What are environmental portraits?

An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace. They typically highlight the subject’s life and surroundings.

Michelle Sank

Michelle Sank is a social documentary photographer, based in Exeter, in the UK. She was born in Cape Town, and left there in 1978. During her childhood in Cape Town, her family were jewish immigrants, who faced high amounts of antisemitism and witnessed the awful era of the Apartheid. Because of her experiences in South Africa, she became interested in documenting people and their situations both in the UK, where she is based, and elsewhere, for example the USA and Ireland.

Insula

Insula is one of Michelle’s many projects. These images were taken both in Jersey, as well as Guernsey.

“Insula eschews a specific brief though the work responds to the wealth of nineteenth century portrait photographs within the Jersey Photographic Archive that it now joins as a powerful point of interpretation. The beguiling qualities of these new photographs call to mind the position that Lewis Baltz found for photographic series, ‘somewhere between the novel and film.’ As such, Sank’s photographs offer a visual poem to the island”.  Gareth Syvret

Images from Michelle’s other collections

This image, along with many of Michelle’s other images, has a very striking background. This helps to make the subject appear more striking, creating a natural focal point to the subject’s face. This photo features an overcast and slightly overexposed background, which helps to contrast the dark tones in the subject’s outfit. The tones in this image are muted, except from the harsh black tones within the subject’s outfit. The image is slightly cool tones, with grey and very slight blue tones coming from the sky and water.

The image also has a wide depth of field, and slightly lower light sensitivity, leading to a slightly grainy image. Furthermore, I think that by capturing thus image, Michelle is commenting o what it is like to be a teen in Belfast when the picture was taken, as well as class and social aspects – Belfast after the era of the troubles, and how it affected the younger generation.

My photoshoot plan

	Inside Shoot	Outside Shoot	Multiple People Shoot
Location ideas	Condor Ferries Terminal, Skills Jersey offices, Local Corner Shop, Cafes, Shops such as Butchers, Boots, The Quayside food kiosk.	Rubbish Dump, Building Sites.	Rubbish Dump, Green Waste dump.
Subject(s)	Employees, owners, bar staff, waiters.	Workers	Workers
Shot Types	Full body, 3/4 length, headshot	Full body, 3/4 length, headshot	Full body, 3/4 length, headshot