From Portraiture to Landscape

I wanted to add a Blog Post in to this module to show my Change in Ideas for this project.  I originally said that for this project I was going to be Photographing the Expressionless Portrait and link with Deadpan, which is what my essay is based on.  I was also going to be writing my essay about Deadpan Portraiture, and link it into todays world.  I have now changed my ideas from this and would like to say why and what my new idea is compared to my original.

Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff was another Photographer who was at the Dusseldorf School of Photography.  He was a pupil at the school and left with some very interesting takes on photography.  His Deadpan Head shots are very well know and are probably the only piece of work from the other photographers at the School who mainly focused on the Portrait.  He started off with using bright colourful backgrounds for his portraits of his friends before he then realised that the portraits were more effective and meaningful when against a white or grey background, the colour is distracting on the eye, but the white and grey left no shadows and less emotion.

Ideas Changing

I said all along from the beginning of this project that I was originally going to concentrate on the expressionless portrait and also concentrate of why it is so popular in todays world.  The deadpan shots here by Thomas Ruff are really striking and your left wanting to know more about the subject.  I would have really liked to do something similar for my project but I have decided to try something a little different.  Although I do think the expressionless portrait and had lots of different ideas for connections between my other modules, but I want to show something a little different for the final 6 prints and see how it turns out.
Below are three of my Own Photography Images, I shot these last year and named them 'Innocence', this was because of the expressionless portrait.  They actually look very similar to the three Portraits of Thomas Ruff's (above). You can tell that it takes aways emotion and makes you want to know more, but with the halo of flowers above their heads, I was trying to show an expressionless portrait that still meant you can see something about them, and leaves the viewer guessing. The Deadpan Aesthetic is most definitely there and I think I portrayed it very well.   I was really happy with these three images and used them in the Exhibition. But because I have produced three portraits like Thomas Ruff's portraiture, I want to try out something new. 

MY Own IMAGES (SUBMITTED IN EXHIBITION LAST YEAR - YEAR 2)

In My Other Modules I've considered Nude:

In my Major Practical Project I started with my Nude's from my previous work and considered carrying them on.  Thomas Ruff has done some Nude work her (below) but they are not his own work.  He has played around with the internets pornographic photos and made the nudes almost unrecognisable.  He was interested in the constructive nature. I would not consider doing this as my project at all but thought it was worth including as it is the only nude piece I have seen from the lectures.  

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From Portraiture to Landscape

So as I have mentioned above, I have explored the expressionless Portrait before and although very intriguing, I would like to try something different.  I have had many ideas to include the expressionless portrait linking to my dance idea for mixed media and linking to the body for Major Practical, but I figured that it doesn't have to be linked and I could try something different but relevant.  So instead of just concentrating on the 'Deadpan Portrait', I now have turned my ideas to focusing on a 'deadpan' image still but concentrating my idea on a piece of work called: 'Same so Different'.

This project will consist of my finding a suitable project topic, I might try a landscape project, and photographing the same 'topic', but then each image could look completely different.  I have mentioned this idea with Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, John Schott and Candida Hofer, who have all taken images of the same 'topic' but have had lots of different outcomes.  I am hoping with this I can prove that sometimes the way something is presented whether it be a property or object, you might be able to read the personality of what it is about.