Has the media shaped our vision of women through photographic portrayal and is their true purpose and identity betrayed as a result?
Amy Byron Photography
ANNETTE PEHRSSON AND CARY FAGAN INSPIRED
MY PHOTOS
This shoot is based on the inspiration of Annette Perhsson as well as Cary Fagan. This is because I particularly like the style of many of Pehrsson's other images, which have an old-fashioned feel the them. I chose to incorporate Cary Fagan's work as I like the concept behind his ideas. His images portray portray women in their simplest form, no make-up or hair style or impressive materials, but rather completely natural.
Both photographers have a way of portraying this, but in particular they both use plain materials such as cloth, sheets and thin clothing as props within their images, often used to frame the model in a particulat way, which connotes simplicity as everything is in it's ordinary natural form.
Nearly all of their images are captured in daylight and set in a home environment such as the bedroom. Pehrsson often incorporates the light from the window in her images capturing the light streaks from the blinds and creating a natural shadow behind the model. Fagan uses a similar approach by incorporating natural light to shoot his images, in fact he shoots the window in his images, however, Fagan's series has a subtle cyan or yellow tone applied to the images to create his style, therefore I will experiment with different tones colours compositions and shadows within this shoot from what my photographers use in their own.
When creating the setting for the images in the bedroom I noticed there was not enough natural light in the room and the images was be under exposed, therefore I recreated a similar style of lighting with artifical light placed in one direction, I then shut out all the light in the room. Which created a shadow behind the model and within the creases of the bed sheets. I set the camera to 1/60. f3.8, ISO 6400.
Here I experimented with paint bucket layers, adding colours such as navy and deep red or orangy brown, I then decreased the opacity and changed the blending mode to which best suited the image. I sharpened the images and sometimes added small amounts of noise, to give that subtle film-like effect that both photographers works demonstrate.
I purposely dressed the model in loose, baggy clothes throughout that suggest a lack of effort but are actually still aesthetically pleasing. This along with the un-made bed creates a similar mise-en-scene to that in both Pehrsson and Fagan's work, and also suggests the idea that simplicity is beauty. In this particular image I selected an existing colour in the image, which was the green from the models clothing, and used this to fill a layer, and change the blending mode giving a tint to the image, as seen in Fagan's work.
The composition of these images are similar to Pehrsson's, portraying the female figure in a rather ...... manner. The darkness from the shadow creates an uncanny mood. However, what is captured within the image is extremely simple, as the models face is not in either shot, and there is nothing else other than bed sheets and a plain wall, the images look similar to a polaroid, therefore I framed them with a white border.
