:

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TABLEAU VIVANT PHOTOS AND PAINTINGS ALSO SHOW VARIOUS ASPECTS OF SYMBOLISM AND ALLEGORY:

Allegory in art is when the subject of the artwork, or the various elements that create the composition, is used to symbolise a deeper moral or spiritual meaning such as life, death, love, virtue, justice etc. Allegory is clearly represented in the ‘Christ in the House of His Parents‘ by John Everett Millais.

This is Millais’s first important religious subject, showing a scene from the boyhood of Christ. Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850, it was given no title, but accompanied by a biblical quotation: ‘And one shall say unto him, What are those wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.’ (Zech. 13:6).

Christian symbolism is prominent in the painting:

• The carpenter’s triangle on the wall above Christ’s head, symbolises the Holy Trinity.
•  The wood and nails prefigure the crucifixion
• The young St John is shown fetching a bowl of water with which to bathe the wound. This clearly identifies him as the Baptist

This image is of Chloe and was taken in the studio quite recent in the style of Chiaroscuro byme in the style of Robert Moran for my photography coursework. A man who uses shadows and light to highlight what he wants the viewers to focus on for example in one of his photographs he used a women’s silhouette and shined light on her curves making that the viewers focal point. In my photo rather than focusing on her silhouette I made the viewer’s focal point her face and also her shirt which I think is just as empowering as the silhouette of the women Robert Moran photographed as she is embracing her body shape and curves I however used the shirt because of WonderWomen as she is one of the few female superheroes empowering to females in the DC comics. The shirt should also be a place where the viewer’s eyes draw into as it has bold colour like, blue, red and yellow. The soft shadows conceals a part of her face and clothes and the light illuminates her best features. For this photograph I used one point artificial lighting to create a chiaroscuroeffect with a backdrop. I positioned the camera right in front of Chloe and just had her turn a small portion of her body. One thing I did differently to Robert Moran was that I used more light than shadow. However when I went to edit the photo and changed the brightness and contrast.

JOACHIM SCHMID

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what do I like about JOACHIM SCHMID’s images?

• how simple the look on face value
• how complex they are when you delve deeper into the meaning of the pairing of the images
• how the halves flow and work together to create a good composition

how could I link my photographs to JOACHIM SCHMID?

• photograph my individual and take a photograph from their childhood and match them up together, to create the sense of how their identity has change over time.
• photograph my individual and find an archival image that links to how they identify, eg. race.

EDWARD HONAKER

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what do I like about EDWARD HONAKER’s images?

• how the faces are blurred
• how these images could be true for any individual as the face is unknown
• links to lots of identity problems such as, lack of identity

how could I link to EDWARD HONAKER?

• blur faces on photographs to show how identity issues could happen to anyone
• find old family photographs and cross out faces of those who have changed or how are no longer alive

CHRISTIAN MARCLAY

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what I like about CHRISTIAN MARCLAY’s images

• the mix between different black and white and coloured album covers
• the way each cover sits on another and fits together
• the thought that has gone into each album cover being placed by another, as in why it has been placed with another
• the mix between genders
• the notion of how each album links to another in some way

how could I to link to CHRISTIAN MARCLAY?

• link my individuals to what music they enjoy listening to
• explore the stereotypical music tastes for people and how it may not be correct

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