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For this project I want to make 3 environmental portraits of eccentric artists.

An environmental portrait, also called a location portrait, uses a person’s surroundings to tell more about that person. Sometimes this environment is directly connected to who they are—it’s that person’s home, place of work or community. Other times the environment has little or no connection but helps create a mood that contributes to an understanding of that person.

The environment shouldn’t overpower the person. You want to show who the person is, not use the person as a prop.

I enjoy portraiture and I would like to develop my skills in this field.

Inspiration:

One of the best portrait photographers that I admire was Arnold Newman. He produced excellent environmental portraits of many great artists. Newman had ability to entered his subjects’ own domains and composed visual poems made of environment and subject, of line, shape, and shadow.

I love his portraits because of the composition (very unusual for his times) and the connection between the subject and the photographer which I can feel looking at them.

 

Arnold Newman, Igor Stravinsky (1946)

Newman’s cropping could be almost crazily, thrillingly bold. Take what is arguably his most iconic image, his portrait of Igor Stravinsky. The composer sits behind a black grand piano, face propped against his hand. The curving black piano lid towers over him like an enormous, backslanting musical flat. The photo is radically cropped, so that the piano is only a thick black line at the bottom of the frame, and Stravinsky himself a small figure at the bottom left, whose tiny angled elbow mimics the enormous, angled lid.

Arnold Newman, I.M. Pei (1967)

Newman also played with tonality, as in his simple, abstract, and spectacular photo of modernist architect I.M. Pei. The photo consists mostly of a vast, deep blackness, broken by three ovoid lights that float near the top of the frame like flying saucers in deep space. Across the bottom right frame juts a single pale rectangle, through which peers Pei’s impish, bespectacled face.

 

Another great portrait photographer who’s work is inspiration for me in this project is Phillipe Halsman.

He used both stage and darkroom techniques to produce gravity defying objects and invented new ways of interacting with subjects. I love his portraits because they are so innovative and creative.
In 1941 Halsman met the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and they began to collaborate in the late 1940s. The 1948 work Dali Atomicus explores the idea of suspension, depicting three cats flying, a bucket of thrown water, and Salvador Dalí in mid air. The title of the photograph is a reference to Dalí’s work Leda Atomica which can be seen in the right of the photograph behind the two cats. Halsman reported that it took 28 attempts to be satisfied with the result.  Dali Atomicus represents an important collaboration of two artistic visions, of both the subject and the photographer, which in my opinion is an important feature that helps to produce a great portrait.

Phellipe Halsman, Dali Atomicus (1948)

This photograph has great composition. The proportions of dark shadows and light highlights give the photograph even visual weight and a steady rhythm for the eye to follow throughout the piece.

The shadows beneath the hovering furniture and the silhouetted chair utilise contrast to emphasise the surrealism of the scene, and the water adds visual juxtaposition to these dark solid forms of the furniture. The dark figures of the cats provide balance to the jumping Dali against the light background as well.

The whole composition also benefits from the energy and visual interest of the shape of the water, which divides the scene in accordance with the rule of thirds.

 

My Project:

For my project I want to photograph 3 different artists based in Edinburgh.

The people I have chosen to portray are individuals that practice unusual kinds of arts, that for some people is hard to understand or is considered weird, thats why the title “Weirdoes”. I put this title in brackets because these people have much more to them them.

They are very different people, each is working in different field and has different personality. The thing they have in common is originality, eccentric nature of their art work and performance.

I would like to capture their personality as well as the artistic nature.

First subject is Kevin Harman

Kevin Harman

Kevin Harman (b.1982) is a Scottish artist who creates works that intrigue, delight and provoke in equal measure. Harman’s work frequently has an element of performance, even if the performance itself remains unseen until unveiled by the artwork. In this he confronts the barriers between the act of creation and the act of experience – linking the art and the audience in a moment of shared discovery. Harman works across media, often using the very objects in which he finds his inspiration as the principle component of his artworks.

 

Second subject is Katarzyna Zawadzka (Skinnyredhead)

Katarzyna is an alternative performer from Poland currently living in Edinburgh. She specialises in bondage which is an art of tying, binding and restraining for erotic, aesthetic, and/or somatosensory stimulation. Rope, cuffs, bondage tape, self-adhesive bandages, or other restrains may be used for this purpose. Katarzyna performs self bondage on various shows and teaches it as well. She also is a model, dancer and and painter.

Third subject is James Robert Faulkner

James is a milliner and gramophone DJ. James uses very unconventional materials in his designs. All his hats are made of recycling materials. He has developed his niche around the remains of animals which have been killed on the roads, or animals which have been butchered the food.

Photographs could be potentially used in any magazine or newspapers featuring articles about artists (Guardian, Sinny)

Finding the right location is the key. It can be either their house, work place or any other place that will help to portray their character. I will decide on that once i will see those places.

I only know one of these people – Kevin and I know i want to take his portrait in his studio, because there is a lot of great pieces that will make the photograph and show his personality.

I would like to get to know the other two artists before taking their portraits so I will try to meet them beforehand.

I will ask about their ideas for the portraits and hopefully it could be a collaboration between me and them.

I hope to get final 3 pictures that would portray 3 different artists but still be cohesive thanks to the lighting and postproduction techniques and could be used together to illustrate big article in a magazine about art.

After issues with scheduling photoshoot with Kasia i had to change for another artist.

Gavin Christie is an artist based in Edinburgh that I’ve met recently. He is a sculpturist and makes his art out of insular objects. He has a lot of random and bizarre objects in his studio and apart from sculpture he does a lot of other thinks, Very interesting person with interesting character.