Michelle Sank

Michelle Sank is a South African photographer born in Cape Town, however, she’s lived in England since 1987. Her images represent her interest in the human condition and because of this, her work can be seen as a social documentary. She quite often targets social and cultural issues with her work.

This is a series of images that she made in Jersey called Insula. Using locals in their homes, places of work, or even somewhere they enjoy being, she made images to develop a lyrical vision within which the defining influences are place and cultural geography.

Another collection of images she has made is “Breathe” was made during the Covid-19 pandemic. First, she documented the social isolation and then the lockdown in this collection of images. As she says on the portfolio of this collection, she felt drawn to how people of all ages were “negotiating” the new way of living and how their relationship to each other changed.

Alongside this, house facades and accompanying objects discovered in the area have taken on a heightened sense of relevance serving as a way of showing that the people were in isolation.

Michelle Sank hasn’t actually finished this project and is continuing as the Covid-19 situation continues on. She is due to release more images in the near future.

Image Analysis

First I’m going to start with how the image came about, Michelle Sank was asked to make a collection about what being a young person in today’s society is like. Michelle did this using people from all different ethnic background and using the cultural divide. She also took the images in the subject’s room, so the objects and decoration could tell us about the person.

In terms of the actual image analysis, the image has a lot of natural light coming in and there are a lot of squares e.g. the mirrors, the window etc. The subject is in the middle of the image sat on their bed, looking straight into the camera. Based on the bedroom, it doesn’t look like she spends a lot of time in her bedroom, there aren’t clothes thrown around the place or there isn’t even that much decoration apart from the mirrors. The girl herself doesn’t look very comfortable, if that’s because of the way she is sat or whether it’s because she’s not that comfortable in her room.