Inspirations

Henry Mullins started working at 230 Regent Street in London in the 1840s and moved to Jersey in July 1848, setting up a studio known as the Royal Saloon, at 7 Royal Square. Here he would photograph Jersey political elite (The Bailiff, Lt Governor, Jurats, Deputies etc), mercantile families (Robin, Janvrin, Hemery, Nicolle ect.) military officers and professional classes (advocates, bankers, clergy, doctors etc).

Henry Mullins Inspired work

Diamond Headshots

I took inspiration from Henry Mullins to create this idea on photoshop. I used the eliptical marquee tool to create an oval shape to cut out the headshots. I then arranged them into the diamond shape so that it resembles Henry Mullins work.

Street photography is photography conducted for art or enquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public places. Street photography is a sub genre of photojournalism. The very publicness of the setting enables the photographer to take candid pictures of strangers, often without their knowledge. Street photographers do not necessarily have a social purpose in mind, but they prefer to isolate and capture moments which might otherwise go unnoticed. Framing and timing can be key aspects of the craft with the aim of some street photography being to create images at a decisive or poignant moment. Street photography can focus on people and their behavior in public, thereby also recording people’s history. 

This image was taken of a mother and child by John Bulmer in 1965. Bulmer had his own style of street photography, taking intimate close shots of people on the streets and public places done with a wide-angle lens interspersed with compressed views of architecture, industry and townscape with a longer lens. The long lens was also used to isolate a figure on the streets. In addition to Cartier-Bresson, Bulmer admired the work in black and white of Bill Brandt, Larry Burrows, William Klein, Mark Kauffman, and particularly Eugene Smith; but he was asked to work in colour for the Sunday Times Colour Section from its launch in 1962. At the time, most photojournalists looked down on colour photography as commercial; and colour film was difficult to work with as it was slower than black and white and had less exposure latitude

Mikiko Hara

Portrait photography, or portraiture, is a type of photography aimed toward capturing the personality of a person or group of people by using effective lighting, backdrops and poses. A portrait photograph may be artistic or clinical. Portrait photography is one of the most popular genres of photography, with good reason. Good portrait photographers are able to capture the personality and emotion of people around them.

Contemporary portrait photography focuses on modern values from today’s world and how they are referenced or challenged in a photo and the message or emotions that reflects. They can either reinforce or challenge modern ideas and feelings by portraying different emotions.

Examples of Contemporary portraiture

These images were produced by Fernando Rodriguez a Santiago based photojournalist and fine art photographer.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), arguably the most significant photographer of the twentieth-century, was one of the co-founders of Magnum Photos in 1947 and champion of the “decisive moment”. He brought a new aesthetic and practice to photography, initiated modern photojournalism, and influenced countless followers. Henri Cartier-Bresson has intuitively chronicled decisive moments of human life around the world with poetic documentary style. His photographs impart spontaneous instances with meaning, mystery, and humor in terms of precise visual organization, and his work, although tremendously difficult to imitate, has influenced many other photographers. His photographs may be summed up through a phrase of his own: “the decisive moment,” the magical instant when the world falls into apparent order and meaning, and may be apprehended by a gifted photographer.

The decisive moment: widely considered to be one of the most important photo books of the twentieth century. Pioneering for its emphasis on the photograph itself as a unique narrative form. Originally titled Images à la Sauvette (“images on the run”) in the French, the book was published in English with a new title, The Decisive Moment, which unintentionally imposed the motto which would define Cartier-Bresson’s work. The decisive moment refers to capturing an event that is ephemeral and spontaneous, where the image represents the essence of the event itself.

Key Images

This image has been taken outside in natural lighting. This image is very bright with contrasting tones of dark grays and blacks. The focal point of this image is the children in the foreground of this image. This image was taken at the Berlin wall in 1962. The children appear to be playing in the streets. This image is a whole contrast in itself as the Berlin wall was seen as a bad thing as it separated the east and west of Berlin (from 1961-1989) leaving people from each side unable to see family members and stopped people from being able to work . However the children are playing next to it which is seen as a happy positive thing.

Magnum Photography

Through 1944 and 1945, Cartier-Bresson photographed the occupation of France and its liberation. In 1947 he co-founded the Magnum agency with Robert Capa, Chim (David Seymour), and George Rodger and he spent the next twenty years traveling around the world. Magnum is one of the first photographic cooperatives, owned and administered entirely by members. The staff serve a support role for the photographers, who retain all copyrights to their own work. In 1966 he left Magnum, which remained his agent, and devoted himself to drawing.

Compare and Contrast

Henri Cartier-Bresson and William Klein

Both Cartier-Bresson and William Klein’s images are solely in black and white. The above image (William Klein’s) is very dark toned with lots of blacks and grays and the below image is more bright and white toned even though both images look to have been taken outside in natural lighting. The subjects of both images also appear to know in someway that they are being photographed, whether they were told or spotted the camera themselves they are both engaging and interacting with the camera. The above image has the focal point of the two children as they are extremely close to the camera leaving very little background space. However in the image below the foreground is of the children but they are very low in the frame leaving a lot of background of the wall behind them.

Henri Cartier-Bresson and Alex Webb

Both of these images have been taken in natural lighting of people who are unaware they are being photographed. The above image (Cartier-Bresson’s) is very dull and grey toned whereas the below image is full of various colours. Both images have been taken in the streets however in the first image the frame is full of people who look like they are at some form of event and in the second image the frame only has 3 people in it. Two of those people are in the foreground of the image and are slightly out of focus whereas the man in the background is fully in focus like the rest of the image. In Cartier Bresson’s image this contrasts the below image as the foreground of the people is in focus and the background of the buildings are slightly blurred.

Albert Renger-Patzsch

Albert Renger-Patzsch was a German photographer associated with the New Objectivity. The ‘New Objectivity’ emerged as a style in Germany in the 1920’s as a challenge to Expressionism. As it’s name suggests, it offered a return to unsentimental reality and a focus on the objective world, as opposed to the more abstract, romantic, or idealistic tendencies of Expressionism.

Image Analysis

This image taken by Albert Renger-Patzsch shows a plant of some sort. This shows off his macro photography. Macro photography is extreme close-up photography, usually of very small subjects and living organisms like insects, in which the size of the subject in the photograph is greater than life size.  This image shows that he uses various styles of photography in his work. He also takes images of industrial type buildings and settings.

My Response

For this photoshoot inspired by Albert Renger-Patzch I went out and took images of industrial style buildings to try and mimic his work as best as I could. I then chose my favourite images from the shoot and converted them to black and white the same way Renger-Patzch has done.

Keld Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer who achieved widespread international recognition in the 1940’s and 1950’s for his abstract colour photographs. He is one of the most influential Danish photographers in the 20th century. His career spanned 70 years and he had strong interest in modern architecture, industrial areas and structures. His efforts have put a mark on photography as an artistic expression. With his keen eye for things that are generally overlooked, Keld Helmer-Peterson opened a door to the hidden beauty of a world we thought we knew so well.

High Contrast Images-Black lighting

Keld Helmer-Petersen published several books of black and white images that explore dramatic contrasts of tone. In some, we are only presented with images that are black and white.  All mid tones have been removed. He created and found these images, using both cameras and flat bed scanners to achieve the effects he was looking for. These books are beautifully designed and encourage us to consider the space around the image and the accompanying text as integral to the meaning of the work.

Keld Helmer-Petersen’s Image

This image looks like it has been taken of an industrial area/structure. I took inspiration from this image to create my own images below. I took an image of an industrial structure and used the threshold tool on Photoshop to try and recreate the dramatic contrast in Keld Helmer-Petersens work.

My Images

Before and After

I created this black light effect image in response to Keld Helmer-Petersen by opening Photoshop going to image adjustments and changing the image to black and white and then adjusting the threshold to the level I wanted it at.

A contact sheet is a piece of photographic paper on to which several or all of the negatives on a film have been contact-printed. They were an inevitable part of the photographic process until digital photography rendered them obsolete.

Contact sheets are useful/essential as the purpose of it is to be able to quickly scan a number of images to find the keepers or the ones chosen to be enlarged.

For this photo shoot I took inspiration from Albert Renger-Patzch. I took images of industrial type buildings from different angles such as, straight on or from a worms eye view. I then changed the images to black and white so that they would fit his theme.