Week 6

I now feel I have done enough research into how I would like to style my book and the photographs within it. I now need to just get on with the concept and put it together. These will be the first photographs I have done since the Guns and Roses logo on the body that didn't really work. I am a bit apprehensive and this is probably why I haven't started getting into the photography. On the other hand, I know once I start doing the image I am going to want continue doing more to complete each chapter.

So to get me going Chris has set me some tasks to complete in the next few weeks. By the 4th of March  he wants me to done a few shoots done, so he knows that I have start and I think to help put my mind at rest that I have got under way with the project and that I am not stressing at the end of the project and rushing to get everything done. He also set me to get a mock up of one of my chapters together for the 11th of March, this will include the drawing, still life and potentially the portrait. I say potentially because I am still at a stage where I am unsure on whether I want to include it. However, I think by doing this little mock up it will help me decide on whether I should include them or not. I would like to get this mock up done for next week, to push myself to get this on the go.

To get me slightly more motivated on doing the portrait Chris has giving me the name Irving Penn to research. Below is just one image I have found so far. I really like the style of work and has made me think a bit more about the style and how this could work within my book. 

"A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart, and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it; it is in one word, effective." —Irving Penn.

Penn was perhaps best known for his fashion photography, but his collection of work also includes portraits of creative greats; photographs from around the world; modernist still lifes of food, bones, bottles, metal, found objects and stunning scenes from travelling.

Penn was among the first photographers to pose subjects against a simple grey or white backdrop and used this simplicity more effectively than other photographers. Expanding his studio surroundings, He was able tp constructed a set of upright angled backdrops and acute corner. (as seen above) Subjects photographed with this technique included Martha Graham, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, W. H. Auden, Igor Stravinsky.

Penn's still life compositions are skill fully arranged assemblages of food or objects—at once spare and highly-organised, the objects articulate the abstract interplay of line and volume. All of Penn's photographs are composed with a great attention to detail. Penn experimented with many printing techniques, including prints made on aluminium sheets coated with a platinum emulsion rendering the image with a warmth and maturity that untoned silver prints lacked. His black and white prints are notable for their deep contrast, giving them a clean, crisp feel.

While using traditional methods, Penn also ventured beyond creative boundaries. This works perfectly for both my ideas of doing still life and portraiture, if you see this work you are easily able to spot that it is Penn's work. I am hope that the same continuity is shown in my own book, even if the still life images are slightly different, the portraits I create will be a lot easier to make the same. This work has really inspired me in my own creations and how to start organising my still life images.