My name is Laura Michelle Di Filippo, and I am currently a student at Seneca College in the Independent Digital Photography program.
This blog is for a History of Imaging project, and I am outlining three photographers who inspire me. Here you will find a short biography of each, their influences, their photography style, and why I admire them.
The photographers I decided to research are Dave LaChapelle, Sally Mann, a young photographer I had come across a few years ago, and have been following her work for quite some time; Lara Jade. I decided to focus mainly on their portraiture, because that is the genre of photography I am most interested in.
I've always loved creative and interesting portraits. Something beyond just a headshot on a plain background. I enjoy taking photos of people, and I always like to find new ways to capture the human form. I tend to focus on letting the personality of the person in the photograph to show through, making each photograph unique. Sally Mann is a perfect example of this, which is why I chose her to study.
I also love experimenting with colour and dynamic things. I am just learning photoshop this year, and it has opened a whole new world for me, what with playing with colour, retouching photos and changing small things about each photo to make it new and interesting. I love surreal photographs, and hope to experiment more with the larger-than-life-ness that you see in Dave LaChapelle's photos.
Finally, I chose to look further into Lara Jade's work. I admire this girl because she is around my age, and has made quite a name for herself in various parts of Europe, as well as having beautiful portrait photographs. I love her style, and how she makes everything very soft and classic, always timeless. I like taking photos that will always be in style, timelessness is very important to me.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Lara Jade
Lara Jade
www.larajade.co.uk
http://www.flickr.com/photos/larajade/
http://larafairie.deviantart.com/
Displaced © Lara Jade
Born Lara Jade Coton, Lara is a 19 year old photographer from West Midlands, England. She has been shooting since she was thirteen years old, on her fathers digital camcorder. There, and in researching photography for a school project, she found her interest and eventual love for photography.
Eliza Portrait II © Lara Jade
Her first camera was a 2.0 megapixel Digital Polaroid. From there, she moved on to Canon cameras and lenses. At first, she used natural lighting for all her portraits, as well as doing the model’s hair and makeup herself. Now days, Lara Jade is no stranger to using studio lighting and having a team of makeup artists and other creative assistants at her side. Though she still says she prefers natural lighting to studio.
Karis and Her Teddy Bear © Lara Jade
At the age of 17, Lara Jade created her own business, Lara Jade Photography. She is now represented by Sudest57 agency in Milan, and has an impressive amount of publications and clientele that range from her home in England into the rest of Europe. Her clients include Headline Publishing, Amphora Publishing in Russia, BBC Audiobooks, Blanvalet Publishing in Germany, Kokkno Jewellery, rock band InMe, DJ Sophie Sugar and DJ Miss Behavin. She has also had many exhibitions and photo features in London and at Cabinet Des Curieux in Paris.
Ornithophobia © Lara Jade
Lara Jade has been featured in many magazines and e-zines during her career. She has had photos in Photography Monthly, Practical Photography, Digital Camera Magazine, and What Digital Camera, as well as e-zines such as Photo Salves, Republicca, Peppermint Teaparty and Snap!.
PierrotVI © Lara Jade
Inspiration comes from many places for Lara, including her imagination, her ability to think quickly on her feet, dreams, music, movies, and from the old art masters of painting and photography.
“I'd say networking is one of the most important things in photography although you always need to be open to experimentation to develop your own style. Having your own style is a major point to consider and you will be known for being unique rather than following the crowd. You’ll find that the 'practice makes perfect' no matter how old the saying sounds but it's definitely true, there's always room for improvement no matter how long you've been in the game.” – Lara Jade
The Hanging II © Lara Jade
Works Cited
Coton, Lara Jade. “About Lara Jade”. Flickr. 2008. [http://www.flickr.com/people/larajade/]
Coton, Lara Jade. “About Me”. Lara Jade.com. 2008 [http://www.larajade.co.uk/low/02.html]
Media
All photos from larafairie.deviantart
Sally Mann
Nigh Blooming Cereus © Sally Mann
Sally Mann
Damaged Child © Sally Mann
Sally Mann was borin in 1951 in Lexington, Virginia. She received a BA from Hollins College in 1974, and a MA in writing in 1975. She resides in Virginia still, with her husband and three children, Jessie, Emmet and Virginia.
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Mann uses a large format, 100 year old camera that requires her hand as a shutter, and produces 8x10 negatives. Known for her skill in print making, she uses a equally old and beaten up enlarger, and always prints black and white. For her landscape work, which she has recently began photographing more, Mann likes to use damaged lenses and negatives.
Candy Cigarette © Sally Mann
Her main focus in photography for the longest time was her children. She photographed Jessie, Emmet and Virginia throughout their childhood, displaying the every day life of a child, and the every day things, no matter how trivial, that a mother sees and deals with. Her photos are often deemed controversial, though, because her children are, more often than not, naked in them. What Mann is trying to depict is the care freeness and innocence of childhood, and the bumps along the way.
There are so many levels to childhood that we as a society ignore, or don't accept. Rather than just saying it, she (Sally Mann) was able to capture it with photographs. It's easy to discount these things unless you can really see them in the kids' eyes, or see it in their actions.” –Jessie Mann
Jessie At Five © Sally Mann
Mann’s books include “At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women”, which depict a number of girls, including her own daughters, at the age of twelve. “Immediate Family” is a collection of photos she took between 1984-1991 of her children, and had garnered the most attention due to the subject matter of naked children. Even so, her work is extremely popular with many fans. Her book of landscapes is called “Mother Land: Recent Landscapes of Georgia and Virginia”, and features black and white stills of her home and it’s surrounding landscapes.
Mann has been featured in many museums, including MoMA and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and Smithsonian American Art Museum in D.C.
“…the things that are close to you, are the things you can photograph the bes…and unless you photograph what you love, you are not going to make good art…it’s always been my philosophy to try to make art out of the everyday and ordinary…it never occurred to me to leave home to make art.” – Sally Mann
"What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann" (clip)
Works Cited
Art:21. “Sally Mann. Biography.” Art In the Twenty First Century. [http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mann/]
College Street Journal. “Sally Mann’s Powerful Photograhps Disturb, Facisnate”. [http://www.mtholyoke.edu]
Fletcher, Jane. “Uncanny Resemblances”. [http://web.ukonline.co.uk/n.paradoxa/fletch.htm] 1991.
Osbourn, Valerie. “Sally Mann’s Immediate Family: The Unflinching and Unafraid Childhood”. AssosiatedContent.com. October 27, 2006.
Media
Mann, Sally. “At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women”. Photo. Photokaboom.com.[http://www.photokaboom.com/images/tips/Mann_Sally_At_Twelve_resampled.jpg]
Mann, Sally. “Candy Cigarette”. Photo. Ground Glass.[http://caraphillips.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/candycigarette.jpg]
Mann, Sally. "Damaged Child". Photo. artnet.com.[http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_141091_275247_sally-mann.jpg]
Mann, Sally. “Night-blooming Cereus”. Photo. Brown University.[http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/1996-97/96-057g.html]
Mann, Sally. "Jessie At Five". Photo. Seminarprojekt:Fotografische Erkundungen zur Pädagogi.k [http://web.uni-frankfurt.de/fb04/fotobox/Gruppensites/gruppe_prof.htm]
Microcinema. "What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann." March 21, 2008. Online video clip. YouTube.
David LaChapelle
www.davidlachapelle.com
Death By Hamburger © Dave LaChapelle
Dave LaChapelle was born in Conneticut in 1969. He was trained at North Carolin School of Arts, and later moved to New York and joined the Arts Studets League and the School of Visual Arts. While there, he was offered a job by Andy Warhol to shoot for Interview Magazine. LaChapelle wasn’t even out of high school yet.
Along with Warhol, LaChapelle has worked with many big names. He has photographed celebrities such as Tupac Shakur, Madonna, Amanda Lepore, Eminem, Lance Armstrong, Pamela Anderson, Li’l Kim, Uma Thurman, Elizabeth Taylor, David Beckham, Leonardo diCaprio, Hilary Clinton, Muhammad Ali, Britney Spears, Angelina Jolie, Kanye West. One of his most well known spreads was the Vanity Fair photos that helped Paris Hilton reach her current level of popularity.
Milk Maid © Dave LaChapelle
LaChapelle has also directed stars in music videos, such as Christina Aguilera, Moby, Jennifer Lopze, Britney Spears, The Vines, and Gwen Stefani. The video “It’s My Life” by No Doubt won LaChapellle the 2004 MPVA’s Director of the Tear award at the MTV Music Awards. His work has also been featured on television in the 2008 Big Rock Candy Mountain spoof Burger King commercial.
He has worked on stage as well. He designed and directed Elton John’s “The Red Piano” at the Caesar’s palace. LaChapelle found a love in documentary films while making the Sundance award winning “Krumped”, and tested his film directing skills in the feature film “RIZE”, a film which follows the lives of dancers on the streets of South-Central Los Angeles.
Lusty Spring © Dave LaChapelle
LaChapelle’s photos have been featured in many magazines, including Italian Vogue, French Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, and Rolling Stone. Also in print are his three books, “LaChapelle Land”, “Hotel LaChapelle”, and “Heaven to Hell”, which features his long time friend Courtney Love with a Kurt Cobain look alike in her lap in the fashion of la Pieta.
His work has been shown in galleries across the U.S.A., as well as Vienna, Germany, Amsterdam, Belgium, Italy, Berlin and London. LaChapelle has been ranked one of the Top Ten Most Important People in Photography in the World by American Photo. He is also revered by celebrities, and even Warhol himself said he was “great”. LaChapelle admits that his celebrity friends are his inspiration, and his mentors include Warhol himself, and Michelangelo.
"It's My Life" - No Doubt
"I don't wanna reinvent people, I wanna take the iconic pictures of them that say who they are. If there has to be one picture that they show in 20 years to describe the person, to narrate who they were and illustrate that, I'd like it to be one of my photos. That's the goal." -Dave LaChapelle
Works Cited
Fred Torres Collaborations. “David LaChapelle”. Artnet. 2007. [http://www.artnet.com/awc/david-lachapelle.html]
LaChapelle, David. “About Heaven to Hell”. MySpace.com Blogs. Thursday, December 21, 2006. [http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=83175130&blogID=208290335]
CBS. “David LaChapelle Claims Pop-Art Throne”. CBS News.com. March 4, 2007. [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/01/sunday/printable2529341.shtml]
Media
LaChapelle, Dave. “Death By Hamburger”. Photo. Website. [http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_425324282_369633_david-lachapelle.jpg]
LaChapelle, Dave. “Lusty Spring”. Photo. Website. [http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/6757974731eb62375288f4082dbbef5a355ebd61_m.jpg]
LaChapelle, Dave. “Milk Maid”. Photo. Website. [http://www.photofacts.nl/fotografie/foto/david_lachapelle_milk_maid.jpg]
LaChapelle, Dave. “Paris at Grandma Hilton’s House”. Photo. Website. [http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/mwp/7.jpg]
No Doubt. “It’s My Life.” The Singles: 1992-2003. Interscope, 2003. Music Video. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pHWd0gN-QU].
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