Environmental Portraits

Environmental portraiture-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. The term is most frequently used of a genre of photography.

Technical-This photo is taken in natural lighting, you can see the sunlight shining on the cow. The direction of light is coming through the top that is creating shadows on the opposite side. The man is almost central to the composition.

The blue stands out from the brown background with it being on his overalls and on the milk bottle. The shadows are dark but the sun is creating highlights in the image. The hay and the cow have a slightly rough texture but the milk bottle and the walls have a smoother texture which creates a contrast. The natural items have curved line whether as the man made items are more straight lines. A sense of depth is created by the diagonal lines and this gives an illusion of space.

the concept of this image is to highlight the tradition of dairy farming in jersey. The Jersey breed of dairy cow originates from the Island and is quite distinct from all other breeds. Renowned for its beauty, ease of management and natural ability to produce rich creamy milk, the Jersey cow is a product of the Island, its soil and climate, the people and their history. Jersey milk is prized among dairy farmers everywhere because of its superior properties, with herds to be found in the UK and around the world.

August sander-

One of the first photographic typological studies was by the German photographer August Sander , whose epic project ‘people of the 20th century'(40,000 negatives were destroyed during WWII and in a fire) produced volume of portraits entitled ‘The Face of Our Time’ in 1929. Sander categorised his portraits according to their profession and social class. 

Sander’s methodical, disciplined approach to photographing the world has had an enormous influence on later photographers, notably Bernd and Hilla Becher.

This is an example of some of the photos Bernd and Hilla Becher have taken after being influenced.

This approach can also be seen in the work of their students Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff. Other photographers who have explored this idea include Stephan Shore , Gillian Wearing , Nicholas Nixon , Martina Mullaney and Ari Versluis.

This photo was taken by Nicholas Nixon.

This is Ari Versluis’ version of Typology.

This is taken by one of Bernd and Hilla’s Students called Thomas Ruff.

These are my photos editing. I cropped them both and put one in black and white. In the first photo I increased the highlights and cropped the image to be more central. I did the same for both sets of photos.

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