precedents for project 3

Looking for inspiration from 'the creative photographer' by John Ingledew, I came across 3 artists whos pictures caught my attention and sparked some new ideas for developing my concept.

These photos by Kjell Ekhorn caught my attention because i instantly noticed a difference between the shadows on the female subjects face and the male subjects face, and like the film noir imagery of feminism and masculinity, the male subject has more darkness and contrast on his face while the female's face is heavily lit up. The other thing that caught my attention was the interesting aesthetic that uses yellow halo's and undefined lines with unusual angles. The artist achieved this by photographing his class mates on a white background and then he put the negatives onto a light box, the re shoot the picture with different exposures. The artist was "seeking an original way of taking pictures" and I think that he achieved this and created a new way of photographing portraits.

This photograph, taken by Erwin Blumenfeld, is interesting because he has taken multiple images of a female model and arranged it in a random layout, highlighting only one side of the model's face, which is also abundantly lit up to show her feminine features. This made me think about how I could use a similar method or idea to transform my images (maybe transform a masculine object to a feminine object, vice versa). I think that this way i could show a new or different way of producing a series of photographs that are unique and offers a different way of presenting my ideas. I will have to work a lot on photoshop to achieve this, but i think that it is an idea that could successfully work. However, i dont want to lose the whole idea of my concept so If I decide to replicate this idea or do something similar I would have to make sure that the audience wouldn't lose sight of what I am trying to portray through my photographs

This photograph also highlights how downlighting really accentuates feminine curves and Im beginning to see a trend in how black and white photography can help show strong contrasts, so this could be something to consider for my own projects since my concept relies heavily on showing the difference between masculine and feminine lighting. The artist uses abstract view of a woman's body, but still through the use of suitable lighting and composition, the audience can clearly see  that the subject is a female. I like how the artist elongates the legs in this picture because it helps exaggerate the abstract aesthetic and how the background has controlled light so the photographer controls what the audience should focus on in the photo. These are things that should consider or plan out before my shoots in order to achieve the same results.

all images and information was retrieved from the same book:

Ingledew, J. (2005) The Creative Photographer. New York, USA; Harry N. Abrams, Inc.