Week 11

My first photographer for the week is Allan Sekula. Sekula is a documentary / photo journalism photographer. His work frequently shows economic themes such as labor conditions and protests. Sekula works both as a photographer and videographer for his documentary work.  These images are from two separate series one titled "Forgotten Space" and the other "Ship of Fools". I wanted to put them both here because I found the repetition interesting. As I was looking through his images I found myself skipping over these because I thought I had already seen them. I later realized I hadn't seen both of them but only one. His composition is so strong and so similar in these. It actually taught me a lesson. As photographers we look at our work and we see differences. We refuse to see similarity because we took each photo in a different place and a different state of mind. The reality is the viewer did not and so if we refuse to see the differences, to recognize what we might change to make our work in a series or even as an entire body of work in general more interesting than we our doing ourselves a disservice. Sure I will remember these images but not thats all I will remember of all of Sekulas work.

My next photographer is Chantal Vey who's website you can visit here. Vey is a photographer who's style I admire a lot. Simple and clean when it comes to technique the images are of everyday things. Yet Vey makes them interesting with light, color, texture, and detail. What I find most interesting is how different or similar each image is to each other. They show great amount of attention to composition and perspective. I also found they way the architecture is shot to be interesting. While most photographers focus on the skys of a location Vey choose grey sky and more attention to the ground. The over all grey tone is quite different from what is expected to me. Vey's work includes architecture, portraiture, interiors, and landscapes. 

My last photographer for the week is Annie Leibovitz. I was never really a fan of her work a side from her black and whites of Susan. However after her recent work with the Queen of England and Disney I can fully say I have found work of her's (in color) that I appreciate. I am a large fan of Disney movies and found that Leibovitz's clean colors and glamorous style works well with it. When it comes to the style of these images I find that her sense of space is really active and important to the images. They feel real and though they are clearly and obviously staged they feel natural in some ways. The photo of the queen for me is her most successful  image. They sense of light an space and the setting she has her in is perfect. The Queen looks for once comfortable and real and if I dare say it tangible and for once normal. This to me is the most beautiful and interesting image so far from her.