masculine photography outlines the way a man is represented in stereotypes such as men being strong, powerful and smart, the photos capture the strength of these men and create the effect to show how strong and powerful a man is in comparison to woman.
femininity in photography outlines the stereotype of women being weaker and the more emotional gender of society while also representing how independent and hard working women can be.
Headshots are a type of portraiture photography which are usually used for websites, press releases, publications and social media profiles. The term ‘Headshot’ just means that the photo is cropped in order to make a persons face the main focus of the photo rather than the space surrounding them. People use headshots usually to capture peoples individualism and personal brand.
The concept of identity politics and culture wars in photography is an important aspect to look at. This is because it studies your administrative identity combined with your physical characteristics, such as your date and place of birth. A photographic identity allows you to reveal yourself, to stand out among the crowd of photographers, to ensure your individuality and your irreplaceable artistic fingerprint. I believe this is extremely beneficial for modern day photography as it allows each and every person to decide how far they want to take either the masculine or feminine approach in their photographs. Identity politics also aims to eliminate negative misrepresentations (stereotypes) of particular groups that have served to justify their members’ exclusion or assimilation to the point of erasure. A great example of this is identity politics in the United States, which developed in the 1980s and ’90s as a reaction to the perceived failure of liberal civil rights legislation to eliminate identity-based inequities, such as racial and sexual discrimination. In the view of many critics, liberal ideals of equality, such as equal rights were misguided because their transcendent nature made it difficult in practice to justify policies designed to achieve greater social equity exploited groups, particularly African Americans. Indeed, during this period conservative activists and government officials frequently invoked the liberal value of “colour blindness” to resist racial affirmative action programs in education, employment, government contracting, and other areas.
Identity politics
Identity politics is politics based on a particular identity. Some examples of this are
Culture wars
In political science, a culture war is a type of cultural conflict between different social groups who struggle to politically impose their own ideology (beliefs, virtues, practices) upon their society. An example of a culture war is the gamergate controversy.
Impact on society
These stereotypes and identities had a very large impact on society because over recent years society has adapted to these changes, and they have become known and believed worldwide.
I created a virtual gallery in Photoshop to portray my environmental photography. I placed my best environmental portraits into my photoshoot virtual gallery. I picked these 3 images because I think they demonstrate the meaning of environmental photography the best. I imported a photo of an empty gallery from Google, and pasted it into Photoshop, I then imported my 3 photos into Photoshop and sized them to place them effectively. I used Adobe Photoshop to display these three environmental portraits, for this I imported them into Photoshop and created a shadow behind to make them look 3D, this helps them look more lifelike. I also resized and distorted them to fit onto the wall realistically.
I then used Photoshop as a method to display some of my lighting technique photos using a virtual gallery, this contained Rembrandt lighting, Chiaroscuro lighting and Butterfly lighting. For this gallery I used one of each, this contained my best image for each lighting technique. I used the same method for this by distorting and moving my photos around to fit the shape of the wall, I then also created another shadow behind the photos in order to make them look lifelike and effective.
I think one of my favorite photographers who has done work on double exposure would be Christoffer Relander. He was best known for his series called “We Are Nature”. He layers the original portrait photo and layers a blurred nature image on top which is known as double exposure.
Emotional aspects-
I really like these photos they feel very tranquil and calming because all the colours are quite dull and muted but the way it’s blended makes it work
Visual aspects-
I think this image really works I like the fact it is in colour and you have the rich greens showing through unlike some of his other images.
I also really like how you can still see the model’s face very clearly underneath the nature/trees and the trees are almost being used as her hair i think that looks really successful.
technical aspects-
if you use the rule of thirds you can tell they have all the darker parts of the image where the hair would be in the collum on the right and the middle collum seems to be the most bright and colourful. The side on the left is probably the dullest it doesn’t have much it other than the model’s face.
conceptual aspects-
I get the impression from his work that Relander is trying to show us the beauty the calming effect of nature
I would love to recreate his work I think it’s so interesting and beautiful and would be a great one to recreate.
contextual aspects-
This style of work is from his “We Are Nature” collection. Christoffer Relander is a Finnish photographer who liked the idea of pairing up each subject/model with different geographical/natural elements.
Double exposure is when you have two images layered on top of each other and you’ll change the blending options of the opacity of the images. Double exposure tends to create this dream like effect sometimes making the image look scary and give off a strange vibe but sometimes the photos can look very happy and sometimes nostalgic.
This style I believe comes from when Bernd and Hilla Becher who took photos of buildings then layered them together to create this creepy almost fantasy looking image.
I think the idea behind doing those kinds of photos is to create that kind of surreal effect for the image. Often photographers use double exposure to be able to add lots of deep and almost hidden meaning within their photos.
Butterfly lighting is where there is a small shadow usually under the model’s nose. It was first used by Marlene Dietrich who at the time was a German silent film actress in the 1920s and 30s and her director von Sternberg started to use the technique as it seemed to extenuate her strong features. The main reason butterfly lighting is used is because it makes for a very flattering portrait your features tend to stand out more and the lighting tends to be softer.
Here is an example of how to actually set up your lighting to create a butterfly effect
This is what butterfly lighting can look like
Chiaroscuro lighting is said to be the contrast between light and dark so any type of lighting skill could be classed as chiaroscuro. It’s inspired by films usually Hollywood crime with German expressionists. However, I will be focusing on split lighting where you light up half of the model’s face and have a shadow on the other half. This tends to add an intense feeling to the photo.
Here is an example of the setup that would been needed to achieve split lighting
This is what spilt lighting can be
This is more Chiaroscuro lighting which the Hollywood films feel to them
The image on the left is the unedited version and the right is the edited picture there isn’t any apparent change between the two however I did darken the shadows slightly to add a bit more contrast to the image. I think overall this picture turned out really good the split in the model’s face is very defined and sharp which is what I wanted.
This technique worked really well for me I think I managed to have a pretty successful image with sharp lines through the shadow down the model’s face the darker image at the bottom I really liked because I also feel they had more of the Hollywood film feel to them like Chiaroscuro lighting was originally inspired by.
I think the images below could have been better if the show was more dramatic and darker although they are still visible they don’t seem to have the same intense feel to them as some of the others do which I think is to do with the shadows being so light.
The editing for these photos really didn’t take much is was mainly changing the contrast slightly just so the difference between the light and dark was that little bit more dramatic and then some of the images I cropped so they were a lot closer to the models face as they seemed to look more effective that way.
EDITS
Identity politics is a type of politics that is based in a certain identity. Things like nationality, race, religion, gender, social background, sexual orientation, social class and so much more.
Identity politics can be quiet damaging to the younger half of society as it puts pressure on those individuals to express something they do not need to express just because they want to ‘fit in’.
There are some positive effects of Identity politics which are things like, society can feel more free to express themselves as there is a more excepting community and they can also feel free to identify themselves as who they want to be, wherever they are and not be judges for it. However there is some bad effect in identity politics. As said above, it pressures young individuals to express things that they don’t even properly know themselves which causes them to feel isolated because they can’t express themselves or don’t know how to or even don’t need to express themselves.
A culture war is a cultural conflict between different types of social groups that illustrate their struggles, beliefs and their want for dominance towards individuals.
Cultural wars can significantly effect society as a whole because it can influence a wrong set of individuals and therefore cause chaos. Cultural wars can cause distrust within a society which encourages people to cluster in their cultural groups.
There is some positive effects of cultural wars because it enables a set of individuals to express the same views and feel heard and appreciated. People who cluster in these cultural groups can relate to each other and set order to things that need to be said and done. However a negative effect to cultural wars is that there is constant conflict and things can get quite serious, even deadly.
Global:
The Black Lives Matter movement:
Black Lives Matter or more known as BLM is a activist political and social movement that urges to highlight racism, racial inequality towards black people, discrimination, and it promotes anti-racism. The primary concerns in this movement are incidents of police brutality and racially motivated violence against black people.
It’s something that is know globally and still continues to power through, calling out anyone who’s against the whole purpose of the movement and especially making sure that those who purposefully commit such acts towards black people are to be called out.
This example is an example of political identity and culture wars globally.
Local perspective:
Something that happened locally recently was the discussion to wether same-sex marriages would be legalised. After 2 years of development and discussion, jersey is closer to legalising same-sex marriage.
The new law will encourage people to stop discrimination against same-sex as same-sex marriage will equally have the rights as an heterosexual married couple. The fact that it took 2 years for it to be nearly approved may imply that there was some type of conflict toward the whole development.
This is an example of identity politics and culture wars locally.
References:
https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/
https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0016241/
