Portraiture Image Bank Continued -

Portraiture -  

Annie Leibovitz:
Annie Leibovitz photographs mostly famous faces such as Anne Hathaway and Adele and also does photography for publicity such as the first image feature below. Leibovitz did the publicity photography for 'Les Miserables'. Leibovitz work focuses significantly on the use of light and the saturation of colour. As a photographer I find Leibovitz's work to be fascinating through the use of the formal elements such as colour within her portraits.

Thomas Ruff: 
Ruff employs a deadpan appearance within his portraiture that are reminiscent of a passport photo. It could be argued that Ruff defies gender norms by giving female subjects a blue background whilst male subjects are given pink. Ruff, unlike a few of the other photographers featured here, focuses on ordinary people rather than the lifestyles of the rich and famous celebrities. Thomas Ruff is sometimes questioned as a photographer due to his style that is considered controversial.

David Lachapelle:
Lachapelle is an extremely controversial photographer often focusing on extreme circumstances of the nude human form. Lachapelle is also a celebrity photographer who uses bold colours and out of the ordinary ideas whilst studying the human form and identity; working with celebrities regularly, Lachapelle, provides an interpretation of a famous face that the public may not be familiar with.

Alec Soth:
Alec Soth studies identity through his portraiture with some of his books being entitled 'Broken Days', 'Dog Days Bogota' and 'Sleeping by the Mississippi'. Most of Soth's works study regional identity and appear almost like a polaroid picture due to the hue and saturation of the colours; as a result Soth's works evoke an almost nostalgic feeling in the audience.

Richard Avedon:
Avedon is a portrait photographer who focuses mainly in the black and white genre. The three images below are featured in a series entitled 'In the American West'. Like Soth, Richard Avedon studies regional identity, specifically in this series, and evokes a series of questions within an audience. The black and white appears to have been used to exaggerate the forms of the human body in the portraiture but could also symbolise something more deeply about how skin colour is irrelevant.