Artist Analysis #7

Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham is an English photographer who is best known for his series called "Who's Looking at the Family?" later published into a book called "Rays a Laugh".  In which he documents his family life and captures his childhood memories of growing up in poverty with an alcoholic father and an obese mother. As it turns out, Billingham actually ended up becoming a photographer almost by accident.  He graduated from Sutherland University in 1994 with a degree in fine arts, specialising in painting. So originally his photos were intended to be used only as source images for his paintings and nothing more. It was until later that he realised the uniqueness he had captured and became interested in film and photography professionally.

This image is part of a set from an exibition called "Who's Looking at the Family?" All the photos from this series were taken at his families house. This photo in particular shows an older man in a sports coat sitting in a chair, pulling back from the camera covering his mouth with his hand, as if he's about to sneeze. Above him is a black and white cat suspended in mid air. The surrounding room seems to be untouched by the photographer and seems quite natural. This photo has a sort of candid feel to it, like a snap shot. All his pictures would be taken on the cheapest film he could find, and contain many aspects of consumer photography, such as harsh shadows, brash colours, and bad focus. However this all seems to add to the authenticity of the images. This photo probably was taken with a small aperture to get the background blur, and a fast shutter of no lower than 200 because of the flash.     

Photo A Day Project

Johnson Field, motion blurred soccer players, and a beautiful Albuquerque sunset.

Experimenting with double exposures in dorm room.

Ghosted students on their way back from the Frontier.

Abstracted motion blur and hospital.

Wide angle, sunset, motion blur.

Ghost bus

Artist Analysis #7

Alec Soth

Alec Soth is an American Photographer who concentrates his work on "off beat, hauntingly banal images of modern America".  Some think his photos have a very cinematic feel to them, like they were taken straight out of a movie. He shoots portraits mainly, and uses an 8x10 camera. What he attempts to capture in all his photos is the equal importance of the subject and the the journey getting there. Some of his influences are said to be Walker Evens, Stephen Shore, and Diane Arbus. He shoots most of his photos outside, using natural light, avoiding harsh shadows by shooting on overcast days. All his photos contain very dull colors in order to better blend in with the surrounding nature and avoid drawing too much attention to the subject. This also makes his pictures more relatable and seem more natural and real.  

This image was taken from the cover of one of his books called "Sleeping by the Mississippi". It was taken in Minnesota during the winter. A man is shown dressed in a flight suit standing on a roof, holding two vintage model planes. This photo just begs to have a story associated with it, as many of his works do, although I could not find any back story on it unfortunately.This picture looks like it would have been a fairly bright scene to expose for, so he probably had to set the shutter moderately fast, while using a larger aperture to achieve the blurred background. The original print is a Chromogenic print mounted on aluminum and is blown up to 40x32 inches. The fact that he was born in Minnesota, I think really effects the final product of his work. All his work ends up embodying some memory or familiarity from his own life.

Artist Analysis #5

William Eggleston

Early in his career Eggleston shot only in black and white, because that's about all that was available at the time. Later on, however, he began experimenting with color processes, such as dye-transfer printing, a cheap process used mainly for commercial and fashion prints. This process was used for many of his most famous works. Eggleston's works marked a sort of turning point in the history of photography, he was one of the first to start making colored prints and the first to start taking photos of everyday life rather than monumental landscape shots, like that of Adams and Weston.

This photo is one of 88 prints from his body of work titled Los Alamos, from sites he saw while traveling through New Mexico from 1965 to 1974. This image shows two people sitting at a booth, enjoying a smoke, at a non nondescript cafe or restaurant. The camera is at head height and positioned directly behind one of the subjects acting to obscure the other person across the table. This is obviously a period piece based on the hair style, clothes and the fact that its illegal now days to smoke in a restaurant. The colors are extremely vivid and are complementary calming and easy to look at.  There is vignetting happening on the corners, which could be an effect he added or naturally occurring from the dye-transfer process. The only thing truly in focus is the back of the woman's head, which means he was probably using a fairly large aperture setting. His choice not to show any faces and only a small zoomed in portion of the space gives it a sense of anonymity, and I think would make it feel timeless if it wasn't for the other clues of the time period.