Inspirational Images 1

First Inspirational Images

"Produce a photographic essay consisting of 6 to 8 digital photographs that represent an individual, group or location of your choice. Your project should investigate ideas of representation and identity, and consider the importance of cultural, social or political positions. Your chosen theme must be presented for acceptance by your tutor." - Brief 

Looking at the brief for the project, I have started to research into photographers work that I find inspirational. 

John Stezaker

This image is from a series by Stezaker titled 'Landscapes' and it is a photomontage that displays a portrait of a female that is in back and white, with a saturated image of a landscape in the foreground that is covering the models eyes. My favourite thing about his image is the brightness of the landscape image as the saturated blue tones contrast against the black and white portrait. The fact that the postcard is positioned covering the models eyes suggests a link to the theme of identity and is as if she is hiding her identity from the viewers of the photograph. The surrealism in the image has been created through manipulation of two photographs, although simple it is very effective. This image could also suggest representation of a location as the landscape postcard in the foreground displays a country with a hot climate. If I were to experiment similar ideas with my own work I would both take landscape images of Brighton and use postcards of the city scanned into Photoshop. I would then take portrait images to use in the background. I could also link the images to social positions by using portraits of people in the city of Brighton to represent both their personalities and the city they are from in one image. 

This next image by Stezaker displays an image of a model who is looking directly into the camera lens, however her eyes have been manipulated as they have been cut in half and full ones inserted in the centre. This give the illusion that different part of her eyes are in different places and distorts the idea that her gaze into the camera lens is simply about identity. The eyes having been cut up could connote that the 'character' in the image is crying for help to the viewer. This gives a slightly uncomfortable feel as you look deeper into the image, however I love the surrealism that has been created by the simple manipulation. If I were to recreate this image I would use photoshop to move around the models facial features subtly to create a small change to the face. This changes one feature of the models appearance, which effects the identity that is represented to the viewer. 

Serge Mendzhiyskogo

Mendzhiyskogo is a Russian based photographer who constructs unique and abstract cityscapes by taking hundreds of different photographs of a city and then splices and reforms them in an offset way.  This technique makes the images look very busy and I love this effect as it makes the images look almost like a painting. This image of London makes the buildings look closer together and has a beautiful effect on the River Thames. I find this image inspirational as it represents the 

already urban city look even busier in a beautiful way. It also gives the impression that the people within the city are very hidden as only a few can be seen in the image and this juxtaposes with the busyness of the buildings. I could try a similar technique with images of different cities I am able to visit to suggest a different representation to the audience in each image.