alice grover AS Photography Component 2

Writing and Portraiture - Nancy Hellebrand and Kelly Maker

Hellebrand's Work:

When creating her work, Nancy Hellebrand works with physical paper and scans in her work to create her images. She focuses on the curvature of the ink and contrasts the white and black in the photo. I am inspired by Nancy Hellebrand's work and I am going to combine portraiture with writing photography to further my exploration.

Maker's Work:

Kelly Maker has used book pages as the background for her portraits. Having the writing in the background is not something that I have yet explored however it is a unique way of incorporating writing with other photography styles such as portraiture. The writing in the book looks quite old, giving this series a vintage feel.

These photographs are very abstract, not only because of the writing but also because of the cut outs of the models in the images. This could simply be a creative addition, or it could have a deeper meaning perhaps related to labels and the feminism movement.

In these images, I think that Maker has scanned in the book pages and then digitally edited on photoshop the images of the models. I would take a different approach to this, by printing out and physically editing the images. This way, they feel more personal. The writing behind which is from a book, I would also exchange for handwritten notes by the models themselves, so that the final edits have very personal tones and represent each individual.

This image is different to the rest as there is no writing and it's in black and white. When creating my images, I will edit the model photos to be black and white as I feel that black and white photos are more personal and touching, which is a theme I am trying to achieve. The lack of writing in this image is not something I will reflect in my work, as I am using inspiration from Nancy Hellebrand as well as Kelly Maker.

Image Bank:

These images are similar to the work I intend to create. Most of the pictures are in black and white, which is something I will recreate. I want my photographs to have very personal tones, and sometimes bold colours can over power that. The rips in the images will be done physically and not on Photoshop, as this gives the picture a more raw look. I will blank out my models faces and use that space to place the handwritten notes after they have been edited and printed. I intend to leave some negative space around my model as some pictures above demonstrate, as it draws the eye to the structure of the writing when there are less distractions in the image.