I only had 20 minutes to take some photos with tony (the model in these photos), so I only managed to take a few of my ideas. His room is full of colour which really adds to the basketball theme, as well as his endless shoes and basketball Jerseys. The brown carpet does ruin the colour sometimes, so I might edit the photos showing carpet in black and white. I asked him to look annoyed and sad, to show more emotion in my photos. I played around with the angle of the shot multiple times since basketball is a very dynamic sport, and an easy way to add this dynamic effect is to take photos with weird and unusual camera angles. For the camera settings, most of the photos where set to auto, with flash since I didn’t have enough time to mess around with the settings. However, I think this made it look more home made and real, as if a family member was taking photos of him.

Here I asked tony to get a few of his basketball shoes out and place them around his head, where he then places his arm on his face, looking disappointed and annoyed. He chose his favourite shoes which ended up being the most colourful which make the image more vibrant and exciting, contrasting his facial expressions. This adds to the story of him being an over obsessed basketball player, as the colourful image adds to the basketball theme, and the disappointed facial expressions adds to his obsession with basketball, never being satisfied with himself.

Here I asked my friend to get some of his old plushies out for the photoshoot. I asked him to look a bit insecure when playing NBA 2K (a basketball game which is the most popular in the basketball community). You normally need to play the game with other players but if you look closely he is playing by himself, adding to his isolation from his basketball team mates. The plushies next to him could also add to this loneliness and isolation, especially since its taking up most of the bed, leaving him scrunched up towards the left side of the bed.

Here is my first attempted edit of a Paul M Smith style photograph, using photoshop to add layers onto one photo. I had to manually add some shadows as well using the brush tool which don’t look too realistic in my opinion. I also blurred the layers that are further away and adjusted the lighting similarly to this. Before I imported the photos into photoshop, I made sure they are similarly edited (by copying one edit and adjusting the exposure to match). I think editing like this adds more effect as the whole composition is filled by the same subject, bringing more attention to what he is actually doing. It also adds the time dimension into my photos as you can see him changing what he is doing over time in one photo. It fits in with the whole story of this project as well since he is shown to be working on himself, by himself which portrays a sense of loneliness.

• For my first photoshoot I will photograph some of my team mates in basketball, having a consistent lighting and consistent clothing to get me into this project. I will then put it into a topography of photos. I will be using my knowledge from my photoshoot work a year ago, using lighting like Rembrandt, Butterfly and Chiaruscuro to draw more attention towards the face:

• I want to also take some photos on the basketball court, using Neil Leifer as my inspiration. the photos below are some examples of what I will be trying to create.:

• Then I will take photos of my friend tony, being obsessed with the grind of basketball, and obsessed with the sport in general. Ill first go to his room, which is surrounded by basketball posters, shoes and basketballs, I will be using Sam Taylor-Johnson – crying men project as an inspiration.

• I also want to take some photos in the style of Paul m smith, where he edits himself to be in a photo multiple times. I will be using my friend tony again to get these photos. I think this would work well as he is so invested in basketball that he only plays by himself, not investing himself with the rest of the team.

• Another Idea is too take photos like Tom woods, but using my basketball team instead. I will go around town and replicating photos like this one:

• Taking shoots of basketball cloths and Item could be a good addition to my project as well.

For this photoshoot, I got 4 of my team mates to take photos of, I asked them to go into different posing, with consistent, Rembrandt lighting. Its important to use this lighting technique as it adds a dramatic effect with a lot of the face being in the dark, while keeping it natural looking. It adds a small triangle under the eye that’s in the shadow, drawing more attention towards it. The eyes normally tell the biggest story in a photo so its important to keep the eyes easily visible in a photo. For the camera settings, I set it to manual with iso set to 200. This is to keep the images crisp, as well as giving me control over the focal length with the f-stop and exposure time with the shutter speed. This allowed me to experiment more with these two effects. For some of the shoots, I kept the camera on a tripod, but then decided to keep it off, since basketball isn’t a consistent, repetitive game. So to switch it up I kept changing the camera angle and position to keep it interesting and in the theme of an intense sport. After getting some studio shoots, I had a short amount of time left to get some photos in the indoor sports area. My main inspiration for these images was the sports photographer Neil Leifer.

I plan on doing more of a story like photoshoot next, but since this is my first photoshoot, I didn’t what to go straight into it, so I kept it light hearted and playful. This was to show the importance of basketball for these people, and how much enjoyment they get from playing it.

Here are 4 united portraits of my team mates, with the same Rembrandt style lighting for each. I asked them to keep a neutral face at first, but I ended up choosing different images, which presents there personality more, making this montage of images a bit more interesting. For example, harry (bottom right) put his headphones on because he’s always listening to music. I used a flash light on a 45 degree angle to there face, allowing me to keep the ISO as low as possible to get very crisp and high quality images.

Above I asked them to hold the ball in front of them, as its a common basketball pose. I think these images work better on there own but when I get to the experimenting phase I will try a multi-exposure or try to crop it so a montage will work well.

Here are two images that I edited in black and white with the settings above. For the top Image, there was a lot of the studio showing which I didn’t like so I used layer masks to remove it. However, for the lower image I didn’t end up cropping or layer masking the studio parts out, since I think it acts as a frame to the image, keeping the attention on the subject.

Here I experimented with selective colour fill to draw more attention towards the basketball, while keeping the rest in black and white. My friends face is very serious instead of deadpan, making this image more dramatic. I also used Rembrandt lighting again to further add a dramatic effect. I used a very slow shutter speed to give a sense of motion from the spinning ball, adding a sense of time to the image. I also like this image as it looks like those pictures which, when you change your viewing angle it changes the image shown.

This image at the top was heavily inspired by famous sports photography, like the one below it, a photo of LeBron James dunking from Dwyane Wade’s assist, leading the heats to victory, as well as being one of the most iconic basketball photos ever. To replicate it, I asked my friends to do a similar movement to the athletes. I shot this image portrait instead of landscape because I wanted my own twist on the image, as well as showing each of the subjects fully. The main difference between my image and Gash’s 2010 shot is that his is a documentary and mine is a tableaux. Here is my edited version of it:

I’m not to sure about this edit, where I increased the contrast, decreased the shadows and added a layer mask covering the subjects, as it look a little scary when it was suppose to be a light hearted image, so I think Ill leave the image as is.

Here is a montage I put together which I quite like above.

Here, I took a lot of inspiration from Tom Woods photos, where sometimes he would get teens to pose in the camera, however with my photo I took it in a studio instead of in the street. This photo here almost looks like a boy band which I find funny. I edited the colour grading a little bit to give an older look.

Explanation

With these photos, I hope to add to each of them over time to get more choice in the images I want to use so the chances of getting a good image is improved (e.g. with better lighting, emotion, angle, ext). I will likely use these photos in my story booklet at the start to build up to the main story with another basketball player I will be using, as well as adding ‘comic relief’ if the photos end up being a bit too dramatic. Some of the Neil Leifer style photos will also be used in the photoshoot to add to the overall basketball theme that I’m trying to achieve. I also like how none of these photos have my main subject in as I am trying to over exaugurated his love for the sport, that he isn’t included himself with the rest of the team. This will make my photos more dramatic with him in, as he is all alone in the booklet.

Tom Wood, born 1951, is an Irish street photographer, portraitist and landscape photographer, based in Britain. He was often known as the ‘Photie man’, as he would never forget to bring his camera around where he lived. Wood is best known for his photographs in Liverpool and Merseyside from 1978 to 2001, “on the streets, in pubs and clubs, markets, workplaces, parks and football grounds” of “strangers, mixed with neighbours, family and friends.” Most of his most famous photos where a 5 minute walk from his house in Liverpool, creating interesting stories in each of his street photos. The critic Sean O’Hagan has described Wood as “a pioneering colourist” and “a photographer for whom there are no rules”, while keeping it “up close and personal”.

‘I started doing portraits of these kids hanging around on drugs, or whatever, and some of their parents. It was really tough’

Here are some photos shown in various national museum’s in Liverpool:

As you can see, each image can be a very interesting image on its own, as the context and amount going on in each photo allows that. He didnt have a set way to take his photos, he used whatever he had at the time and walked around looking for interesting subject to take a photo of, some being staged and others being street photography. So many photographers grub about until they have a formula, and then force all their pictures into the same mould. Not Wood. Forever unsatisfied, never content to make a series when a single picture will do, his curiosity and his intellectual powers always fully engaged, he has roamed around making pictures of the world he lives in.

Partly due to cost, from time to time he has used old cine film and out of date film stock for his pictures. This lends a grainy quality to the film, most evident in Bus Journeys. However, his use of medium formats lends fine detail to the negative, allowing much more visual information to be revealed through the printing process. Wood has also tirelessly experimented with printing papers to create the exact colour balances and textures he requires. For him, analogue rather than digital printing, and making his own prints in the darkroom, are important. He sees photographing, printing, selection and editing as inseparable parts of the process of photography.

101 pictures- 2020

Here, I chose 2 photos from his book ‘101 pictures’, it includes many of his most famous photos from his many years of taking photos.

Here you can see five people stand apart looking towards and contemplating an artwork out of the frame of Wood’s picture. The lighting is almost oversaturated, and its cropped to only show the people looking at the picture. The temperature is defiantly on the warmer side, with more red and orange colours that blue and purple. This photo is a big contrast from his usual photos, with more upper class people being included. The fact that they are standing equally apart, disconnects this image to reality. This could also be seen as the upper class disconnecting and distancing themselves to middle and lower class people. This is further added by how everyone is lost in there own thoughts, with no connection between each of them, their sobriety of behaviour matched by their dress, which is echoed in the browns of the gallery space. Even the brown, equally spaced framed images behind the subjects matches the overall boring, repetitive theme of this image. However, the 6th subject on the left seemed to have seen the camera, giving this photo some reality, allowing this image to stay somewhat similar to his others.

This image is a more ‘traditional’ tom wood photo, taken in Liverpool, which contrasts the imaged I used above with everything, from the lighting to the way the subjects are portrayed. here, light is an essential feature of this image, with the suns patchy light illuminating four young people as they eat there chips and beans at the sea front, with a colourful blue rail behind them, adding a barrier between the foreground and background. The barrier also adds lines across the photo, drawing the eyes towards them, thus drawing the eyes towards the unrepetitively placed subjects. This uneven placement of people makes it seem real (documentary). Each person in this photo is wearing bold and brightly coloured clothes, further giving this image life and value. I think the best part of this image is the peoples faces, each being unique and funny, which makes the viewer think about there stories and the connections between them.

Sam Taylor-Johnson – crying men

Sam Taylor-Johnson, born in 1967, is a British film director and artist. She began her creative carrier with fine art photography in the early 1990s, collaborating with Henry bond and creating a pastiche of various things, like the photo taken by Annie Leibovitz of Lennon a few hours before his assassination. However, she isn’t known for her photographer work back when she was younger, rather her as being a famous film director. So why am I talking about her? its because she created a series called ‘crying men’ which shown many male actors crying in films. From 2002 to 2004, after Sam had battled breast cancer, as an ‘exorcism of tears‘ she photographed actors crying, a mix of old Hollywood actors as well as young up and coming actors at the time. It was a revealing look at some actors you may not have seen cry on screen and raises questions about how masculine vulnerability is portrayed on screen, as well as how society has drummed it into men not to cry. I think this series is very impactful to see, as actors like Michael Madsen can be seen crying, and he’s usually depicted as the ‘tough guy’ in films. Men’s mental health is becoming a serious issue that’s been overlooked for many years and only now people are beginning to take action. For example, the highest cause of death for men under 45 is suicide, facts like these brings more attention to the topic of men’s mental health.

Soliloquy 1

Here is Taylor-Woods image ‘Soliloquy 1‘, we see a man exhausted on a sofa, with his right arm hanging lifeless to the floor. This pose is emulates a very popular work by painter Henry Wallis, the death of Chatterton (1856). The light source coming from behind keeps the main subject mostly in the shadows, giving a more dramatic image.

Paul M Smith

do it in own timeALWDLKMAWKDMWKALDMKLDMKLDMAWLKDM

Neil Leifer

Neil Leifer (born in 1942) is probably the most well known sport photographer and created some of the most iconic shots. I will getting some inspiration from him when I turn towards sports, specifically basketball, when linking it to masculinity.

Leifer often uses unique angles and perspectives to tell a story through his images, setting him apart from other sports photographers. His style is characterized by a keen eye for composition, timing, and the use of colour and light to create dynamic and striking images, allowing him to capture the intensity and emotion of the athletes in his photographs.

Here are some photos I like:

All these photos are incredibly dramatic, from the intense facial expressions to the detailed backgrounds, each with there own unique stories. The photo with Muhammad Ali (likely the most famous boxer of all time), is particularly dramatic. It shows a victorious Ali standing over the defeated Sonny Liston, shot during a 1965 world title fight. Leifer admitted that luck played a big part in getting this picture, since if he was positioned in a different part of the ring, it would the photo would never of been as famous. However, even with his luck, creating a photo like this requires lot of skill, as the cameras back then where not as easy to use as they are now, as well as trying to get that close to the ring side. The buzz and excitement is also been presented very well in this image, with countless camera all around the right, and the tense Ali standing in the centre of the frame. Below are some quotes that I will take note on with my photos:

“I always try to tell a story with my pictures. You have to know the sport and the athletes to be able to anticipate the action.”

“Lighting is everything. The difference between a good picture and a great picture often comes down to the way the light falls on your subject.”

“I’ve always believed that you can’t be in the right place at the right time unless you’re in the right place all the time.”

Some more research

I had also done a little bit of research on these photographers:

Sarah Jones

Gregory Crewdson

Jeff Wall

Tom Hunter

Philip Lorca Di Corcia

Justine Kurland

Troy Paiva

Sophie Day is another photographer I will be getting inspiration from. She spent three years continuously photographing close male friends, amassing an archive of their shared experience. Along the way, she refined her own understanding of masculinity – a girl amongst boys, reflecting on their social codes and behaviours. Here are some photos I like:

For this photoshoot, I will be going to a bonfire since its that time of year. The plan is to show couples, planned and unplanned. For the tableaux photo, I will take photos of my friend with his girlfriend, acting out an argument, then forgetting about it when the fireworks start. For the documentary style photos, I will be trying to capture natural reactions to the fireworks. This may turn out badly because its a low light environment and I don’t have a tripod to use, meaning motions blur may become an issue.

Here are some of the images I used, including why I used them and how I edited them:

Here I captured this photo as a documentary style, trying to give a nostalgic look by editing the colour grading, adding greener shadows and bluer highlights. In this image everyone is walking away from the camera, giving it a sort of melancholy feel.

This is another documentary style image, with the subject looking towards the bonfire. I made everything black and white except the fire, drawing more attention to where the subject is looking. Since you cannot see the subject, it makes the viewer wonder who they are and why they are looking at this fire.

Here I again tried to create a nostalgic feel with this tableaux style photo. I asked my friends to pose in front of the fireworks, making a well composed image, with the couple looking up to the fireworks.

Here are 2 images that I quite like, with one having the phone in focus and one with the fireworks, this documentary photo could show how people cant enjoy something without needing to take a photo or video of it. Its also a little bit ironic because I was also taking photos so I wasn’t really in the moment as well.

Here is another image I like, its a tableaux image of my friend group. I like the composition as almost every space in the image is filled with someone.

Photography is a way of seeking out what normally goes unnoticed, that can be seen as seeking for a photograph. Another way to look at photography is as a challenge, as usually they create the most interesting photos. Observing things, e.g. the ‘male gaze’ is another important feature to create be a good photographer.

Observe – “To notice or perceive (something) and register it as being significant.”

Seek – “Seek is the attempt or desire to obtain or achieve something.”

Challenge – “A challenge is something new and difficult which requires great effort and determination.”

I will be using these 3 definitions to form my ideas. Here is a little mind map to collect my ideas on what these definitions could me for photography.

I then created a mood board to gather my ideas together, allowing me to pick the best general ideas:

I like the idea of landscape photography, showing the beauty of nature. I also think I could do something with basketball as its been my biggest passion for many years, allowing me to get more creative with it.

Another Idea I have had is to show manhood and the hidden difficulties of it. I might, later on, find a way to relate this to basketball, giving it a more personal response. Here is a article about masculinity that I enjoyed reading and will likely use to help me with this project here. I might also be able to bring some old photos of my dad to show how manhood has changed.

I will be planning 2 photoshoots, one being type documentary/window photoshoot (realism/ factual/ public/ candid). The other being a tableaux/mirror photoshoot (romanticism/ fiction/ private/ staged).

Documentary

The first I think of when thinking of this word is our street photography work a year ago so I will be getting some inspiration from photographers that I have already analysed back then. This would work well as Its completely natural and there wont be any input from me to change the subjects. National geographic is another think that comes to mind when thinking of documentary photos, so I could show the destruction or beauty of our environment. Maybe match car traffic with the crops in field.

Tableaux

When thinking of Tableaux photos, I think of our masculinity vs femininity work. Since I have already explored this in depth I might go about exploring 2 other binary opposites. Another Idea I had was to stage some sort of setting or story, maybe a crime scene, or a drug deal, ext. Another Idea I had was to recreate some of the romanticism paintings using photography, this allows me to link to some masculinity vs femininity photographers. Another Idea I had was to represent a few different human emotions. I got a few of my ideas from here.

Here I am creating a list of things that I found interesting doing, and other studies I enjoyed doing:

Still Life And Formalism

Still life is a work of art that shows inanimate objects from the natural or man-made world. This typically including fruit and flowers and objects contrasting with others textures, such as bowls and glassware.​ For this project I looked at famous paintings to get an idea of what my photos should look like. I also analysed photographers like Paulette Tavormina, who created 17th century inspired still life photography. She lives and works in the chaotic city of New York, yet manages to capture stillness in her work. I also looked at a a series of photos by Mat Collishaw’s called ‘Last Meal on Death Row’. Here are some of there photos and my responses below:

Formalism is where where The Design, Composition and Lighting are dominant over Subject Matter. I think this contrasted nicely with the still life project as when taking photos using these ideas in mind, it creates a widely different result to the still life photos. Walker evens and his series on Beauties of the common tool was a famous piece of work that he published in 1955 and tries to capture the good, clear, ‘undesigned’ forms. This linked very closely to the ideologies of formalism, with is simple backgrounds and repetitive composition throughout the series. I also analysed photos from Darren Harvey-Regan, who was directly inspired by Walker evens, but had modern technology to improve the outcome. Below are some photos and my responses:

Environmental Portraits

An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. Arnold Newman was the main inspiration for my photoshoots, he is known for his ability to thoughtfully capture the personalities of his subjects through their expressions and surroundings. While commonplace today, this technique was not widely used in the 1930s when Newman was learning his craft, pathing the new era of portrait photography. He would designing floor plans, equipment, schedules, and possible poses before the actual shoot even took place. Here are some of his Images and my responses to the overall topic:

My response

Studio Lighting and Headshots

Here I was getting to grips with the some common lighting methods, and some slightly more obscure ones. The main types of studio lighting consist of flash and continuous lighting, but they way you organise the lighting can create a massive impact on the final outcome. One lighting technique is called Rembrandt lighting, where a small triangle is cast under one of the eyes. Butterfly lighting is the next one and it shins a light directly towards the models face, above the camera. It creates a shadow under the nose and cheek bone that resembles a butterfly. Another one I looked at was Chiaruscuro (Italian for light dark), its a dramatic contrast between light and dark in the image. Here are my photos where I tried to replicate these lighting techniques in the studio:

A headshot photo is where the portrait photo is cropped somewhere in the middle torso – so that the focus is on your face. Bruce Gilden and his faces series was where he went very up and close to the subjects faces, capturing and amplifying all the imperfections lack of symmetry of people, making each person very different to each other as we are all individuals. Often times he subjects looked ‘Ugly’, causing a lot of criticism. Here are some of his photos:

I then explored different ways to edit headshots, using diamond cameo, photo-montage and multi-exposure:

Identity – masculinity vs femininity

This topic is all about capturing the inside of a subject, not the outside (e.g. there hair, eye colour, what clothes they re wearing). I tried to capture who they actually are, there identity. However, since this is a very broad topic, with many things I could explore, so I decided to focus on the binary opposites of masculinity vs femininity. I analysed 2 photographers, Cindy Sherman’s work is the multitude of identity stereotypes (like femininity) that have arisen throughout both the history of art and the history of advertising, cinema, and media. Sherman reveals and dismantles these stereotypes. her Untitled Film Project shows how females who play roles in moves are simply there for male pleasure. Claude Cahun was another photographer who defied conventional ideals of beauty and femininity with her shaven head and male attire, Claude Cahun is a perfect example of someone who pushed the boundaries of gender roles in a stereotypical society. Here are some photos from them:

Here are some of my photos that I took, which is my response to the topic of masculinity and femininity:

Landscape – Romanticism and the sublime, and New topographies

A Landscape photograph is one where it is aligned with the horizon line. The photo is wider than it is tall, to capture the vastness of a natural setting. Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) is an artistic and intellectual movement, characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of the past and nature. The Sublime defines art as that which alludes to an immeasurable greatness beyond comprehension. Ansel Adams often had both these features in his images. He is probably the most well known and important landscape photographer of the 20th century. He created many techniques (e.g. the zone system) to help create his vast and breath-taking images of national parks in California. Here are 2 photos by him:

Here are some of my photos that I got inspired by Adams to take:

The New Topographics represented a radical shift by redefining the subject of landscape photography as the built (as opposed to the natural) environment. As environmentalism took hold of the public conscience in the 1970s, The old landscape photography from people like Ansel Adams, which where heroic and displaced the power of nature, where rejected in favour of how human activity connects with the natural world, rather than separating it. Robert Adams was took very deadpan images of buildings contracting the natural world. Here are some of his photos:

My photos:

Anthropocene

anthropocene is defined as the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Edward Burtynsky, born in 1955, is renowned for his continued investigation of the ‘indelible human signature’ of the planet, caused by are excessive destruction of the natural landscape, for resources, land, energy, dump sights and more. Here are some photos from Edward Burtynsky and my response to his ideology’s:

My photos:

Stephanie Jung

Stephanie Jung works as a freelance photographer, based in Germany. Her Photos are often multiple merged images, each slightly offset from each other. Stephanie Jung does this to create a sense of movement, matched with the busy environment. Here are some of her photos and my responses:

My photos:

Street photography – Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier Bresson harnessed the idea of the decisive moment, which is, with little planning, waiting for a moment which is interesting to capture. His photos set in motion a transformative wave that resonated throughout the photographic community. Here Are some photos from him:

I created a page spread of a trip to St.Malo I went on. I took some street photos before hand, then put them in InDesign to edit them and create a page spread of my trip.

Introduction

Photography started with many years ago with a camera obscura, and using this camera obscura we began creating different ways of capturing the light. Some of the first ways where the Daguerreotype and Calotype process. The Daguerreotype process required a perfectly reflective silver plated copper, almost like a mirror, to capture the light. The Calotype process used a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride and exposed to light in a camera obscura, which is basically a small window into the real world, creating a negative image (the Daguerreotype process also used a camera obscura). So the idea of windows and mirrors in practical photography have been around for hundreds of years. However, as cameras become more common with a larger and larger catalogue of images, there became a pattern which most images followed, with some images being more subjective and romantic (a term used to show the indispensable presence of its maker in the picture), and others being more documentary like and objective. These ideas relate to mirrors and windows respectively. However, using the ideas of how a camera works, with view finder, or the window into the camera, and how the photographers view is almost always reflected onto the photo, means its hard to find an image that fits into one category.

Mirror

This image by Cristina-de-Middel is clearly very staged and manipulated. Its one photo in a collection by her to rebuild some a little Zambian story about astronauts, you can learn more here. It is of a person, with homemade clothing walking like there are on the moon almost. The background contrasts the subject in a way that makes it look edited (with the background being dark and rocky and the subject having colourful native clothing on), further enhancing this manipulated look. The covered up face with the helmet adds a sense of curiosity to the image as we don’t know who is under it. Its also a tableau as it has a model positioned by the photographer, reflecting there views on the scene. This also links to John Szarkowski’s quote about mirror in photography, “reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it”, as she added her own twist to the original Zambian story. However Jed Pearl’s review on Szarkowski’s thesis opposes this view of a clear ‘mirrored’ image of the artist, as all of photography by its very nature can create a inclusive acceptance of fact and objective structure, yet the choosing of images and the facts to show for them is the romantic/mirrored part of a photograph. In my opinion, I think Szarkowski’s thesis is the most correct as he believes all photographs are on a continuous axis but most lean towards one side. So with this image, the romanticism side is obvious with the planned shots and the modifications of the original story of the Zambian astronaut, but the fact that there was an original story leans the axis slightly less towards the staged side and towards the factual side.

Window

This picture was taken in 1969 by the Garry Winogrand in Los Angeles, in public. He is a famous street photographer so already the photographer cannot add his own input to the subjects in the photo, only the subjects can change from the photographer being there. For example, the three women that are in the light may notice the camera and make themself appear better. This already makes this image more of a truthful, and natural image, and removing the romanticism from the image, contrasting the tableau image above. The person on the left, with his curved back, contrasting the straight lines of the lights and buildings, further emphases the truthful nature of this image. The photographer can, however, add input to the composition of the photo, like how he tilted the camera to create more diagonals in his images, adding more dynamism and drama, as well as cropping images to remove some of the truth, to create an image that matches the photographers desire. in Szarkowski’s thesis realist is ‘generous and inclusive acceptance of fact, objective structure, and the logic of process and system’, however, this image can never be a realist image by those standards as its already subjective by the photographers modification on the composition of the image. In Jed Pearl’s review of Szarkowski’s thesis, he states that his thesis, ‘gives little value to photography’s a priori status as a realist activity’. I agree with this point as with this photo, its objectively unedited and natural, making it a documentary photo, instead of a tableau, where as Szarkowski believe there is not a definitive line between those two categories.

@t-little14

So, How can photographs be both mirrors and Windows of the world, I believe its because we cannot draw a line between the mirror photographs and the window photographs. Above I said that drawing a line between a documentary and tableau photo makes sense. This is because those words cannot be subjective otherwise they would be pointless to use. However, when it comes to mirror and window photographs, like Szarkowski said, its very hard to leave one photo in one category as even with documentary photos, its hard to not reflect some of the photographers visions (consciously or unconsciously) onto the final photo. I disagree with Pearl’s review, which was that no photos can be mirrors as, by nature, they are a window into the world, because of the fact that the photographers visions will always be reflected onto the photo. The opposing concepts of objectivity and subjectivity with windows and mirrors both features displayed in almost aspects of a photo, as I have explained above with two images. Even with the the image being more ‘Window’ like or ‘Mirror’ like, I have shown that it will still display aspects that oppose its original ‘designated’ category.

John Szarkowshi’s expedition ‘windows and mirrors’, held in New York, since the 1960s, categorised the work that reflected a portrait of the artist who made it (mirror) and work that largely sough to see outside themselves (window).

Szarkowski is fond of creating categories. In the anthology The Photographer’s Eye, published in 1966, he described five “characteristics and problems that have seemed inherent in the medium.” Now, in Mirrors and Windows, he presents a binary theory of photography as art: an evolution from public to private concerns and at the same time a potential toward either self-expression or exploration in the unique sensibility of each photographer

Mirrors

As already explained, a mirror is basically a staged or personal image that matches the photographers vision. words that associate with mirrors include: tableaux, subjective, romanticism, fiction, staged, personal, reflective, internal, manipulated, biased.

The photo I got given to analyse was, as I decided, a mirror photo:

I think this is a mirror photo as it seems incredibly unlikely to happen naturally, from the boy using the flash in the day, to the good composition in the photo. It also just gives off a ‘staged’ feel. Here are some other examples of mirror photography:

Windows

Think of a window photo as the polar opposite of mirrors, with words like documentary, objective, realism, candid, public, external, truthful, straight, optical, unbiased to describe photos in that category. its basically an image that was not modified by the photographer. This is very uncommon so most images are usually a mix between the two categories, but still leaning towards one side. Its also uncommon to see an image that perfectly matches the photographers vision, making it slightly more window like. Here are some examples of window photography:

A quote about mirrors and windows in photography:

“The two creative motives that have been contrasted here are not discrete. Ultimately each of the pictures in this book is part of a single, complex, plastic tradition. Since the early days of that tradition, an interior debate has contested issues parallel to those illustrated here. The prejudices and inclinations expressed by the pictures in this book suggest positions that are familiar from older disputes. In terms of the best photography of a half-century ago, one might say that Alfred Stieglitz is the patron of the first half of this book and Eugène Atget of the second. In either case, what artist could want a more distinguished sponsor? The distance between them is to be measured not in terms of the relative force or originality of their work, but in terms of their conceptions of what a photograph is: is it a mirror, reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world?” 
— John Szarkowski, 1978

Here Szarkowski considers Alfred Stieglitz as a leading figure in the “photography as a mirror” function, and
Eugène Atget as a leading figure in the “photography as a window” function:

Through the theoretical separation that the mirror/window bipolarity produces, and the questions that arise regarding the ways in which a work can be a mirror of the photographer, a problem emerges concerning the relationship of the self with the mirror: how to conceive of the relationship between what is seen of the self and what the self is in its totality, as well as between the “Ego” and the “I take a photograph”. This major question can be tackled through some related ones, such as those concerning the concepts of the “truth of the photographer” (to what extent does the person who photographs enters some synchronous -to their personality- qualities, beliefs and preferences in the image) and of the “truth of photography” (what constitutes a photographic image?).