Dictionary definition of a portrait- painting, drawing, photograph, or engraving of a person, especially one depicting only the face or head and shoulders. Portraits illustrate a persons identity, personality and nurture. This can be shown by features , likeness and appearance. But
what makes me unique
1) music 2) films 3) living in London 4) dogs 5) friends + family 6) drama 7)social media These are some of the things that shape my life and make me different to others.
selfie
mirror selfie
Inspiration
Nan Goldin llse Bing Lee Friedlander
Distorted selfie
Inspiration
Lee Friedlander - Self Portrait Edu Monteiro - Autoerrotrato Sensorial Masahisa Fukase
regular selfie
Shadow selfie
Inspiration
Vivian Maier 1975 Umbo Otto Umbehr 1928 Daido moriyama 1997
Myra Greene
Myra Greene said :''Confronted with an up swell of bigotry both personal and public, I was forced to ask myself, what do people see when they look at me. Am I nothing but black? Is that skin tone enough to describe my nature and expectation in life? Do my strong teeth make me a strong worker? Does my character resonate louder than my skin tone? Using a photographic process linked to the times of ethnographic classification, I repeatedly explore my ethnic features in Character Recognition. The lessons learned are haunting and frightening in these modern times.'' This is her interpretation of the series.
Character recognition
Responding to Myra Greene's work I looked into the details of the face and learnt themes of appearance vs internal reality .I took these portraits digitally not just looking at the face and a whole but the individual features of my face and my subjects. I edited the images to take them back to basics by making them black and white.
Light and shadow
For this task we had create an image that represent a shadowing and a contrast between light and dark. i feel like this effect creates a very ominous and distorted image. we created this by going in front of a dark surface or just a dark room and had a bright light / torch light shining apron the subject and you could either move the camera or get the subject to move to create a blurred effect.
Valerie Kabis was our inspiration artist. There isn't a lot of information on her but these are the images we were trying to recreate.
I really liked the outcome of this task. It created a really cool Visual effect and left a dark atmosphere. To edit these images I made them black and whit and for some that didn’t come out as blurry I used the blur effect on photoshop to enhance the effect I was trying to create.
Analogue photographs
To take these images we used three different old fashion film cameras each from different parts of history. We loaded the cameras with black and white photographic papers and took a series of portraits in front of different backgrounds. Initially wee need to work out the timings to see how the exposure worked out. after we developed the negatives we use the sandwich print technique to see the positive images
Lewis Khan -Georgetown
A friend, a neighbour, a familiar face in the street. Georgetown is a view into the life of south london resident, George. During a period of my adolescence that saw playing football in the street as a daily ritual, George and myself often shared the same space. Frequently we would meet with a simple nod, more frequently a hello, and on occasion George would join in for a kick about. Georgetown is informed by six years of these impromptu and informal meetings in the street, usually the same one
Portraits can be taken anywhere and often the most powerful images are taken of everyday life. From the extraordinary to the mundane all subject matters can create exciting and inspiring photographs.
Documentary portrait
For this task we were asked to go around the school and find people to photograph to see if we could get a perspective on their life and an entry into their daily routine. Finding people that where willing to allow us to take images was hard. I started of by going to the dinner ladies who I captured doing their routine of cooking and sieving up the food and working the check out. Then moved on to the library where the librarian sat at the head desk with all her books and signs. Finally we saw a builder who has been doing work around the premises and was just doing his routine of get equipment and products to do his job. However I felt this task wasn’t an in depth look at people it just showed you the surface of them and their day.
A final look at documentary photography
Anita Barr-
For this task I looked at my mum. She grew up in east London (Leyton stone)with her five siblings , she was the 5th child of the six. they lived in a house with her two parents three dogs and her grandma. In 1987 when my mum was fifth teen her mum died of breast cancer that she was fighting for ten years her mum was age 49. She then had to look after her younger brother and father who suffered from emphysema but in 1992 when she was nineteen her father sadly passed away aged 51. She had to look after her brother and also provide for them. However her luck began to change when she entered a supermodel contest at Harrods and they heard her story and she started working there in 1992. Starting of as a sales associate and working her way up to a buyer. Then in 1999 left Harrods to work at Selfridges as a senior buyer and stayed there for ten years. During this period she had me and my two younger sisters and married my dad.
I chose my mum for this project as she is my inspiration and idol. Even with everything she has gone through she has raised a family of her own and developed a carer for herself. She's an incredible mum and person who is kind to everyone she graces with her presences. I also thought she worked well as a subject for this task as looking in on her from an outsiders perspective you couldn't imagine that such a bubbly person could have such a dark and traumatic history. This links back to Lewis Kahn's - Georgetown project as its about showing that from the extraordinary to the mundane all subject matters can create exciting and inspiring photographs.
Lighting workshop
This workshop allowed us to play with different kinds of lighting. From natural lights, to studio light and even red light. It was an interesting thing to see because each light was very different from another and had completely different out comes. In the natural light there was a lot more shadowing on the subjects face but the skin looked much more air brushed compared to the studio light where their were less shadows upon the face but you could see the imperfections in the skin a lot more. Where the red light was the most contrasting of the three where nothing was really clear apart from the figure of the subject. My fav route would have to be the red light as it created a really ominous feel to the images and was really clear even without editing.
Ben Watts
Ben Watts was born in London and moved to Sydney Australia in 1985 to study photography. And then in 1990 goes to new York finds new street photography which is predominantly influenced by hip hop music and culture and he based his work in Brooklyn and uptown Harlem. In1990 his clientele became more prestige for example Vogue. he was constantly surrounded by other photographers but strayed away and did his own thing which allows us to believe the urban and youth culture of new York is his inspiration and not other artists. he became a contributor to the New York, Rolling Stones, Elle and GQ which allows him to start working with A list celebrities. And when working with them he tries to include things that people enjoy to create an image that is comfortable and allows them to be themselves (eg his images with Heath Ledger). Watts also uses polaroid's and and photomontages for backgrounds to and uses different materials for texture and gets the subject to write across it to bring them into the image and make the image more unique to that person. He released big up 2004 that includes pictures of the urban youth of new York from 1990. In 2008 contributes to Nike, and GAP. Another process to his work is that he keeps a visual journal to see his progression or digression of his work over the years.
First attempt at a Benn Watts image
In response to Benn Watts we were asked to create a collage inspired by his work. For this task we used previous photographs of Muhamad Ali. we used different materials such as paper, masking and washy tape, oil pastels, paints and magazines. for my interpretation i wanted to focus on Ali's quote ' I am the greatest' and create a piece reflecting the saying. To do this I used Benn Watts use of colour to emphasise the main image of Ali to give him a powerful and god like feel. I also used captions to again further emphasise his greatness.
Second look at Benn Watts
For this task we were aske to create another collage but instead of a celebrity one of ourselves that show a clear representation of us and our lives in London. To create this I printed out an image of the London underground and cropped that to give us an opening in the centre for the rest of the images I printed out of me and my friends and family. The images I used show places and people that have influenced or impacted my life in one way or another. I also used an old contact sheet from when we used film cameras in class and placed columns of that around the edge of the paper to create a boarder creating a focus on the centre of the piece also the images included in the contact sheet had images of the area where I live and my friends. To outline these images i used whit paint to define them. I also used washy tape and oil pastels to add a pop of colour. I then printed off a polaroid of me and stuck it down with masking tape in the centre and used felt tip pen to write my name and date of creating the image across the bottom, this gave the piece a Benn Watts feel as it added a personal touch.
Final portraiture task
Brief - For the final task I wanted to create images that followed along the same style as Benn Watts by creating an urban youth culture images but also incorporating the collaging aspect of his work by layering smaller and larger images upon each other. The images below are my inspiration pictures and the theme of images I'm trying to capture.
My images
To take these images I used a disposable camera. I wanted to use this kind of camera as it gives the image a vintage feel like my inspiration photos. I captured these images not only in school but out of school trying to capture children hanging out and being kids. I also wanted to get a look into the urban youth and their culture.
Then to edit these images I placed a black and white filter over the top and then adjusted the contrast and brightness to add the to vintage feel. Also if needed I adjusted the exposure to whether it was over or under exposed as using a disposable is unpredictable with how the image will come out.
To give these images a Benn watts twist I wanted to also to create a collage to adapt this task even further. due to the images being taken on a disposable camera I had the images not only electronically but also had hard copies of each which I used foe the collage. I placed the images in an order I liked and then glued some down and also used gaffer tape too also build open the ben watts style of work. I used a yellow marker ands clippings of the film to give more dynamics to the picture. the words written across the page are words I feel most teenagers relate with when at school.