Randi Rosing-Schow

Portrait Photographer - Dave Anderson

Dave Anderson worked in a lot of other fields before he became a photographer.  For the past three years he has worked full time as a fine art and commercial photographer.  

He has done a project called Rough Beauty where he photographs people in the South that are marginalized.  He wants to show that these people are worthy of our attention and that beauty can be found in their harsh lives.  However, he does not try to purposefully beautify their lives.  Anderson aims to explore how a community can be branded by its history and he tries to display the beauty that is hidden within a struggling community. 

These are examples from the Rough Beauty project: 

Project #5 - Inspiration From Other Photographers

August Sander, Pastry Cook -

http://www.andrewsmithgallery.com/exhibitions/augustsander/index.htm

August Sander, Bricklayer -

http://www.andrewsmithgallery.com/exhibitions/augustsander/index.htm

August Sander, Young Mother, Middle Class -

http://www.andrewsmithgallery.com/exhibitions/augustsander/index.htm

August Sander did a series in which he aimed to document the entire German population.  The three photos above are examples from this series.  Each person is pictured with something that represents the role that they have in society. The pictures are very formal: the subject is looking straight at the camera with a serious expression, but also with a sense of pride.

Arnold Newman, Woody Allen - http://www.arnoldnewmanarchive.com/

Arnold Newman, Igor Stravinsky - http://www.arnoldnewmanarchive.com/

Arnold Newman, John F. Kennedy - http://www.arnoldnewmanarchive.com/

Arnold Newman was famous for what became known as Environmental Portraiture: photographing the subject in his or her own surroundings with objects that reveal something about their profession or personality.  

August Sander and Arnold Newman’s styles are very similar.  They both photograph people in surroundings that give the viewer hints as to who they are and what they do. The subjects are aware of the camera: they are looking straight at it without smiling. Both photographers also pay very close attention to composition.  

Ideas for Project #5 - Portraiture

My main inspiration for this project is going to be portrait photographers August Sander and Arnold Newman. They both include visual clues in their photographs that reveal something about the person in them. They link the person with objects that are tied to their profession or history in some way. Arnold Newman is know for “environmental portraiture” meaning that he photographs his subjects in their own environment, in settings that they are comfortable with. August Sander also does this to some extent, but some of his photos are also taken in a studio and seem very posed. 

For my project I plan to do a miniature version of August Sander’s project in which he wanted to document the German population. Instead, I plan on taking photos that will document the student body of Beloit College. I will try to find people that represent different “roles” such as athletes, musicians, Greek organizations, international students, etc. I will try to mimic the style of August Sander and Arnold Newman; my subjects will be placed in familiar settings with objects that reveal something about them. I think I will want most of them to be facing the camera, but not smiling. I plan to shoot in black and white. 

Project #4 - Post Critique Reflection

Critique today went pretty well, I thought. People quickly caught on to the idea of roundness in the first 4 photos, which I hadn’t necessarily expected them to. People also seemed to get the idea that I was portraying marks on the body that are seen as bad and marks that are seen as good. I liked the idea that someone brought up of displaying an emotion through the marks, but I don’t know if it would have worked for this project since I had both good and bad marks. 

Overall, I was pretty happy with my photos, especially the first four because they worked well together. I wish I could find a way to integrate the last two photos more with the other four, but at the same time I liked having the bad marks in one group and the good marks in another. Maybe there just needs to be more than two photos in the second group so they can work more as a series separate from the first group of photos.  

Photography Exchange

Check out http://photographyexchange.wordpress.com/ to see a couple of my previous photos. Please leave a comment too! Thanks. 

Project #4 - Inspiration From Other Photographers

Sally Mann - http://www.kochgallery.com/artists/contemporary/Mann/index.html

I think that this photo is interesting because it shows two traces of the same action. The photo is called “The Fall” and it is a trace in the sense that it was taken after the decisive moment - the fall. Secondly, the pattern created on the girl’s back is another trace of her fall. 

Martina Mullaney - http://www.yossimilogallery.com/artists/mart_mull/

The series that this photo by Martina Mullaney is from is really interesting. She has taken a series of photos of beds in shelters for homeless people and I think it is fascinating how much this limited view of the beds and the rooms reveal. 

The bed is a quite personal object, I think, and it feels a bit intrusive to get this kind of view of it - it seems very exposed and so does the person who has slept in the bed even though they are not in the photo.

Birthe Piontek - http://www.birthepiontek.com/work/sub_rosa

This is quite a classical trace that we humans leave from time to time.

Nan Goldin

This photo has definitely been an inspiration for me with this project. I’m looking at what traces we leave on the body and I want to explore which ones of these are seen as bad and which ones are seen as good.

Martin Parr - http://www.martinparr.com/index1.html

I think this photo is hilarious. It comes from a series called Playas, which is documenting beach culture of Latin America. This woman is so desperate in her desire to get a tan and it is obvious to the viewer that she has gone way over board since she is more red than anything else. Tanning is an interesting trace - it is something that many people desire, yet it can also be harmful. 

Nate Larson - http://www.natelarson.com/mary13.html

I think this photo is interesting because it depicts traces that we leave to honor, remember or even worship somebody/something. 

Ideas for Project #4 - The Trace

Objective: Create a series of 5 photographs that capture the trace of an event, action or person. 

For this project I really want to focus on creating a connection between my photos since I struggled a bit with that last time.

I think that the idea of what traces we leave on the world and what traces the world leaves on us is really interesting. My main inspiration for this project is the body and the traces that we leave on our bodies, whether intentionally or unintentionally. I also think that it would be interesting to explore the idea of which of these traces on our bodies are viewed as beautiful and desirable to have and which ones are not.  

Up to date again!

After a few days of editing and rearranging posts, my blog is now fully updated. I have also decided to change the layout of my blog to a more boring but less confusing theme.

Enjoy.

Project #3 - Post Critique Reflection

I have to say that I wasn’t too crazy about the way we did critique for this project. Usually we print out our photos, hang them on the wall and then talk about each one. This time we had to upload the pictures to our blog and then show the rest of the class on the projector. There were some technical issues (for example the distortion of colors through the projector) that I thought took away from the pictures themselves.

I had some difficulties deciding on something that could tie my photos together and I wasn’t completely satisfied with people’s response to my connection, which was color. I found that people tried to read too much into what I had decided to leave in color and what I had decided to make black and white. To me it made sense and I had of course made those choices on purpose, but I don’t think that people got the idea that the colors were a continuation of each other. 

Overall I was happy with my pictures, but I wish that I could find something other than the colors that could tie them together. I will try and work on that for the next project. 

Final Photos for project #3

Below I have posted the final six photos for project #3 (Street Photography). 

I decided to have the thing that connects my photos be color. In each photo there are two colors and one of those colors reappears in the following photo, which then also has a new color that reappears in the following photo and so on…

We had to name our photos using two words (preferably an adjective and a verb). I tried to have the title refer to something in the picture and sometimes also one of the colors dominant in that photo.