Amelia Bishop-Style

Bing Wright-"Everyday Pictures"

Bing Wright has a particular style that transcends each individual picture in the way that he takes photographs in a series, sometimes grouping together almost a hundred photographs into one large piece. As the title of his book implies, his photographs are also of seemingly every day subjects: windows, dead flies, roses, windshield wipers, pedestrians on crowded streets, and clouds in the sky. However, the way he frames each of these subject captures a unique sense of experience to these objects, as if he is showing the viewers of his photographs how he goes about seeing the world. Similarly, when photographers may compare their art to a looking glass into their world, Wright does so quite literally, capturing scenes and objects that have great familiarity to almost any audience member. In the "Encyclopedic" photographs that are composed of about 80 photos each, Wright intensely captures this perspective. It is almost like looking at the storyboard for a film, with snippets of memories from a particular point in time. For example, his photograph that compiles various blurred landscapes appears to be an experience in a moving car. Sunlight shines through the trees in some, and others are cloudy skies ridden with telephone poles and street lamps. Looking at this piece makes me feel like I am getting a glimpse into Wright's wandering thoughts and feelings that he may have staring out a car window daydreaming. This is very powerful because though I do not literally know his thoughts by looking at the photo, it is a subtle way to take the reader to that place and time. Another collage captures windshield wipers on a rainy day. The color pallet is muted and gray, a very realistic feel of what it is like driving through a rainstorm. Each photograph seems to deliberately capture the windshield wiper at a different point, some not containing wipers at all but instead foggy windows. Again, this feels as though I am riding in the car with Wright. It also makes me feel a sense of uneasiness because it points out in a subtle way that throughout our lives we see many things that we associate with what is going on in our mind, but often times only one or two of those "frames" is kept alive in our memory. Wright brings the many "frames" to life again in his work, making the viewer feel that they have seen this somewhere before, almost like deja-vu.

David Bailey-"Eye"

David Bailey is a portrait photograph, and in his collection "Eye", all of his portraits are monochrome. The thing that drew me to this photographer the most was his use of directional light, sometimes in ways that are not traditionally considered the best for lighting portraits. For example, in his portrait of Jim Dine, there is a deep shadow on the left side of his face. Dine's brow is furrowed,  and the intensity of his expression along with the darkness that surrounds his face communicates something troubling about Dine, though it is not completely clear what. Most of his subjects are shot in the center of the frame, looking directly at the camera, almost like a mugshot. However, Bailey appears to use light to add dimension to these portraits. Some have backgrounds that fade into darkness, starkly highlighting the individuals features and plain expressions while other are featured behind white "blown out" backgrounds. Other individuals are placed in front of large landscapes or lying diagonally in the midst of a scene, almost as if Bailey walked in on them and snapped a photo. Sometimes the subjects stare blankly into the lens, sometimes they are looking off into the distance seemingly unaware of Bailey. Regardless of the background, each contains intense contrast of shadows and highlights in the photo, particularly in the faces. Another striking thing I noticed about these was that some of them appear to be fairly old, dating back to the 1960s, but they all could appear to be taken at the same time as his portraits that are dated in the late 2000s. This likely has something to do with the photographs being taken on film, as this adds a timeless feel to the photographs. Still, I was impressed by the consistency of Bailey being able to capture so many individuals in his highly contrasted and candid style.


Lee Friedlander-"Portrait Self"

Lee Friedlander shared in the beginning of this book that these self portraits occurred not due to specific intention, but rather a collection of them was discovered as an extension of work because he was finding himself appear sometimes indirectly in photographs he was taking. This is very apparent almost immediately looking through the photographs that Friedlander is in the photographs but in a way that captures how he sees himself appear in the world, rather than a traditional self portrait. His photographs feature many shadows of him cast on objects: bushes, store windows, other people. Sometimes it is a blurry reflection, and sometimes his reflection is obstructed by an everyday object such as a frame or trophy. A couple of them even appear to be blurry "selfies", in which Friedlander appears to have been testing his camera but instead captured himself. A few of the portraits are much less subtle, featuring Friedlander sitting in a chair, staring directly at the camera in his underwear. All of his photographs are black and white and tend to feature himself or his shadow directly in the center of his frame or slightly off center. The photographs give off a somewhat disturbing feeling for me, almost as if Friedlander is lurking in them as an intruder rather than a subject. Friedlander seems to share a similar view when he stated that there is something eerie about capturing yourself in photos, since people tend to go through the world imagining how they themselves fit into their surroundings. His photos capture this very nicely, but it is odd to experience that connectedness to surroundings when it is not your body but someone else's.