This image makes me feel intimidated as the mans pose displays him as powerful and the use of light positioning to create shadows on his face portrays him as cruel and spiteful making the audience feel uneasy. The dim lighting also creates an eerie and dark feeling to the image with the writing on the pillars implying that there are some unknown stories and secrets hidden within this image.

In the background we can see what looks like a train and rails making me question what sort of role he had in a place like this and following further research I found out that the man was a German industrialist that was a convicted war criminal. Alfred Krupp’s business was using almost 100,000 slave labourers from concentration camps to manufacture arms for the Nazis under terrible working conditions. This caused many deaths from exhaustion, hunger, neglect and malnourishment. Krupp was surprisingly interested by the work of Arnold Newman, a Jew, despite his obvious hateful views. This lead the New York based magazine Newsweek to commission Newman to take Krupp’s portrait. He originally refused on a moral basis however he changed his mind when he realised he could create an image that would represent the evil that he harboured and the pain and misery that Krupp was responsible for.

This context explains the use of a downwards camera angle, which contrasts the power we originally sensed. This is to present how Arnold was looking down on Krupp, positioning the viewer to be higher up then him potentially symbolising the fact that now that Krupp has no power and authority over the Jewish people and Arnold Newman is taking back that power.