What is environmental portraits?
Environmental portraits are typically images that show a subject in their workplace, usually undertaking their profession. They don’t always have to be in a workplace, they can also be images where the subject is linked to the background and shows the subject’s life and surroundings. The environment behind the subject helps tell the story about who they are, what they do, or what their passion is. Photographers like taking environmental images because they are visual storytellers and they like to tell stories with out the use of words. These images reveal the story behind a stranger, and makes the viewer feel closer to them in a way.
Mood board:
This style of photography makes me feel inspired because I can learn about different work environments and how they have changed over the years. I also like how each photo has a different feeling to it from the subject’s body language and their facial expression.
What is typology?:
Typology in photography is a single photograph or a body of photographic work, that shares a high level of consistency usually of similar objects.
As we can see here, there are 9 photographs all including trees of similarity. This is called typology because it is a suite of images in relation to the same subject. In this case, the tree is the main subject of the image.
Good intro, when showing your understanding of typology, make sure you link back to environmental portraiture to make it relevant. It’s a technique used by some environmental portraits, like August Sander…. you could use him as an example and discuss why his typologies are successful when it comes to environmental portraiture.