Michelle has lived in Exeter, in the South West England, since 1987. Since then she has produced many of intriguing photographs of people. She has developed her style to mainly be environmental portraits. Her work is included in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

She gives a description on her website to why she produced these images. I like how she wants to give these teenagers their sense of individuality and show they are part of our society and should not be looked at in a negative way, instead be seen as people of the future.

She has another project called “insula” https://www.michellesank.com/portfolios/insula , this was done in Jersey. as she talks about her residency and the mix of 19th century portraits, I found a link between this project and the other one mentioned earlier. what moves her a lot is political, community, social, economy and the environment she photographs. her photographs are a response to those topics.

Her work encompasses issues about social and cultural diversity and the challenges within, meaning there is much more to her images then just strangers that decide to pose for her. Within each person she saw a meaning that responds to a project she focuses on.

Response– most of Michelle’s work revolves around realism of the moment, where the people in her photographs are not staged but instead they are captured by her in the way to show who they are to her, their nature. To her, the woman she decided to photograph must of caught her eye, and she wanted to present her for what she felt like to Michelle. The way she is sitting and her position has an impact on how a viewer responds to the image. Her position also gives an insight of who she is. Without knowing the background information of the person, to me she makes the photograph so much more intriguing as her appearance contrasts with the background. Her clothing and makeup being dark, give her this mysterious feel. Because of her legs being visible and crossed over, I think this also has a relation to her as a person, to me she seems so mysterious because she reveals as much as conceals, this might of been done intentionally by the photographer or by the woman herself deciding her way of sitting. Even looking at her arms , one is open and one is not. the gesture of excessive makeup, which dramatized her intense gaze, could be a sign of her not wanting to to reveal her true self or maybe she isn’t aware of her true self yet. She makes me feel uneasy because she seems indecisive and this is why she makes the photograph overall a bit more confusing. she seems confident not only because of her appearance but because of the engagement with the camera, where she is looking straight at the lens.

In the photograph her belongings are displayed next to her, perhaps this was intentional and Michelle wanted to include them to show others an insight to her, who she is and what is personal to her. What I think was intentional is to frame her portrait in the white clouds behind her, meaning shoulders and her head, and to have the photograph to follow the rule of 3rds, where only 1/3 of the sky is visible.

Michelle made the camera be slightly out of focus, for the background to shift all the focus onto the woman. She doesn’t completely get rid of this background because I think she wants her to contrast against the background, she does so because everything in the back looks dull, the scenery and the weather, the scene is a common town view or an area that’s a bit socialised, and the clouds bounce off this light which makes them bright, but there aren’t many areas in the whole photograph that could be said to be colourful, the image as a whole is quite dim, even the woman wearing black clothing represents this area slightly but she doesn’t look like she’s blending with it at all, instead, she looks like she is challenging this area or the impact it had on her through her style and the way she wants to represent herself, like she is going against the current of what the area does to others, she’s fighting against it to not be this dull, boring scenery , to not be influenced by it, but instead be influenced by who she wants to be, this is why she looks extraordinary, and this is why Michelle wanted to photograph her and show her in this way, in the way where she is young as still has time to figure out who she wants to be but for now she has an idea of who she does not want to be and that enough.