Wednesday, 16 April 2014

Self portraits

Richard Avedon

In 1944, Richard Avedon began working as an advertising photographer for a department store, but was quickly endorsed by Alexander Brodovitch, the art director for the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar. Lillian Bassman also promoted Avedon's career at Harper's. In 1945 his photographs began appearing in Junior Bazaar and, a year later, in Bazaar itself. In 1946, Avedon had set up his own studio and began providing images for magazines including Vogue and life. He soon became the chief photographer for Harper's Bazaar . From 1950 he contributed photographs to life, look and graphics and in 1952 became staff editor and photographer for Theatre arts magazine. By the 1960s Richard had turned energies towards making studio portraits of civil rights workers, politicians and cultural dissidents of various stripes in an America fissured by discord and violence. He began to branch out and photographed patients of mental hospitals, the civil rights movement in 1963, protesters of the Vietnam war, and later the fall of the Berlin wall.











Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman works in series, typically photographing herself in a range of costumes. To create her photographs, Sherman shoots alone in her studio, assuming multiple roles as author, director, make-up artist, hairstylist, wardrobe mistress, and model. Bus riders (1976/2000) is a series of photographs that featured the artist as a variety of meticulously observed characters. The photographers were shot in 1976 and are among the artist's earliest work but, like another series entitles Murder mystery people, were not printed or exhibited until 2000. Sherman uses   elaborate costumes and make-up to transform her identity for each image, but is photographed in a sparse, obviously staged setting with a wooden chair standing in for the bus seat. In her landmark 69-photographs series, the complete untitled film stills(1977-1980; although the 1997 travelling MOCA retrospective included five straight - on head shot dated 1975)











Ivring Penn

Ivring Penn was best known for his fashion photography. Penn's repertoire also includes portraits of creative greats; ethnographic photographs from around the world; modernist still life's of food,bones,bottles,metal, and found objects. Penn was among the first photographers  to pose subjects against a simple grey or white backdrop and be effectively used this simplicity. Penn's still life compositions are spare and highly organised. His photographs are composed with a great attention to detail,  which continues into his craft of developing and making prints of his photographs. Penn experimented with many printing techniques, including prints made on aluminium sheets coated with a platinum emulsion rendering the image with a warmth that undertone silver prints locked. His black and white prints are notable for their deep contrast, giving them a clean, crisp look.











Helmut Newton

In 1946, Newton set up a studio in fashionable Flinders lane and worked on fashion and theatre photography in the affluent post- war years. He shared his first joint exhibition in may 1953 with Wolfgang Sievers. Newtons growing repetition as a fashion photographer was rewarded when he secured a commission to illustrate fashions in a special Australian supplement for Vogue magazine. Newton settled in Paris in 1961 and continued work as a fashion photographer. His works appeared in magazines including, most significantly, French vogue and Harper's Bazaar. He established a particular style marked by erotic, stylized scenes, often with sado- masochistic and fetishistic subjects.











David Bailey

In 1959, Bailey become a photographic assistant at the John French studio, and in may 1960, he was a photographer for John Cole's studio five before being contracted as a fashion photographer for British Vogue magazine later that year.  He also undertook a large amount of freelance work. Since 1966, Bailey has also directed several TV commercials and documentaries. Bailey photographed album sleeve art for musicians including The rolling stones. David Bailey was hired in 1970 by Island records Chris Blackwell to shoot publicity photos of cat Stevens for his upcoming album Tea for the Tillerman. In 1972 rock musician Alice Cooper was photographed by Bailey for vogue magazine, almost naked apart from a snake. Cooper used Bailey the following year to shoot for the groups chart. In 1985, Bailey was photographing stars at the Live Aid concert at Wembley stadium.






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