Environmental portraiture

American Gothic
Grant Wood
This painting is an example of environmental portrature. It is beautiful and has more dennotations connotations than i can mention here, it is relevent o the time and probably one of the most truthful images of the time it was painted. There is one problem it never happened, the house was there but the people were his sister, and the man modeled on his dentist. this is why a photograph can capture an environmental portrait in a more relevant and real way. it is a peice of documentry, and not subject to the artist changing whats in the frame at will. it is about circumstance meaningh it is almost impossible to fake.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Robert Howlett 1857

this photograph taken using wet plate process is what the V & A class as the first example of Environmental Portraiture. Shot against the chains SS Britan Brunel strikes a nonchalant pose showing his dislike of being photographed. The dirt on his boots spreading up his spats show is  uncaring attitude toward the fine clothes and a thin cigar carelessly held between loose lips. these are all things that weren't seen in portraiture before this. this is what makes environmental portraiture different, new and more interesting.

Lee Friedlander
Lee Friedlander is a photographer who I have been influenced by before and at the begining of this project i turned to this image for ideas. what i saw was a comment on places which take the identity of people. this is an idea i decided to think about and hopefully come out with my own idea.

James Dean
Dennis stock 1955
i find this photograph incapsulates the ideas i want to show in this project, i am less moved by the work of winogrand because of the amount of people in them, i think an individual within an environment is more interesting if it is a bare environment without the influence of others to change the photograph. this is a excellent example of this, shot in times square it turn thes usually highly populated tourist area with lights billboards and commersialized happiness into a lonely sidewalk barely recognizable from the usual travel agent image.
 Victor Burgin 1953
this is another photograph that style i wish to be able to replicate in my project. the sense of lonliness whilst surounded is something i think is a special thing to be able to do. the beniality of location works with the isolation of subject in a way leaving the viewer questioning the story and thoughts behind the subject.

 For my project i have decided to stay away from Howletts style and go more with the style of 1950, 60's and 70's street photographers.

My idea is to go to similar locations as  Friedlander and take photographs of people without there knowledge, hopefully it will show an individual in an environment deigned to be lonely.
To acheive this i will go to places like supermarkets,shops and the highstreets.

i chose to use black and white film, ilford pan 400. i also chose to use a 35mm camera rather than a medium format because i wanted to be able to take photographs quickly about without cumbersome size or equipment. i chose to set the aperture on auto on the lens and change the shutter so i could get a quicker process from walking to exposing. the way that i took my photographs was by choosing my subject and standing there observing through the lens, occasionally opening both eyes to be able to see action out of the frame crossed with whats happening in the frame. using this process meant my photographs weren't technically perfect but i was happy with the composition. i then chose to print the film in a darkroom as i felt this would make the imperfections within the images would look good with the slight imperfections of the darkroom printing process and give continuity through the series.


_______________________________________________


I have done my shoot and i am plesed with the outcome. when i started i was quite nervous about how close i was getting to my subject and how obvious i was making it i was taking a photogragh. however as i got more comfortable i stopped caring as much as how i looked and what they would feel about there photo being taken. You can see the progression through my film, the begining part is full of almost candid shots of people looking the other way, and taken from a didstance; yet later in the film i have shots of looking straight down the lens as i obviouly composed the shot with them in it.

The shots which i prefer out of the film is are the ones where i was brave enough to go up close yet the people were looking in other directions, this is because i think it works with the ideas i have outlined in a more fitting way.

_______________________________________________


Through out this project i have tried to make sure the photograpghs i am producing relate to an idea and concept and i feel i have done this successfully by the fact i can talk about my photographs aesthetically and conceptually. in the end i realized the true intent behind my images, they where about society more than anything, within the situations photographed who was in control the person or the environment. the subjects are all so wrapped up in there own head as a result of these lonely environments which strip the person to become a product of the environment rather than a product of our own humanity. i think my intention and idea behind this project can be summed up by a few lines from Allen Ginsbergs "A Supermarket in Calafonia"

"In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for

images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! 

Whole families shopping at night!  Aisles full of husbands!  Wives in the

avocados, babies in the tomatoes!"