Mike Weinheimer - 2nd Blog Assignment (Portrait)

Hellen van Meene

Untitled #327

Me, Ophelia

Hellen is photographer from the Netherlands. She uses models that have never modeled before and guides them as to what pose and expression she is looking for. For the most part she works with a lot of young children and adolescents because they are easier to guide, control, and freedom when working with them. From time to time she pick subjects from the street. When she guides her subjects she wants them to feel confident and relaxed with her when she is taking the photos. Most of her portraits are influenced by the painting Ophelia by John Everett Millais where the models expression is vacant, the hushed atmosphere of the composition, and the alienating surroundings. In most of Hellen's work it appears to be the use of natural lighting in the afternoon or morning, which contributes to the over all attributes of what she was going after.

Lydia McCarthy

Jessye 2010

Kate 2010

Lydia is from North Carolina and photographed people with a self constructed camera in which she replaced the lens with a fresnel (magnifying sheet). The results of what she took were impressions of refracted light where the highlights rendered as the spectrum and the shadows as undefined lines and shapes. The over all feel of the photographs were painterly due to the saturation of the color, the soft focus, and the rich tones. Lydia choose subjects that she desires, but do not know personally and the characteristics that these subjects have she wants to be able to possess them as part of her character. The work created is about an intense longing to experience a reality that is not of our own.

Tierney Gearon

Untitled 2006

The Mother Project

Untitled 2000

I am a Camera

Tierney is from Atlanta Georgia and has worked as a fashion photographer, but decided to settle down and be with her kids. She goes on journeys with her children to homes of distant and diverse relatives, mostly across the US. The photographs that she takes are of her children and family from different places, but her work is more than just family snapshots. They are out of the ordinary and have an edginess play to it. Her work shows a level of comfort and confusion. the confusion part being that she has the ability to capture life with surreal twists by young people in an adult world. The masks being used contribute to the unusual nature of the family photograph and the children paired with the adults appear to be not sentimentalized. The work is personal and reflects apparent equal helping of chaos and stability and yet appears to stay anonymously distant.

Mary Ellen Mark

Quail Dobbs urges his dog Phyllis through the over sized hoop

Rodeo

Circo Franzatti, Mexico City

Mexican Circus

Mary is well known and has been in LIFE, New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stones, and Vanity Fair Magazine. Recieved countless awards and mentions from various insitutions and galleries. Published 16 books and exhibits her work worldwide. Over four decades she has traveled substanially to make photographs that reflect a high degree of humanism. Mary has a documentive approach on her images that seem to go beyond than just documenting of the worlds diverse cultures.