Alec Soth is a photographer born and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, famous for his ‘documentary style’ photographs which where influenced by Walker Evans traditional American photography. Soth is interested in and focuses on the relationship between narrative and metaphor, and draws many comparisons to literature, although, he believes photography to be more “like poetry than writing a novel.” He has published over twenty-five books, some of them are Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), NIAGARA (2006), Broken Manual (2010), and I Know How Furiously Your Heart is Beating (2019).

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In an interview with Hanya Yanagihara in early 2019 for the New York Times magazine, Soth begins to talk about how and why he takes his photographs the way he does, explaining that “When I started this project, my only intention was to spend time with another person in a room, any room. But after I photographed Anna Halprin, I decided it should be in the subject’s home. This makes them more comfortable. It’s also more stuff to help reveal what might be going on inside of them”.

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His second project NIAGARA was an exploration of ‘love‘ and long term relationships and commitment, which I can directly link to my theme of love in my blog so far. One of the main points that Soth has repeated thought various interviews is that he was interested in making the focus and person he was photographing comfortable, by being in a familiar environment that they love and cherish.

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This is one of my favourite of Soth’s photographs. It shows an old woman, who we can assume to be Anna from Kentfield in California sitting comfortable in a chair in a beautiful seating area. The lighting is clearly a natural daylight coming though the windows. I think that the image Soth’s taken is very clever, as the woman home is obviously filled with plans and vines, and the fact that Soth has taken the image from outside has mean that a delicate reflection of greenery and sunlight is placed around the frame of the photograph. In the centre of the image is a full length body shot of Anna, sitting in her home. The image is obviously taken with a lower F/ as the outer parts og the image are out of focus.

Contextually, the image has been taken outside for different reason, and that being that it makes the model more comfortable in their own space. By taking the photograph from outside the building, Soth sticks to an important though he keeps in mind; to allow the subject t to be photographed in their own home. By leaving the room that the subject is in, it should allow them to be even more comfortable inside their own personal space, and this allows Soth to capture the most neutral, relaxed and free image of the subject possible. His reasoning for photographing people in their homes is to find chemistry with strangers while photographing loners and dreamers. This directly links to the image of Anna above in relation to the fact that she may be lonely being an older woman. Alec Soth manages to find a simple and calm chemistry with Anna while taking her photograph ,while she lets him take look into her life.

“I fell in love with the process of taking pictures, with wandering around finding things. To me it feels like a kind of performance. The picture is a document of that performance”

Alec Soth

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WHAT IS LOVE?

‘When we love someone we experience the same positive thoughts and experiences as when we like a person. But we also experience a deep sense of care and commitment towards that person. Being “in love” includes all the above but also involves feelings of sexual arousal and attraction.’ – https://theconversation.com/what-is-love-139212

There are many different ideas of what love is. Love can be an addiction, a relationship, friendship, and many more other things. It’s not only people who perceive, show and feel love in the same way, for example, many cultures have different values and feelings toward ‘Love’.

You don’t always have to love one person/ people, many other forms of love can be toward an object or idea, e.g. religion. Many political views come from love such as controversial views about ‘free love’ and things such as polygamy, gay couples and other alike topics. Many movement have been started to fight these issues.

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Carolyn Drake tanks about her lover, Andres, who doesn’t particularly like being photographed. Waking up a couple hours before him, she can’t resist to snap a shot to express how natural the moment is. She states ” Love is a complicated thing. I see the pictures as an expression of love, but also of the selfishness in love.”

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Tomas Munita is an independent documentary photographer. He focuses on photographing social and environmental issues. In the photos above, he documents refugees with their families crossing the Naf river. His photos explore a strong sense of love and community in difficult times.

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Ernest Badoux

Born in France in 1828, Ernest Badoux worked in Jersey from 1869 to 1887, later joining and working with his son. A grand total of 13085 photographs are available in the Société Jersiaise’s archive, mainly portrait work (his speciality) but also featuring landscapes of the island. Badoux can be described as the “first significant chronicler of island life” through the means of photography.

He often used the chromotype process (carbon printing) for his images, which adds a sepia-tone to the portraits and their subjects, and makes the photographs more expensive to produce but of higher quality.

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The portraits themselves are excellent examples of the fashions of the period, as the subjects would have worn their best clothes to the sittings, showcasing their wealth and social standing. For the children, this meant fancy dress most of the time including sailor outfits for the young boys, which showed how influential Jersey’s maritime industry was during that period. the facial expression of the subjects also reveals more about the practice of photography during that era, as they were most often pictured as being stern and not particularly happy. This was due to the need for them to be very still in order to have a clear and sharp picture, meaning holding their pose for a far longer period of time than nowadays.

These people would all have been fairly wealthy, to be able to afford such a high quality and professional portrait and the fine clothing that they wore, and much can be judged about each person’s life from each image. However, the majority of them are photographed in what appears to be a studio, with the same plain background and furnishings, the exception being the photograph in the bottom right corner, of Miss Allix on her horse.

PHOTOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS-

This image is an example of the “chromotype” method of photography that Badoux often use, which can clearly be seen by the sepia colour palette and the higher quality of the image as a whole. This image in particular was not labelled with a name so the subject’s identity is unknown, but we can guess from the context that she was wealthy, and from her wedding ring we can see she was married. the subject is centered and the portrait is a half-body posed type of image. There is clearly a fake background hanging behind her, which is simple and not overly distracting, which draws all attention to the subject as the main focal point of the whole image. She is facing the camera, however is looking just off into the distance, and her expression is plain and neutral, due to the long time it took to take a photograph in those days.

LINKS-

https://www.theislandwiki.org/index.php/Ernest_Baudoux

https://societe-jersiaise.org/photographic-archive