Kristen Wrzesniewski- Shannon Roulet

  

  Kristen Wrzesniewski is a portraiture photographer who experiments heavily with double exposures, film, and heavy saturated colors. Wrzesniewski focuses mostly on people, and creates interesting portraits that tell stories and uses different techniques to develop moods within each photo.
    Wrzesniewski spends a lot of her work investigating relationships between people and their surroundings. She does this both through including two or more people in the photo, or overlaying an image of a flower(her flora/fauna set) etc, and creates a collaboration of the two images. I think that Kristen Wrzesniewski has a distinct style of portraits that resonates throughout all of her work, and makes original imagery. 

KW portfolio

Sarah Retchin: Adam von Mack

I can’t remember if we talked about von Mack in class, but one of his focuses is familiar, as Liesa is interested in this specific type of portraiture. So this artist might be of interest to you, Liesa (check out the portfolio labeled “The Raw”).
Back to the photographer: Adam von Mack is both a commercial and fashion photographer who originally went to school to study biology, but now fully focuses on photography. He likes revealing genuine expressions from his models and says that he is, “always looking for the face behind the face.” He’s influenced by artists like Martin Munkacsi, Richard Avedon, Herb Ritts, and Irving Penn. He mainly works digitally, but has a few black and white analog photos on his website. He definitely has a fashion aesthetic—most of the lighting used in his photos seems to intentionally flatter the models’ angles. There’s a very beautiful, romantic feel to most of them. I should also note that a majority of his photos are taken vertically, which is something I've been trying to focus on myself.

George Hurrell- Charlotte Laurance

George Edward Hurrell was born on June 1, 1904 in Cincinnati, Ohio.“As long as I can remember I wanted to be an artist.  As a boy, I was drawing all the time, in school and out.  Art was my favorite class in high school.”  Following graduation from high school, that summer he enrolled at the Chicago Art Institute, and later took night school classes at the Academy of Fine Arts studying painting. Hurrell became acquainted with the camera while in art school because his fellow painting students kept photographic records of their work. Hurrell moved from Chicago to Laguna beach, bringing along with him a second hand view camera so that he could photograph various potential scenes during the warm spring and summer months. Hurrell photographed the local artists and their art in the Mediterranean climates. Hurrell's first famous portraits were photographs of Ramon Navarro, the highest paid celebrity during the time. Ever since these pictures became known, Hurrell was commissioned by other famous people such as Greta Garbo, Carole Lombard, and Julie Andrews. His portraits, all classic looking, capture the beautiful nature of the glamorized people of the 20's-40s.

http://georgehurrell.com/gallery/

Hannah Nees - Steven Klein

Steven Klein studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. Later, he left the painting field to pursue a career as a photographer. Once beginning his interest in photography, his career grew rapidly while becoming a popular fashion photographer. Today, Klein is one of the most widely recognized fashion photographers, having shot campaigns for companies such as Dolce & Gabanna, Vogue, and W. Another interest of his is the world of filmography, where he has directed the videos for Lady Gaga's fragrance campaign, as well as her music video for Alejandro. Today, he works close with Lady Gaga, becoming one of the main contributors of her "Haus."

Klein chooses to shoot with a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark 3, while digitally manipulating his images in certain programs such as Adobe Photoshop. He also chooses to use harsh studio lighting in his fashion shoots for companies such as Dolce & Gabanna. Another camera that he uses is a medium format with a 50mm lens and Kodak Portra 400nc film while utilizing a tripod for balance.

http://kleinstudio.us/

Abbey Reddington- Kate Pulley

I came across the photography of Kate Pulley completely on accident. Upon browsing images of a more renown photographer, I found this gem of a young lady. Kate experiments with film, Polaroid's, and digital. All of her images maintain a soft, dreamlike appearance. I found myself super attracted to her Polaroid's, which demonstrated her understanding of light and color. The narrative isn't super direct, which I find refreshing. The eye accepts the mood from the images without trying to dissect them too much for a deeper meaning.

The color pallet of her work relies upon neutrals. Soft skies, almost non existent, create a lack of grounding. It appears (especially in the last ex.) that the location could be anywhere, further adding to her dreamlike nature. Most of the work has a deep depth of field, keeping the viewer far from the action  and creating a sense of being a spectator. I chose to really look into the young photographers work, because she understands portraits in a less literal sense, and that is what I am currently working on.

Jim Mangan - Natalie Kohlhepp

Jim Mangan was born in Illinois in 1973. Mangan has an extensive background in the snowboarding industry, which tends to poke out in his work. Bedu, is the third part of Mangan’ series on rebirth, shot in the Little Sahara Desert, Utah.  Mangan uses a perspective that does remind me of snowboarding/skiing photography, the way he pulls back and shows more of the minimalist nature surrounding the subject.

             His subjects feel like his friends, and much of his work feels like his own memories of these extreme trips they all take together. I can relate to his work in the way that he has this artistic relationship with the people around him, because I also feel that my strongest photos come out of a collaboration of my style of portraiture and my friends’ understanding and willingness to be subjects. Also, nakeds are a reoccurring theme in Mangan’s work; I find nakeds to be far more fascinating than nudes in photography. 

 

Lexi Wilson- Judith Fox

Judith Fox is an award winning photographer, public speaker, and writer. Her book, I Still Do, focuses on the problem of Alzheimer's and how it has affected her and her husbands relationship. Included in this book is a series of photographs that she has taken using a large format camera of her husband. There is a very specific use of lighting in these images, as the lighting accentuates certain attributes of her husband.

Fox uses the camera to connect with her husband and love him through this difficult time. In these photos exists a sense of intimacy as Fox explores the disease. They capture memories that the two are experiencing. The disease is confounding as it changes every minute, and Fox hopes to capture these moments in an effort to connect with her audiences.

Tierney Gearon - Liesa Collins

Tierney Gearon is an American photographer that blew up when the public thought her work to be controversial because of the use of her naked children. She has done series of works that follow her kids, her mother, and herself. Gearon uses a Mamiya 7, which is a medium format camera that is very expensive. We just watched a documentary video on her in our darkroom class and I became fascinated with her. She is such a free spirit yet she will do anything for a picture. Many people call her selfish and that she doesn't care about her children the way she should. Coming from an art student's perspective, I see it as using the resources you have to make the best art possible, but I know from a mother's perspective, how she exposes her kids is very wrong. 

I think Tierney Gearon makes the work that she does because she has some sort of tunnel vision that only allows her to look at the world as everything having an opportunity to photograph. In the documentary, every moment of her kids' and her mother's lives were being documented and she was never without a camera in hand. She will do anything to get the image she wants and has battled with herself in response to people telling her that she's a bad mother. No matter what he reasoning is, Tierney Gearon is an amazing artist that deserves respect for her work. 

Nikki S. Lee: Jessica Aicholtz

Nikki S. Lee was born in South Korea in 1970.
She is now based in New York city. Her most well known work, Projects, started while she was still in school. She poses with various ethnic and social groups, including drag queens, punks, swing dancers, senior citizens, Latinos, hip-hop musicians and fans, skateboarders, lesbians, young urban professionals, and Korean schoolgirls. Her main focus wasn't to create beautiful photographs but more about investigating identity. She immersed and transformed herself to be these different types of people.

Alex Kreher:

Selfies from famous people on the cover of newspapers: 

Taylor Stevenson: Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethrope was an American photographer, who is mostly known for his photography. He is mostly known for the underground BDSM scene in the late 1960s and early1970s of New York. His work was very controversial however very beautiful. One of my favorite projects from his is The Black Book. Within this project Mapplethrope works with the black male body, capturing its detail. 

Mapplethrope captures depth and texture by using harsh lighting and interesting angles. I really enjoy the way he works with the form, even though the subject is put in a studio setting its posture and movement adds a story to the figure. The placement of the male form in the studio creates the allusion of the body being on display as a sculptor.  Mapplethorpe inspired many artist to challenge the way the black male figure is perceived in media. 

Cornelia Hedliger - Liesa Collins

Cornelia Hediger is a photographer that was awarded a Master of Fine Arts from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Her work has been widely exhibited all over the United States. In her Doppelganger II series, her female subjects are elongated, fragmented or distorted, and the rooms that these figures inhabit have a dream-like, almost fairytale quality to them. There is an overall mood of emotional provocation, tinged by fragility and doubt, which is counterbalanced by the formal rigor and control of the artist. 

In her own words, Cornelia Hediger chose the Doppelganger series to delve into the idea of an alter ego, the conscious mind vs. the unconscious mind, inner conflicts, the duality between good and bad and split personalities. I really enjoy the distortion of these females and how important it is for young women to see what society wants from them. I think what Cornelia Hediger is doing a really great thing.  

Teirney Gearon-Virginia

Teirney Gearon is an American Photographer most famously known for the controversy surrounding her series in which she photographs her schizophrenic mother. Not limited to family portraiture, Gearon’s work seems very cohesive in her techniques.  Weather a staged shot or a cadid photo, all of her work carries a feeling of impermanence- a fleeting moment. The colors in her work are always strong and saturated. Color is easily what makes Gearon’s work so compelling. She seems to either knowingly or not, color coordinate her shots. With in each photograph, there is a nearly perfectly balanced color palette. Gearon manipulates her colors with light. She uses intense situational lighting to highlight the importance of her subjects.

Gearon’s work ranges over the spectrum of photography. She is known for her family photography, but also has an archive of work in fashion. Though the subjects seem polar opposite, Gearon’s work remains the same. She still utilizes color as a resource for evoking emotion, and making her images cohesive. The idea of identity is explored throughout all of her photographs – and each in each of her snap shots she seems to attempt to capture a tangible remnant of the subject’s self.