What is Identity ?
Identity is who you are. It can be beliefs, personality traits, appearance, expression, it is what characterizes a person. It can also be your surroundings, your environment can develop and influence your identity.
image from google
What it femininity ?
Qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of women or girls – Oxford Dictionary
Femininity is socially seen as traits such as nurturing, sensitivity, sweetness, gentleness, warmth, modesty, empathy, affection, tenderness, and being emotional, kind, helpful, devoted, and understanding have been cited as stereotypically feminine. Sometimes femininity can be linked to sexual objectification and sexual passiveness.
What is masculinity ?
qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of men or boys – Oxford Dictionary
Masculinity is socially and traditionally seen as traits such as: strength, courage, independence, leadership, dominance and assertiveness. And is usually shown as a contrast and opposite to femininity. Traditionally masculinity can also be seen as being the ‘breadwinner’ of the household or house. However the standards of masculinity vary between different cultures and historical periods.
image from google
Kara Walker
images by Kara Walker
Kara Elizabeth Walker is an American Contemporary artist. Born on November 26th 1969. The main themes are work explores is race, gender, sexuality and identity. Walker is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes that often address the history of American slavery and racism.
The mural that really brought Walker to the art worlds attention was called “Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart” In 1944.
During her early career Walker lived in Rhode Island but later moved to Forte Green, Brooklyn where Walker became a professor of visual arts at Colombia University. As well as Walker is one of the youngest recipients of the MacAurthur fellowship at only 28 years old when she received this honour.
Tim & Sue Noble
images by Tim and Sue noble
Tim and Sue noble are British artists that work and collaborate as a duo.
The work that I am looking at mainly is their shadow work, which is where they use household rubbish to create silhouettes.
Tim Noble and Sue Webster’s work can be divided into the ‘Light Works’ and the ‘Shadow Works’, And Susan states: “We kept them both going side by side. There are two sides to the work; the shiny side and the dark side. That kind of reflects the two personalities within us. which I think that is very powerful as it links to good and evil and which could even be religion.
Photoshoot plan
For this photoshoot I took the idea of silhouettes from the artist references above and decided to put my own sort of spin on it, I really enjoyed using the coloured gels so I knew that I wanted to do something using them. And I decided to go for ore of the femininity route for this particular photoshoot. I liked the idea of kind of having the light shine through the hair of the model.
my photos – silhouettes
Edited images
this is my favourite image of the shoot. Because I really like the hand placement, it makes me think of femininity and I feel as if it kind of links to dance and maybe more specifically ballet which is a traditionally a feminine area. As well as the face the coloured gel lighting is very nicely outlining her arm, chin and I like the way that there is still some of the light shining through the hair.
Here is how I have edited this image:
Valerie Jardin
images by Valerie Jardin
Valerie Jardin is a French photographer whose photography gained a lot of followers due to its strong narrative and proving portraiture doesn’t need to be photos of a face. Jardin leads international workshops for photography has written books and has even published a weekly podcast for a few years. Jardin runs online courses and conferences as she states that she love to help and mentor other photographers .
Jardin has taken many photos all over the world. Her images are mostly classed as street photography which she is most known for.
Jardin analysis
This is image is taken using a digital camera and the genre of this photography is portraiture.
The mise-en-scene presents two people holding hands whilst sitting at a table in a park. The tone of this image is quite light, however there are some darker spots for example the tree in the background, but due the lighting and the colour of their skin the overall tone of the image is light. The use of light in this image is quite subtle, soft, almost hazy looking looking lighting, however, it is natural lighting as they are outside. The focus distance is short as it is a close up photo and the depth of field is large as everything is in focus. The leading lines of the images would be the lightness of where the sunlight is hitting there skin against the contrast of the darker shadows of the parts of the arm that are not being hit by the light draw your eye along the image.
I believe the ISO is 600 as everything is in as most of the image is in focus however the background is blurred and grainy. I believe that the shutter speed is 1000 as everything is clear.
photoshoot plan
My plan for this photoshoot is too photograph my dads hands as to have some masculine hands and possibly some of maybe my hands next to his to compare the hand of a women in juxtaposition to big man hands.
my photoshoot – hands
Edited images
This is my favourite image out of the photoshoot that I have done because I some what shows a story behind it, as the signal of the fist is showing strength and power ( traditionally masculine traits) I decided to make these sets of images monochrome as I thought it gave them more of a dramatic affect as well as being a bit of contrast compared to the brightness of the coloured gels.
this is what I have done to edit the image as well as cropping out some of the blank space around the edges to make the hand a bit more central and a bit less empty.
To challenge myself a bit more I decided that I would further my photographer of the hands and move to more parts of the body such as just the torso of just legs. An artist reference for this could be Bill Brandt
Bill Brandt
Bill Brandt died December 20th 1983. He was born in Germany and then he moved to England. Brandt later denied that he was German and used to claim that he was born in South London. Brandt has held nine exhibitions which include many different places such as: The Museum of modern art in New York, Philadelphia Museum of art and Victoria and Albert museum. In 1984 Bill Brandt’s images were welcomed into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum. As well as receiving a English heritage blue plaque in 2010. Brandt made his portrait of Ezra Pound in honour of visiting him after he had just survived tuberculosis.
Brandt Analysis
This is image is taken using a digital camera and the genre of this photography is portraiture.
The mise-en-scene presents a close up photo of an eye from an older man. The tone of this image is pretty dark, due to the fact the image is close up and high contrast as well as monochrome. But the wrinkles and texture in the face could also be making it look darker. The use of light in this image is quite harsh, however, it is artificial lighting as they could be in a studio space. The focus distance is short as it is a close up photo and the depth of field is large as everything is in focus. The leading lines of the image would be the wrinkles on the skin of his face as the darker contrast and texture of the wrinkles draw your eyes to those spots.
I believe the ISO is 100 as everything is in as most of the image is in focus however the background is blurred and grainy. I believe that the shutter speed is 1000 as everything is clear.