In a past blog post I focused on the idea of happiness and mental health as this photographer had suffered from depression and anxiety. I always found his work beautiful as you can feel his emotions through his physicality rather than his facial expressions. I enjoyed doing this project as I used an old photo to cut up and rearrange in a new order to show chaos in a simple photo by collaging the new cut up pieces.
Edward Honaker is a a 21 year old photographer who documents his own depression through the use of self portraits, the black and white images illustrates the photographer’s experience with depression and anxiety. In an attempt to raise awareness of the topic, Honaker says about the project: “Mental health disorders are such a taboo topic. If you ever bring it up in conversation, people awkwardly get silent, or try to tell you why it’s not a real problem. When I was in the worst parts of depression, the most helpful thing anyone could have done was to just listen to me – not judging, not trying to find a solution, just listen. I’m hoping that these images will help open up conversation about mental health issues. Everyone is or will be affected by them one way or another, and ignoring them doesn’t make things better.”
With this photographer I enjoyed the timing of the photos by slowing down the shutter speed but still being able to find the right timing to move the mask so it wasn’t so blurry that it is just a white dot or too slow that you can still see the persons face. the use of masks was very interesting and I found was very affective as he uses a lot of masks but if I was to use this photographer I would try find doll masks to use to give a rustic atmosphere to the images.
Keld Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer who was inspired by Albert Renger-Patzsch. He became famous through his colour photographs but he also published several books of black and white images that explore dramatic contrasts of tone. Some of these photos were only black and white without any tones as they had been removed. Helmer-Petersen published his first photobook, “122 Colour Photographs” in 1948. His work was then noticed for its inventive photos, which he turned landscapes and buildings into abstract patterns. He embraced coloured photos as black and white photos were only seen as being serious.
This was another photographer that I enjoyed interpreting as the use of extreme black and white as I felt was very effective as the two colours are very contrasting and I did find editing the images enjoyable but it was difficult to find images that was easy to have a great depth of contrast so would be needing images with solid colour which I found difficult with the sky as the layers of clouds made it difficult but with the images I chose after testing out the editing, I feel worked really well with the editing and the outcome.
