Tristan Hutchinson is a Dublin-based photographer primarily working in medium and large formats. It's hard to speak strictly to technicality because his images are not originally captured in the way we are learning in class, but his settings consistently produce well exposed images he has clearly spent time orienting. They are all edited as they should be as well, specific to the artists's taste but cohesive when viewed together.
These photos are from a series he did titled "Took Strength To Tackle These Hills". Through the series he documented two towns in Northern Ireland as they go through industrial and economic transformations. Cohb and Ringaskiddy, the two towns he is rendering, are not exactly thriving, and through his landscapes and portraiture he attempts to show this decay and hardship. As the rest of the world modernizes, these fishing and industry based towns find themselves unable to compete but still needing to make a living. Hutchinson, a native to similar areas, has inserted himself in this place so that he can truely document what it is like to be in these places.
I think Hutchinson's work is beautiful and powerful. The portraits he includes are subtle and do not reveal identity as much as they reveal people's place in this decaying land. The landscapes are wonderful but still evoke this sense of pain and unnecessary change that I'm sure is at the forefront of most inhabitant's minds. His other work is compelling in a similar way, but I enjoy how in "Took Strength to Tackle These Hills" he really committed to a subject and spent so much time developing a language to speak and communicate about this place. Pretty sure I'm going to need to experiment with large format once this class is done.
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