Sam Contis

Sam Contis is a Postwar & Contemporary artist who was born in 1982. Their work was featured in numerous exhibitions at key galleries and museums, including the The Museum of Modern Art and the and the Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery.

Sam Contis’ series Deep Springs speaks to the idea of community and the social self. Contis spent lengthy visits at a traditionally all-male liberal arts college in the high desert of California, a remote backdrop that contrasts starkly with the group mode of collegiate life. Contis’ subjects are pictured at a moment in their lives where they are in their early college years that has been typically understood as a time of coming into an adult self. In this case, such identity-formation is impacted by group social dynamics as well as connection to the characteristic western landscape of California.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s

Paul Mpagi Sepuya was born in 1982 he is an American photographer and artist. His photographs focus heavily on the relationship between artist and subject. He often explores the nude in relation to the intimacy of studio photography. The foundation of Sepuya’s work is portraiture. He features friends and muses in his work that creates meaningful relationships through the medium of photography. Sepuya reveals the subjects in his art in fragments: torsos, arms, legs, or feet rather the entire body. Through provocative photography, Sepuya creates a feeling of longing and wanting more. 

Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s images often substitute masks, parts and space to fragment both the literal and figurative body. Layers and collage effects unsettle what the eye anticipates, viewers’ fixed beliefs, the historical canon of portraiture and the social context more broadly. “There is a confusion of positions – Where is the camera? The model? – which forces viewers to confront our own perspectives,

Since its origins photography has enabled people to make sense of themselves and their environment. In one sense all photography, whether it is directly about the  photographer or not, is an exploration of identity and/or  place.

Identity or parts of identity may be classified by any number of things such as religion, gender, or ethnicity.

Loss of identity can result in increased levels of generalized anxiety, low self-esteem, depression, a loss of self-confidence, social anxiety, isolation, chronic loneliness, all of which threaten our ability to connect with other people.

You are the one who defines yourself only your thoughts and actions define who you are, and if you don’t recognize yourself anymore, it means you weren’t being fair to yourself.

Self Portraits

A portrait can be of your cat or your brother’s feet on a skateboard. It should say something about the person you are photographing or the person you are creating with the camera.

the difference between a self-portrait and a portrait is seeing themselves. for example a selfie is a smaller branch of self-portraiture. A self-portrait considers the inferiority of the artist; it’s a moment for self-reflection, to pause and to look at yourself.

Since the beginnings of photography, artists have used the self-portrait to push the technical and artistic boundaries of the average in photography.

MINDMAP

A tableau vivant , French for ‘living picture’, 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, and may be theatrically lit. A tableau may either be ‘performed’ live, or depicted in  painting, photography and sculpture.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, tableaux sometimes featured poses plastiques (‘flexible poses’) by virtually nude models, providing a form of erotic entertainment, both on stage and in print. Tableaux continue to the present day in the form of living statues, street performers who busk by posing in costume.

Jean-François Chevrier was the first to use the term tableau in relation to a form of art photography, which began in the 1970’s and 1980’s in an essay titled “The Adventures of the Picture Form in the History of Photography” in 1989.

It shows us three teenage girls posed formally in a dining room. In the center of this photograph, a clock face is on top of a dark marble fireplace. Above the clock hangs a nineteenth century portrait of an old man mounted in a heavy gilt frame. On either side of the painting, framed prints of men hunting on horseback hang on the wall. However this isn’t what catches the attention the image is dominated by the colour of the wall behind, rich blue that screams royalty. The polished surface of the dining table cuts across the picture horizontally and the table’s surface is highly reflective, creating a mirror effect and almost like symmetry as it reflects the silver platter and an ornate ceramic tureen. A dark-haired girl stands to the center right of the image, holding onto the back of a chair pulled out behind the table. She stares directly, at the viewer. Two girls sit at the table, on either side of its centerpiece.

On the right, a girl wearing a blue shirt is gazing at the table center piece. One hand rests lightly on the table, while the other, half hidden behind a cascade of hair, supports her face as she leans her elbow on the table almost looking bored of being there.

On the left, a girl in an orange shirt is folded over her arms, her face hidden and her blonde hair flowing onto the table. The table’s surface is highly reflective mirroring the girls. The dark space underneath it constitutes the foreground of the image and has a significant effect to the visual power of the image and adds a sinister undertone their environment. The girls wear make-up and are well groomed, echoing the room’s extremely clean and well-ordered appearance.

A candid photograph is a photograph captured without creating a posed appearance. The candid nature of a photograph is unrelated to the subject’s knowledge about or consent to the fact that photographs are being taken, and unrelated to the subject’s permission for further usage and distribution.

Taking photos of people when they have no idea that you’re doing it is considered candid photography. One of the beauties of photography is being able to catch someone in the act. It adds life to your pictures.

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.

By photographing a person in their natural surroundings, it is thought that you will be able to better illuminate their character, and therefore portray the essence of their personality, rather than merely a likeness of their physical features.

It is also thought that by photographing a person in their natural surroundings, the subject will be more at ease, and so be more conducive to expressing themselves, as opposed to in a studio, which can be a rather intimidating and artificial experience.

The surroundings or background is a key element in environmental portraiture, and is used to convey further information about the person being photographed.

Where it is common in studio portraiture and even in location candid photography to shoot using a shallow depth of field, thereby throwing the background out of focus, the background in environmental portraiture is an integral part of the image. Small apertures and great depth of field are commonly used in this type of photography.

Examples of some photographers

Anthony Kurtz

Born in California, USA in 1979, there is a rich,cinematic and painterly quality to Anthony´s photography which not only drew the attention of the advertising industry but has also been honored with some of the world’s top photography awards. Anthony Kurtz currently lives in Berlin, Germany

This image is of a model standing in front of a famous Berlin monument called the ‘Brandenburg Gate’which was located in no-man’s land between East and West Germany during the Cold War, this famous monument, built during the 18th-century this monument has long been a defining symbol of Berlin and both the city’s division and unification. The name of the photograph is ‘Bundestag’. Definition of Bundestag : an assembly of representatives of a bund (such as the assembly of the German Confederacy of 1815 or the lower house of parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany)

Final Photos

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.

for this photo shoot I used one point artificial lighting to create a chiaroscuro affect with a backdrop.