Final Shoot

Expression

This shoot on the theme of expression through portraiture combines ideas from the photographers and artists I have studied. Rankin captures the personality of the subject whereas Lambert and Rainer focus on their current emotions. Knowing my model well meant I was able to encapsulate her feelings and personality within these photos. 

Chloe, my model, is quite introverted, and on the day of the shoot was feeling shy. However, she also has a sense of humour so I decided to play with this idea and we worked together to create the images from this shoot. I really liked both the colour and black and white versions of these photos so I've included both, as a set of four on the following pages. 

Arnulf Rainer

Arnulf Rainer combines the arts of photography and drawing to create images such as this one. He plays around with the idea of emotion and expression, and his photos are influenced by surrealism. The angle and pose of the model aren't completely abstract but they are slightly unusual - this paired with the drawing over the top creates an almost humerus effect, which I like.

Alison Lambert

This charcoal and pastel drawing "Zeno" is one of Lambert's 'Emotion and Expression' series. Lambert does portraits of people displaying different emotions, much like Arnulf Rainer does, but Lambert's work isn't photographic. I like the inclusion of hands in this portrait and the monochromatic colour scheme. The composition is quite basic but that means that the focus is on the subject and therefore the message of the picture comes through more clearly.

Male Gaze - Manet's Paintings

Keen to delve deeper into the art of fashion photography and to give a meaning to the photos I'm taking, I considered the prospect of challenging the male gaze. Throughout time, art has been created purely for male pleasure, and therefore any female body depicted was done so in a way that the male would enjoy. Now although society has arguably progressed since the days of limited education for women, the male gaze is still something artists are playing to in the 21st century, not only through traditional modes of art such as paintings, but through photography and cinematography also. One only has to look as far as MTV to see that the way women are presented through the media is so as to appeal to the male eye. Photographers such as Terry Richardson and Rankin often use (needless) female nudity in their photographs, and the poses are suggestive to say the least. 

Whilst the idea of the male gaze is not something that is new, neither is the idea of challenging it, as we see with the painter Manet. In the photo above, the woman pictured is completely naked, which is not unusual for paintings of that time. What is, however, unusual is the direct eye-contact the woman seems to be making with the viewer. This eye-contact is immediately disconcerting, and places an unwelcome sense of guilt on the viewer, as they are suddenly ashamed to be caught looking at her naked. This challenging gaze restores the humanity to the woman, which would be lost had she been painted naked and looking elsewhere. Manet is directly challenging the idea of male gaze here, and I intend to do the same through my photographs. 

Rankin Inspired Shoot 2

The model in these photos had never modelled before and so I used more direction for his poses, but not for his facial expression, as I didn't want it to appear forced. 

Rankin inspired shoot

Having researched Rankin's ability to draw out the personality of his subject, I spent more time pre-shoot talking to my subject about how they were feeling and what they wanted to do. This model was in a bad mood that day, and so I used this to inspire the poses and to create my main images from that shoot. 

Researching Rankin

I was very interested in finding out the way Rankin takes his photos and directs his models, so I watched videos of his shoots and interviews with him on YouTube. 

It was really interesting to see the interaction between Rankin and the children on Jamie's Dream School and to see how he can turn even children into models.

Knowing Rankin has a whole set of lights and backdrops and make-up artists. something we don't have available at school so it's been an interesting challenge trying to replicate these things using school kids and my own equipment.