Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s (1925 – 1972) photography spanned many genres, but mainly focused on abstract photography. He shot all his images in black and white, lots of his photography is focused on children and adults in worn down areas with face masks on. He used different exposures, apparatuses and motion blur to create an uneasy feeling and a sense of confusion as the viewer has no context of the image and its purpose. Many of the subjects of the images are moving and are not in focus, and sometimes over exposed.

My photoshoot

My Favorite Images

I chose these final images as my best finished photographs because of the similar style to Ralph Eugene Meatyard such as these images:

My final images resemble Meatyards work because of the strong black and white tonal contrasts with dark blacks and bright whites. In many of my images the subjects face is bury, much like Meatyards images.

The subjects face is also covered in the images, similar to some subjects of Meatyards images wearing masks.

This project is inspired by the work of Vjeko Sager who created art by cutting lines into a piece of paper and raising the shapes up.

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To create my own unique version of this I have decided to center my project entirely around paper. To do this I am going to create a sharp looking origami using plain paper and overlaying it on top of open books to add depth to the photos.

I crossed out the photo in red as it was far too overexposed which made the paper origami blend in too much with the background. The images with green around them are the photos i’d like to explore further.

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Some of these images need cropping to remove the background

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These images have been cropped to remove background distractions such as hands or the grey worktable underneath the book. I experimented with changing aspects such as contrast and exposure but I didn’t like the way it made the images look so decided to leave it unedited

THE FORMAL ELEMENTS

Light- I used natural light to keep the image soft but could have used artificial light from my iphone’s torch as a spotlight to create a more dramatic effect with dark shadowing

Lines- the creased lines on the side of the origami lead viewers eyes directly to parts of the book. To create meaning I could have had it point to a word in the book

Repetition- There is not much repetition in the photos themselves, however, when displayed together like this there is the repetition of the paper itself which is more aesthetically appealing than just a singular image

Tone- The images are very bright with a lot of available light that doesn’t really contrast with the white of the books and paper origami

Keld Helmer-Petersen was a danish photographer renowned for his abstract photography, often upping the contrast of his photos for a more dramatic affect

MY RESPONSE

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To replicate Helmer-Petersons work, I used adobe Photoshop and used the threshold tool to achieve a high contrast look. My favorite photo is of the cuttlery in the top left hand corner. Next time I would like to try this on less delicate objects, like industrial buildings

Keld Helmer-Peterson was a Danish photographer who was inspired by Albert Renger-Patzsch. He is mainly known for his colour photography, however he also published multiple books of black and white images showing dramatic contrasts of tones.

Keld Helmer-Petersen’s Image

My Images

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First I selected the images I wanted to work with in Photoshop. Then I cropped it to the way in which I liked and clicked image, adjustments, and then threshold to adapt where the darkest and lightest parts of the photo are. Overall I feel that they reflect Keld Helmer-Petersen’s photography well due to the way in which i manipulated my photographs.

Keld Helmer-Peterson

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Keld Helmer-Peterson was a Danish photographer. He produced some of the influential work of the 20th century. Most of Helmer-Petersons work consists of two colours, black and white. These to colours are in contrast and create very abstract shapes. In the late 20th century he became interested in figurative shapes found in objects and architecture. In Helmer-Peterson a lot of very dark and very light tones can be seen with the white tones in the background and the black tones in the foreground. These tones also create a stark silhouette against the background that makes his images seem flat. He also uses lots of lines in his, these are quite abstract and give his images a strange composition.

Response

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In my response i tried to use photographs that contained quite abstract lines and shapes. I edited them to give a flat look that Helmer-Peterson captured in his work. Using photoshop to edit my images gave them the harsh, flat feel that Helmer-Peterson would create when editing his images.

In the photo below I have scrunched up a piece of paper. I placed the paper on a black background to show contrast from dark to bright. I have also got a contrast between blue and red in the image and edited the colours to be more vibrant using an editing software.

In the photo below i have edited out the artificial light from the room we completed the photo shoot in. I also turned the mage into black and white and made the shadows and dark colours more dramatic and deeper.

I have edited the image below to have half colour and half black and white to represent the contrast between light and dark, black and white and day and night. I firstly took one image and made a copy of it, then i edited one to have colour and the other to be black and white. Then I used an editing software to split the image and piece it back together perfectly so that there was one side with each.

The image below is of a paper plane in front of a black background being lifted up by a string. I have converted the image to black and white and made the shadows and dark colours deeper and the lighter colours lighter. I then edited out the string that held the plane out from the image.

Formal Elements (Image Above)

The lightest part of the image is to the right (red) side. The background is black and there are some shadows in the contours of the paper. There are two clashing colours of blue to the left and red to the right.

There are random and scrunched up lines throughout the photo. There are also curvy and ripped edges.

The paper reminds me of a rock as it is random and has different surfaces.

The paper is very central in the photo and to either side of the image we can see the glow from the paper.

The texture and surface seems to be very random and contoured which creates some slight shadows. The surfaces in the image a varied and range from random and ripped to flat and straight.

The image ranges from very light and bright colours to dark and lifeless tones.

Albert Renger-Patzsch (June 22, 1897 – September 27, 1966) was a German Photographer associated with the new objectivity. He was born in Würzburg and began taking photographs at the age of twelve and after service in the First World War he had his first museum exhibition in 1927.

Albert Renger-Patzsch’s attitude towards photography involved exploring light, rhythm, line, texture, repetition and many more. He published his famous book ‘The World is Beautiful’ in 1928 which consisted of 100 images which had a lot of detail. Patzch’s work is sharply focused and matter-of-fact style. His work references the aesthetic of The New Objectivity that became quite popular during the Weimar Republic in Germany (1919 – 1933).

Patzsch’s ideas and values of photography are similar to an American photographer called Edward Weston. Weston is known as one of the most innovative and influential American Photographers and one of the masters of 20th century photography. Over his 40 year career, Weston took photos of many different subjects such as including landscapes, still lives, nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodies. Similar to Patzsch, after taking photos of cities and subjects in cities, he went to the countryside and took photos of rocks, trees, rivers and more. Over this 2 year stay in nature, he produced 1,400 negative images using his 8 by 10 camera.

My Photos

Repetition

Half of my images are that of symmetrical patterns inside my house. They are similar to some of Renger-Patzsch’s photos as they are symmetrical but random at the same time. For example the image of the bookcase is very aligned and symmetrical but at the same time random as the books are not perfectly symmetrical or the same.

Final Outcome

I believe the image above is the best from the photo shoot above. This is because i have used the metal railing to frame the incinerator. I have also edited the contrast, curves and cropped it so that the rule of thirds line up with the metal railing.

A contact sheet is similar to a negative but in positive colors. This contains thumbnail images of all the photos from the shoot. This makes it very easy for you to see what images you like and what might need improvement or removal.

The purpose of a contact sheet is to be able to quickly scan a series of images to find the keepers or the ones chosen to be enlarged.

Albert Renger-Patzsch was a German born photographer living in the twentieth century. He is widely associated with the New Objectivity movement taking place in Germany. This movement was against the idea of expressionism. In Renger-Patzsch’s work order and tradition can be seen clearly throughout, this is what expressionism challenged. Expressionism sort out to express emotion rather than nature and tradition, this is what the New Objectivity and Renger-Patzsch’s work doesn’t capture.

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Analysis

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In his work it is clear that Renger-Patzsch uses tone and light to create depth. He contrasts very dark tones with very light tones. He also uses lots of repetition in his work, this repetition can be seen in the shapes he finds.

In the first image the repetition is obvious. The lines in the photo cross the image diagonally creating a triangular shape in the top right half of the image. The crevices in the wall create dark triangular shadows, these contrast with the tone on the outer walls which is a lighter grey. The round shapes on top of the crevices create a rhythm that flows to the background of the photo.

In the second image repetition can be seen in the lines. these lines are shown on the sides of the building and the way the building is shaped. A depth is given with the way Renger-Patzsch angled his camera. Dark, black tones sit beneath the lighter grey and white tones in the sky and on the front of the building. A rough texture is captured on the side of the building which is in direct contrast with the flat sky.

Response

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A contact sheet is a a group of images all put together in an order. On one contact sheet will be all the images from one photo shoot. They help to archive the negatives to be quickly scanned.

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This is a contact sheet from one of my photo shoots. It is of the back of a bench and has been edited into black and white to capture the shadows and the highlights. I also changed the contrast so the highlights were more visible.