Before beginning to plan and perform my own still life photo shoot and thus producing a triptych as an end result, I have decided to conduct research. To gain more inspiration and ideas I read into existing professional photographers and their work.
IRVING PENN
American photographer Irving Penn is most famous and iconic for his fashion photographs working for magazine such as Vogue and creating his own personal projects. He has also contributed to other genres of photography including photojournalism, portraiture and still life, producing collections such as Cigarettes, Cranium Architecture and Flowers. Inspiring future generations of photographers, his use of composition of still life objects presents a new and unique style of photography.
The photograph below featured on the front cover of fashion magazine Vogue in 1943, which launched Irving Penn’s photography career. In New York he arranged lemons, oranges, gloves, a brown leather bag, topaz and scarf in an organised composition against a textured wooden background. The general colour palette of orange and brown shades suggests an autumnal mood, reflecting the publishing date of October. The seasonal objects such as gloves and scarf would have inspired female readers to dress appropriate to the time of year and current fashion trends. Wide depth of field has been used as everything within the frame is in complete focus making the image overall very clear and sharp to the viewer. This simplistic photograph, for me resembles a traditional painting due to the dark colour scheme and vintage subject matters. The masthead of the front cover ‘Vogue’ also continues the dark autumnal colour scheme in a vintage font. Each object is positioned neatly beside or in front of one another, creating a strong sense of order and structure within the image. As the objects overlap, a sense of distance and depth is created added extra interest and complexity for the viewer. Penn is known for relying on natural daylight to bring forth light into his images, “Using simple equipment and daylight alone is for me a pleasure and a replenishment”. By doing this Penn has created very soft lighting around his subjects avoiding highlights and shadows created by harsh direct lighting.
The photograph below is taken from Penn’s series ‘Flowers’ where for seven years each summer he produced a photograph for Vogue, focusing on a different flower each year. Throughout his work Penn explored and documented the anticipation of death which he explored within objects such as flowers, rotting fruit and architecture. Despite the inventible of death Penn still captured the beauty within his subjects, which can be especially seen in this series. Despite the flower darkening deforming Penn is still able to make them appear beautiful and delicate in their natural form. Using a plain white background enables all the viewers’ attention to be directly on the subject matter without any distractions. The flowers are therefore almost projected off the surface allowing the viewer to study the flowers’ intricate patterns and details. Penn has composed each flower delicately onto the background with no real structure or order, continuing the natural theme of the photo shoot. I find it particularly interesting how he has chosen to present flowers in this form which is uncommon for photographers and artists to traditionally do.
HENRIK BONNEVIER
Henrik Bonnevier was born in 1972 as is a professional still photographer, having worked for brands such as Samsung, IKEA and McDonalds. Bonnevier takes a very contemporary approach to capturing still life, particularly exploring the relationship between object and product through advertising. He aims to emphasise the ‘movement and dynaism’ of the relationship by creating almost narrative scenes of an array of objects. In these these two images in particular Bonnevier has adopted very strict colour schemes following similar shades and pallets. This thus creates a strong sense of order and structure within the image in addition to making the pieces of aesthetically pleasing. Iconic and famous brands such as Chanel and Prada are easily recognisable in these images due the positioning of the labels, which are also surrounded by similar fashion and beauty objects. I especially like Bonnevier’s work due vibrant colour scheme which has been accentuated by the use of artificial stuio lighting shining directly downwards onto the subject matters. I feel I will easily be able to take inspiration from the use of ordered composition which he has neatly placed his object to create complex and interesting scenes.
Bibliography:
- http://www.ucreative.com
- http://www.hamiltonsgallery.com/artists/27-irving-penn/overview/
- https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2009/oct/08/irving-penn-photography-art
- http://www.gosee.de/agentbauer/reps/henrik-bonnevier
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