Trip to the Science Museum and the V&A
Alec Soth
Alec Soth is considered to be one of the world's foremost documentary photographers. He has been described as the greatest living photographer of America's social and geographical landscape. Soth takes the outside world as his subject as many writers and photographers of America do but he does so with his own modern spin. His photos are intimate, eery, often desolate and wild and he manages to capture what it is to be humans across both his landscape and portrait shots.
Science museum, Gathered Leaves, Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), Niagara (2006), Broken Manual (2010), Songbook (2015)
In Alec Soth's work in the science museum he gives a interesting and complex insight into America and work has taken him across the whole of the US.
In Alec Soth's work in the science museum he gives a interesting and complex insight into America and work has taken him across the whole of the US.
Richard Learoyd
Richard Learoyd is a British art photographer. He captures large-scale unique portraits and still-lives which captivate viewers with their quiet power and mesmerising detail, which is achieved through an innovative process. “when an image works, it often feels that an impression of the person has been left on the paper. You can almost feel their breath.” They are made directly onto colour photographic paper in a room-sized camera obscura. The effect achieved is hyper-realistic and entirely by non-digital and chemical-based photography. The subjects appear frozen in deep reflection, and are shown alongside dreamy, surreal still life arrangements creepy dark mirrors with no reflections. The combination of using subjects symbolically and visual impact create his elegant compositions question the nature of optics and test limits of photographic representation. There being no negatives means that every photograph is an edition of one and the failure rate is high. “Every picture I make is hard won, There are no happy accidents.”
V&A, Dark Mirror
Is this exhibition Richard Learoyd takes a minimal approach but the quality and level of detail within the photos is astounding. As described above, the process Learoyd undergoes to produces these images is long, old fashioned and risky, as well as the fact that there is only one copy of each image. The photos in this gallery feature mainly women, sat down, not looking into the camera. The images are extremely intimate and really capture the moment in that they feel almost alive and you can see the life within the people. Some of the subjects were nude which added another aspect to the tenseness and intimacy of them. They are expertly lit and extremely atmospheric. Each subject looks deep in thought. The backgrounds are quite plane but use soft colours, mainly blues, which match the mood of the photos and the appearances of the subjects. The photos are extremely high resolution and very clear which adds to them feeling like reality. They are also printed very large so the subjects are pretty much as big as they would be in real life so this makes it seem as though they are really there. In this way the pictures really draw you in.
The photos in here that didn't primarily feature women include a dead rabbit/hare, a decapitated horse head and a naked man. All of these gives the impression that it was Learoyd intention to capture real life as it is, censoring nothing. This is shown in how some of the subjects are nude making no attempt to cover up, and the dead animals are very life-like and look like they have been hunted. The human subjects in the photos don't appear to be models and are likely just regular people, like the woman with the baby who is likely really the mother. The images show how humans (/and animals) really are and look like they have been taken with real human eyes.
Overall the exhibit was breathtaking and very ambient and I think I can take a lot away from it.
Is this exhibition Richard Learoyd takes a minimal approach but the quality and level of detail within the photos is astounding. As described above, the process Learoyd undergoes to produces these images is long, old fashioned and risky, as well as the fact that there is only one copy of each image. The photos in this gallery feature mainly women, sat down, not looking into the camera. The images are extremely intimate and really capture the moment in that they feel almost alive and you can see the life within the people. Some of the subjects were nude which added another aspect to the tenseness and intimacy of them. They are expertly lit and extremely atmospheric. Each subject looks deep in thought. The backgrounds are quite plane but use soft colours, mainly blues, which match the mood of the photos and the appearances of the subjects. The photos are extremely high resolution and very clear which adds to them feeling like reality. They are also printed very large so the subjects are pretty much as big as they would be in real life so this makes it seem as though they are really there. In this way the pictures really draw you in.
The photos in here that didn't primarily feature women include a dead rabbit/hare, a decapitated horse head and a naked man. All of these gives the impression that it was Learoyd intention to capture real life as it is, censoring nothing. This is shown in how some of the subjects are nude making no attempt to cover up, and the dead animals are very life-like and look like they have been hunted. The human subjects in the photos don't appear to be models and are likely just regular people, like the woman with the baby who is likely really the mother. The images show how humans (/and animals) really are and look like they have been taken with real human eyes.
Overall the exhibit was breathtaking and very ambient and I think I can take a lot away from it.