August Sander
August Sander was a German portrait and documentary photographer and his work has been described as "the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century." (Michael Collins, Record Pictures (Thomas Telford Publishing, 2004), p. 1842).
Sander uses typology photography in his work- which first started with Bernd and Hilla Becher who were husband and wife in 1959 Germany.
Sander's project "People of the Twentieth Century" took his whole career to complete and is the greatest collection of portraits of the 20th century. In this book he took portraits of everyone from farmers and factory workers to aristocrats and very wealthy businessmen. Which of who were categorised into 7 groups based on social rank which can be viewed as a jab at the German social order in 1922 and onwards. Due to the controversy of the book to nazis confiscated his first published version and burnt as they did with things they didn't agree with.
This typological approach would be inspiration to many photographers (including me!) since Sander. This includes Thomas Ruff who has a unique style of typology portraits who I have also briefly looked at for this project. I find it interesting that most typology works can be lead back to August Sander. This could be because it is a simple yet very very effective way to create and display work in all forms.
Gillian Wearing CBE
Gillian Wearing is a photographer who likes to explore "power dynamics and voyeurism in everyday life". Wearing tends to focus not on aesthetics but rather on the message she is portraying in her images and the awareness it brings to the subjects.
I find her project called "Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say" (1992-1993) very engaging as it is unexpectedly vulnerable, as she found people in their own space and they were able to open up to her for her work. This is really inspiring, it makes me wonder how she got these people to open up and let themselves be so vulnerable around her and her camera. Most of the subjects hold their signs with a smile which makes me think that they are in denial or the complete opposite and they are contempt by their thoughts. It makes the viewer think as there is much that is left unsaid even though the subjects thoughts are written down right there on the paper.
The paper signs are always the centre focus of these images, perhaps with the intention of highlighting the thoughts.
The way they are holding the signs reminds me of a protest. This work could relate to the protest that are happening now in the University about sexual assault and how people are encouraged to share their thoughts and stories to help the movement. This could have been Wearings idea- using her work to kick start or continue a movement.
Overall, Wearings work is very engaging for the subjects and the viewers. I want to be able to take this idea and adapt it to correspond with my idea. Maybe get the subjects to write their thoughts in a book or a sticky note.
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Laura Pannack
Laura Pannack is a portrait photographer. While looking at her work there was one project which stood out to me- Digital Self Esteem. In this project she had young people stand in front of a two-way mirror and look at themselves. This was an activity to to "confront and accept their appearance" to reduce the control social media has over people's self-worth. This project was made in 2017 but it is still extremely relevant now, even more so. As social media like Instagram and snapchat become more and more popular by the day we are subject to more manipulative images. It is normal for people to manipulate images of themselves on social media to make themselves look "better" and this can be damaging to young people. This might be why Pannack chose to have children aged 7 to 17 who are arguably more at risk from the media manipulation as they are online more than other age groups.
This project reminds me of Rineke Dijkstra's beach portraits where young people stood and posed in a way that society has told them too. Pannacks project is similar but also different from this as, unlike Dijkstra, Pannack had the children mediate almost and gaze at themselves in the mirror to try and become at peace with their appearance.
I really love the idea behind Pannack's work as she is allowing people to celebrate what they look like without the judging dark side of the internet. It gives them freedom which maybe they didn’t have before. I really admire Pannack for that.
Charlie Engman
Charlie Engman is a photographer who takes photographs of just one subject. His mother, Kathleen McCain Engman. This series is called "Mom". In this series Engman takes his mother and photographs her in different positions and quirky clothing. He has taken a photograph of his mother in almost every process and composition, with practically every expression on her face. This is a very unique project which has taken over a decade to complete. Which is very inspiring and makes me want to do something like this- something long term.
I looked at Engman for this project as I want to focus on portraits like he does. I can base some of my ideas for the compositions of the portraits from Engmans work and then adapt from that. In a few of the images his mother is positioned in the centre of the frame in different clothes- I was thinking that this might be a good composition for my work but inside of different clothes it's different people.
This work is very engaging to me as it's very interesting to see how many times someone can be photographed without it getting repetitive- and that is exactly what Engman has done.
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His website is also so cool! the graphics are so enchanting and they way it is set out is so unusual but very engaging. (http://www.charlieengman.com/)
Sarah Louise Stedeford
Sarah Louise Stedeford states that "we are all connected" and in this project she wants to highlight the surprising and intimate connections between people. All the subjects int the images have a "shared hobby, interest or passion for change in the world.” I love this idea of connections between completely different people- it creates a sense of community and also commitment to that community. I want to be able to create this atmosphere of community in my work, I could do this through the connections of space, or the same facial expressions.
In the majority of the Stedeford portrait images the subject is always close up in the frame- like a headshot. In each headshot the subjects features and culture are very coherent- Stedeford manages to highlight the differences in these people but also connect them all in the series. images hold a lot of detail for the simple nature of the composition- I find that this makes image more eye catching and allows the viewer to study the images more intensely. I want to be able to use Stedeford's technique of capturing the viewers attention straight away as that focus is maintained through the viewing. I think this is create through the eye contact the subjects have through the lens. It feels like they are staring at you- with the almost vacant expression on their faces- it makes you think what was happening as the shot was taken? what were they thinking at that moment? We will never know but it is interesting to think about.
I want to be able to engage with my audience the way Stedeford does, as it makes the images more memorable and these days that is very important as everybody sees images everyday in the media- so the aim is to keep people’s attention for longer than 5 seconds otherwise they will just find something else.
Rineke Dijkstra
Rineke Dijkstra is one of my main inspirations for this project. In her images she captures her subjects in a similar composition each time. For example, the horizon in each image is almost identical and the people are always in the centre of the frame. I love this idea as it connects the images together if there wasn’t something there to connect them before. I want to be able to adapt this to my work because this is a technique I haven’t tried before as normally all my images have a very different composition. My idea is to have the people positioned in the same position in the frame but have them in different places therefore I am exploring all the different people and places in the community.
In Dijkstra's portraits all the subjects are rigid and posing for the images- portraying their "camera face". I think that Dijkstra wanted this to be apparent in the images to poke at society and its expectations of people. The children are posing on how they think they should to be accepted and not feeling free or confident enough to be themselves- to pose without sucking in.
I love the simple portrayal of this project, although the meaning behind it is complex, to outcome is quite minimalist which is probably why I was drawn to this work. There's no distractions to the message that Dijkstra is trying to tell- young people care too much about how they are perceived. Although this project finished in 2002, it can still be used today in the age of social media and how everybody wants to be something they are not by manipulating photos of themselves to make them fit into society’s standards.
Deborah Turbeville
Deborah Turbeville is a fashion photographer who was working in the 70s and 80s. In an article from Aperture Magazine, it is stated that Turbeville's "legacy has shifted the way we view women in fashion imagery" and with her haunting collages I can see why. I found Turbville's work while looking for inspiration for my collage and I was captivated by what I saw- the work is strangely seductive while being a bit spooky (for lack of a better term). There is a lot to unravel about her work but I was mainly focused on the layout of her work as it is relevant to my project.
Turbeville's collages were made all by hand- she cut, taped, pinned the images onto mounting paper. The way she lays out her collages reminds me of a scrapbook due to some of the images being stuck down at an angle. With Turbeville's collages she keep all the images around the same size- this is something I don't want to do, I want my images to make an impact on the viewer when looking at them and since my images aren’t ghostly like Turbeville's, I think making a big contrast in scale will help with this.
What I find compelling in this work is that there appears to be no rhyme or reason to the order of the images in the collages- it appears random. this could be true or not but I believe that it makes the collage that much more interesting as it makes the viewer have to make their own connections with the images.
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