Personal Investigation
“I try to have an open view and I'm intuitive. When I encounter things, I try to let myself be led by those things." - Viviane Sassen
When I first began taking photos my practice involved solely photographing the world around me. I would take photos in the spur of the moment, unplanned. My subjects would normally just be my friends and most of my shoots involved being with my subjects for a long time, whether I am sitting with them or following them and once I have been present for a long enough time I begin taking photos as I have now gained their trust and they are used to my presence and I have managed to blend into the background. This allows me to be able to take intimate, personal and atmospheric images which make the viewer feel like they are present too.
A lot of my images would come out quite dark as well and normally I don’t brighten images taken in dark places as I prefer them to look how they did in reality. I like to capture the feel of a room or location and I do this through taking pictures of small details and objects, as well as capturing the lighting. I look to explore the formal elements of light and line, as well as others like texture and colour, a lot in my work.
A lot of my images would come out quite dark as well and normally I don’t brighten images taken in dark places as I prefer them to look how they did in reality. I like to capture the feel of a room or location and I do this through taking pictures of small details and objects, as well as capturing the lighting. I look to explore the formal elements of light and line, as well as others like texture and colour, a lot in my work.
However over time my focus has shifted as I began to develop an interest in fashion photography. Once I started moving more into this field I began taking photos in a different way. Rather than just capturing the world around me as it is, I began to construct the photos more myself. I started by taking photos in a studio with a plain white backdrop and then position the model in the way I wanted them to stand and positioning the lights how I wanted. This made for a much more controlled image. Through doing multiple shoots with different models I slowly learnt how to use lighting, direct models and further construct an image from scratch into exactly what I wanted.
More photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lucanembhard/sets/72157668180334813
More photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lucanembhard/sets/72157669985402990
More photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lucanembhard/sets/72157675540838862
More photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lucanembhard/sets/72157673248684283
More photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lucanembhard/sets/72157677208231555
Also alongside the fashion/portrait shoots I was doing I also got into shooting urban landscapes such as different estates, architecture and structures. I wanted to explore the formal elements of light and line through capturing shapes made by buildings.
Eventually I began merging my two practices, of shooting light and line as well as textures, shapes and colour, and mixing that in with my portraiture work. I wanted to explore the relationship my human subjects had to the backgrounds of these images and it was important that I use the format of photography as photos are flat images so the background and foreground can be indistinguishable so I made sure to include the subject as part of the lines created by the background. I also wanted to venture out of the studio and use less artificial light. My new work in an exploration of portraiture, testing the limits of what the word portrait means and what types of images can be called a portrait.
Eventually I began merging my two practices, of shooting light and line as well as textures, shapes and colour, and mixing that in with my portraiture work. I wanted to explore the relationship my human subjects had to the backgrounds of these images and it was important that I use the format of photography as photos are flat images so the background and foreground can be indistinguishable so I made sure to include the subject as part of the lines created by the background. I also wanted to venture out of the studio and use less artificial light. My new work in an exploration of portraiture, testing the limits of what the word portrait means and what types of images can be called a portrait.
In this shoot I focussed on using sunlight. In my last shoots I had stayed in the studio using only artificial light so I decided to venture outside and experiment with natural lighting. In many of my shoots I like to play with shadows and how light bounces off different parts of skin and the face and clothing and in this shoot I wanted to see how my practice might be changed by the inclusion of sunlight rather than just lightbulbs. The clothes worn by the model made the shoot even more successful as she is dressed bright and colourful which reflected the weather on the day and specifically her yellow jacket looked vibrant and brought attention to her when the sun lit her. I particularly liked taking shots where the sun shone through leaves making her jacket lit in a patchy way which I thought made for good outcomes. I liked venturing out of the studio as it allowed me to use a few different locations as backdrops. I took some photos in a more suburban setting such as in front of garages and drives, as well as taking photos in more built up city locations.
More photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lucanembhard/sets/72157675865667240
More photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lucanembhard/sets/72157675865667240
This is another outdoor shoot but on a very different day than the previous shoot. This time it was much more cloudy so the photos came out looking a lot more grey. The most effective outcomes were the ones with the white background of the flats as the model was slightly silhouetted and the shape of his body made for a good shot. The best shots from the series were the ones that utilised the urban setting as a backdrop and the model looked moody. Him wearing a blue coat also helped give the photos some colour otherwise they would have been colourless and possibly boring.
More photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lucanembhard/sets/72157675625756071
More photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lucanembhard/sets/72157675625756071
I looked at the work of photographer Hannah Starkley to observe how she makes portraiture using chiaroscuro, natural light and reflection to create carefully arranged beautifully composed painting like shots. Most of her photos use windows, often as the main light source and include people. She uses natural lighting to create large shadows and the windows are used as a reflective surface, as well as mirrors.
I looked at the work of Tom Hunter because he is a photographer who takes a lot of portraits but in the style of painted portraits. His work connected to what I was doing because he often takes darker, moody photos but his subjects are always well lit. However his shots look almost like screenshots from movies as there is a definite narrative to many of them. I looked at his work as inspiration because I am interested in taking more narrative, film-like photos, and I want to use darkness and shadows more tastefully.
I also looked at a lot of Viviane Sassen work because I really like her portrait work and her style is the direction I would like to take my photographs. Her work connected to what I was doing because she is a fashion photographer but she comes from a fine art background which means her work is much more interesting than typical fashion photography. She is an artist who often contrasts bright colours with dark shadows. A lot of her work is also quite abstract and she often poses her subjects in interesting ways, often depicting elegant, abstract forms of bodies and body parts and I definitely wanted to take influence from this because I felt a lot of my portrait photography was quite uninspired pose-wise and I was interested in pushing portraiture further by not limiting the part of the body I capture to just face and front of body.
This pushed me into capturing limbs and exposed skin and taking shots from different angles than usual. I began taking less conventional portraits, mainly focussing on specific features of the subjects body, often close up.
I was also inspired by the photographer Othello De Souza Hartley’s work in portraiture, specifically his “Masculinity Project”. This project asks the question of what is masculinity in the 21st Century and explores the artist’s own vulnerability as well as the vulnerability of men in general living in today’s society. The project consisted of a series of self portraits of Hartley, lying naked in several typical masculine environments such as factories, garages and barber shops.
This inspired me in that I was already interested in exploring abstract forms of bodies but I liked how Hartley contrasted the bare tender skin against the rough, metallic industrial settings, so I took some shots following on from this idea where I captured shots of a subject’s skin exposed against a metallic backdrop. I had been taking photos of subjects in urban and industrial settings before but in a much more conventional “fashion photography” way but in the new shots I made sure to shoot angles and sides of the subject that I wouldn’t usually shoot and I got my subject to pose and contort and wrap his arms around each other, as well as tense his muscles.
In this shoot I attempted to capture the human male body in an interesting way and display how the body and bones are structured. I took some shots from a distance to show a larger area, while others were taken close up. The close ups I took were in order to get hyperdetail on features of the male body such as the spinal chord through the skin and chest hair. I took some shots against a massive metal container and I took them from further out to contrast the bare skin against the hard metal. This, like Othello De Souza Hartley shots makes the body appear vulnerable. I also had the model hang off the metal container in the shoot which further adds to the vulnerability I was trying to capture because his arms are under pressure as he is gripping it tightly, which would have been painful to keep up and you can almost see the struggle as his arms are tensing. Also since the container is metal it is pressumably cold which adds to the uncomfortableness captured in the shoot. I also took influence from Roger Ballen in this shoot.
Also around the theme of masculinity and femininity I took shots of a male subject lying in leaves looking into the camera, which paralleled with the Manet painting “Olympia” of a white prostitute lying on a bed being brought flowers by a black servant. I had my subject pose in the same way as the painting in leaves instead of a bed being delivered flowers, inverted the roles so my subject was black not white and male not female.
For my final images I wanted to take photos which bridged my interests in portrait & fashion and light & line, using an urban/city backdrop. I made sure the sun was out when I shit because it was important to me to use sunlight as it creates the right kind of shadows that I wanted to use when incorporating line. Also a lot of my portrait shoots had been in a studio completely using artificial lighting and the outdoor shoots were overcast. I wanted to see how my practice might be changed by the inclusion of sunlight as I’ve always been intrigued by shadows and how light bounces off different parts of skin and the face and clothing.
For the first shoot I shot in a more suburban setting such as in front of garages and drives as well as more urban modern areas like underpasses. The clothes worn by the subject made the shoot even more successful as she is dressed bright and colourful which reflected the weather on the day and specifically her yellow jacket looked vibrant and brought attention to her when the sun lit her. My favourite outcomes from the shoot were when sun shone through leaves making her jacket lit in patches, as well as the shots I took using line.
For the first shoot I shot in a more suburban setting such as in front of garages and drives as well as more urban modern areas like underpasses. The clothes worn by the subject made the shoot even more successful as she is dressed bright and colourful which reflected the weather on the day and specifically her yellow jacket looked vibrant and brought attention to her when the sun lit her. My favourite outcomes from the shoot were when sun shone through leaves making her jacket lit in patches, as well as the shots I took using line.
For these shots I wanted to use strong sunlight, brought out more by the yellow, as well as using strong shadows. For some I shot with only the jacket being in direct sunlight to highlight it, others I had the subject half lit but half in shadow, others I had only the background sunlit with the foreground and subject in shadow. Because I was shooting in strong sunlight I was able to capture strong clear lines, created by the barrier between the sun and shade, in the background of these images.
In the second shoot I again made sure the sun was out but this time instead of shooting in the middle of the day I decided to shoot in the early evening when the sun was just about to go down as I wanted to use more red sunlight. I again wanted to use line in these images, while still making them portraits with an urban background. For this shoot I used the lines and angles of structures like stairs and metal bars and railings and, like the last shoot I wanted to use triangular shapes made by these structures and the shadows cast by these structures. I again experimented with interchanging the foreground and background being shadowy and I shot in front of a red wall which highlighted the red/orange sunlight. For most of the shots my subject stood idle but for some shots I got him to kick because the angles made by his leg worked well against the angles behind him and it placed more lines into the composition.
I used this location by the stairs because the original idea to do portraits using line in urban settings came from a portrait I took which used lines created by a staircase and several brick walls and a brick pillar in a corner which inspired me to take more shots using these elements.
In the second shoot I again made sure the sun was out but this time instead of shooting in the middle of the day I decided to shoot in the early evening when the sun was just about to go down as I wanted to use more red sunlight. I again wanted to use line in these images, while still making them portraits with an urban background. For this shoot I used the lines and angles of structures like stairs and metal bars and railings and, like the last shoot I wanted to use triangular shapes made by these structures and the shadows cast by these structures. I again experimented with interchanging the foreground and background being shadowy and I shot in front of a red wall which highlighted the red/orange sunlight. For most of the shots my subject stood idle but for some shots I got him to kick because the angles made by his leg worked well against the angles behind him and it placed more lines into the composition.
I used this location by the stairs because the original idea to do portraits using line in urban settings came from a portrait I took which used lines created by a staircase and several brick walls and a brick pillar in a corner which inspired me to take more shots using these elements.
These four images are my final pieces.