Arnold Newman (born in 1918 – 2006) was a American photographer who was most famous for his environmental portraits. For his portraits he made sure he used a carefully framed and well lit setting while also making sure its contents were also visible, this helps symbolize the individuals life and work in the photograph. One of his famous portraits was one taken of a man named Alfred Krupp and he was originally commissioned by Newsweek to take the portrait but he refused at first, This is due to their backgrounds as Arnold Newman is Jewish and Alfred Krupp was a convicted Nazi war criminal. Eventually Arnold Newman agreed to take the portrait as he saw the assignment as some sort of personal revenge. This portrait would then later become one of the most controversial images taken at its time.

Technical

Lighting – The photo is positioned in a way where most of the light from the image is at the top while it gets darker between the bottom of the image. The subject is also illuminated to make him the main focus which can make him look more sinister.

Aperture – The photo looks like it was taken with a wide angle lens as we are able to view a great amount of detail in the image, it also uses a low aperture which gives us a large depth of field as we are able to view most things in the images clearly and with ease and it also doesn’t appear blurry.

Shutter speed – The photo looks a bit over exposed as we can notice from the light towards the back which makes things near the light appear slightly blurry.

ISO – The photo does not appear to look very grainy so I assume that a low ISO was used.

White Balance – The picture uses quite warm colours especially on the pillars and the subject.

Visual

The image features a few colours but mainly sticks to using warm colours. The tone of the image is both light and dark, we can see this with the subject where he is illuminated with light which creates some dark shadows at the bottom of the image. We can also see that the subject takes up half of the image and has his fingers interlinked while resting his chin on top and leaning towards the camera and this being done helps create some mystery and uneasy feelings towards the subject which makes us wonder who he is and what he does in his life. We can see a pattern in the background with the pillars which are placed symmetrically with one on the left side and one on the right side which helps us direct our attention to the middle which is the subject.

Contextual

This image is supposed to represent the horrors that were happening in WW2 specifically the time period were Nazis were using Jewish people as slaves. This is easy to see as we can see that the setting appears to be in an industrial building which resembles closely to a train station, the pose and positioning of the subject also makes us uneasy and makes him look sinister to represent the Nazis at the time who were in charge of trafficking the slaves and what to do with them. The subject named Alfred Krupp was actually a convicted Nazi war criminal which makes the photo even more connected to the setting and what it is supposed to represent.

Conceptual

The concept of this image is to show the public the tragedy of the loss of millions of Jewish people during WW2 and how horrible their conditions were, By using a convicted Nazi as the subject of the photo it helped layout the true meaning of the photo and what it really presents. Arnold Newman was said to be furious when he saw this image and this photo allowed Newman to share his hatred towards Krupp with the world.