Major Practical Project - Some thoughts on style...

Recently this project has slightly taken a back seat as a cause of my ridiculously time consuming analogue project. However, I have been thinking about style. The recent feedback I had been receiving was that I needed to set myself on a particular set of aesthetics that I should be aiming for - the photographers I have been looking at in my research have extremely varying styles and I need to pinpoint which one is closest to that of my own photographs. Therefore, what I will do in this blog post is talk about each of the artists I have looked at so far, and discuss them purely in the context of their aesthetics.

Penny Klepuszewska

©Penny Klepuszewska, from the series Living Arrangements.

With Klepuszewska, the images she produces in this series often involve a black, or very dark background with objects in the foreground, shot with a small depth of field. They are theatrically lit, which is clear, but they don't look too unnatural. Her work is very focussed on small details, which is something I aim to do in my images too. However, the heavily constructed lighting does abstract the objects from their setting, giving more of an impression of the person that owns them as opposed to the home they come from. I love Klepuszewska's style, but I do feel like it is very different to my own, as I mostly prefer to work using natural light. Particularly in this project, I think it's important that the details I am photographing build up to give the viewer a picture of the house I grew up in. Therefore, I feel that some background information (wallpaper, shapes of rooms etc.) needs to be included.

Colin Gray

©Colin Gray, from the series The Parents.

With Gray's work, again, he has focussed on the details of the home his parents live in, but his work feels much more informal. It seems as if he has taken influence from the snapshot aesthetic, with some of his images not necessarily having to be in perfect sharp focus, or adhering to the rule of thirds. It also seems as if he uses mostly available light, in order to keep the images feeling very natural and simple. Although I don't feel quite as attached to Gray's work as I do to Klepuszewska's I do respect that he uses more of the techniques that I will hopefully be employing in my project.  However, I will hopefully be making much more detailed prints, attempting to keep the most important details in sharp focus.

Anna Fox

©Anna Fox, from the series My Mother's Cupboards and my Father's Words.

For this series, Fox has appeared to utilize flash, in order to light right the way into the backs of the cupboards. It is important that the viewr gets to see all the items within the cupboards, in order to give the most information within the photograph as possible. Although the lines of the images are not straight, and they donb't feel as though Fox has taken a long time to compose them, the images do have sharp, crisp focus. I see the images as stylistically somewhere in between Klepuszewska's highly constructed photographs, and Gray's more snapshot style ones.

Nigel Shafran

©Nigel Shafran, from the series Washing Up 2000.

The images I feel come closest to the idea that I envisage for my own project are those by Nigel Shafran. Again, he looks to have used natural, available light, and it has given the images a very neutral, white tone. I will definitely be looking to acheive a similar aesthetic in my project. However, so far I have been shooting my images form straight on, focussing down on much smaller details, single or small groups of items, for example. I do really appreciate Shafran's celebration of the mundane, which is not only reflected in the subject matter, but in the style too.

I did shoot 3 films worth of images whilst I was at home for Christmas, which arecurrently being processed and printed. I shot them using a relatively neutral style. When the prints have been returned to me I will asses whether I should carry on with the simple, almost deadpan style I have been using so far or if I need to make any adjustments to lighting or style of composition. However, I do hope to stay true to my aims to keep the images simple, let the subject matter speak for itself.