DOCUMENTARY: Newspaper article and Contact sheet

Newspaper article:

 

I enjoyed doing the newspaper article because it allowed me to have an insight on what photography can be used for in a wider context rather than just in a school environment. It also broadened my knowledge on journalism and creating a fictional storyline.

Contact sheet:

Contact sheets are important because they allow a photographer to see all their photos at once. It also makes it easy for a photographer to chose exactly which photo they want to use.

TRADITIONAL PORTRAIT: Arnold Newman

Arnold Newman

Arnold Abner Newman was an American photographer most famous for his environmental portraits of artists and politicians. Born March 3rd 1918 in New York City, he was raised and attended schools in Atlantic City and Miami Beach. He studied art under a scholarship at the University of Miami from 1936 to 1938. He died in New York City on June 6, 2006. He is also known for his carefully composed abstract still life images. He is considered as one of the most influential photographers of the 20th Century.
Arnold found his vision in the empathy he felt for artists and their work and photographed many famous personalities such as: john F. Kennedy, Pablo Picasso, Marilyn Monroe, Ronald Reagan and Audrey Hepburn and even though the subject may have been forgotten, he still managed to excite and interest the viewer through the photographs.
Arnold was often credited with being the first photographer to use environmental portraiture, in which the photographer places the subject in a carefully controlled setting to capture the subjects lifestyle and work using their most familiar surroundings expressing their personalities. for example; a musician might be photographed in their recording studio or on stage.


Newman's best known images were in black and white, although often he photographed in colour.

His black and white portrait of Igor Stravinsky seated at a grand piano became his signature image, though it was rejected by the magazine that gave the assignment to Newman.

I like Arnold's photographs because the hand covering the face adds extra emotions/feelings within the picture as well as having different lighting. The picture above of Picasso is different to his other pieces but in this case less is more, the high profile picture draws all the attention to his eyes and increases its intensity,making more impact on the audience. 

How i achieved my Arnold Newman inspired photo:

Contact Sheet:

I like my final piece because it has the same features that Arnold displayed in his photograph of Picasso such as the hand near the face, different lighting and black and white effect. However, if I was to take this shot again I would have the hand creating the shadow over the face instead of in the light as it would have made more of an impact and create more emotions within the photograph.

DOCUMENTARY: Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham:

Born in 1970, West Midlands Lives and works in Swansea, Wales 

Billingham graduated from the University of Sunderland in 1994 and in the same year took part in his first group exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery, London.
the world of photography became increasingly analytical, subjective and confessional of family life,the very private was becoming very public. However, Richard Billingham didn't care about how his family ought to look and instead he focused on them and their situation at the heart of working class life in Thatcher's Britain. Billingham's snap shots form a kind of family album no ordinary family member would ever show to anyone. This is not a family life of fake smiles and awkward calendar events, it is more like a backstage glimpse of the chaotic happenings within everyday life. It's a view that turned Billingham from a would-be painter into a well-known photographer.

The series of photographs, taken over a period of years are a stark, painful and often humorous documentation of the emotional, often violent relationship of his parents and brother. 

He never considered photography when he was living with his father Ray, he was simply a painter in need of a patient model. He began taking pictures of his bed bound alcoholic father that would act as a source material for his paintings as he wouldn't stay still for longer than 20 minutes at a time. This was how Billingham first started taking photographs.

 

 

I think these photographs aren't particularly astetically pleasing however this is because they aren't staged but are natural, there are no fake smiles and show the real expression of everyday life according to the photographer. The surroundings don't look very clean and is cluttered with empty bottles and cans of beer. A lot of Billingham's pictures are of his mother waiting on his father whilst he is sat down, showing the unequal distribution of domestic labor at that time.