‘This exercise is essentially the same as the previous one, but instead of taking photographs of the same person, here you must make portraits of three different subjects, but keep the background to the image consistent (see Irving Penn and Clare Strand, above). There are many ways of exploring this exercise. You could either select an interesting backdrop to use inside (studio) or perhaps select an interesting backdrop on location (street). Whichever you choose, try to be as creative as you can and be prepared to justify your decisions through your supporting notes.’

– IaP Coursebook, p.54

I would have liked to do something as simple and yet clever as Martin Parr and Daniel Meadows’ 1972 June Street collaboration where the occupants of a terrace of Manchester houses were pictured in their originally identical but now divergently individual living rooms.  I found this series much less problematic than Parr’s later work on the Japanese Commuters that also forms part of the course material. I even have a couple of ideas for this – the various double front doors of the terraced maisonettes of the east London street that I live in or the small-shop interiors of the parade that runs perpendicularly along the far end of my street – but, lacking time I shall file this idea away for later use. Continue reading →

Closely consider the work of the practitioners discussed above [Walker Evans, Lukas Kuzma, Martin Parr, discussed here, and James Wood who I feel fits better in with section 3] then try to shoot a series of five portraits of subjects who are unaware of the fact they are being photographed. The reflection about your methodology will be as important as the final five images, so be prepared to write about how you found the experience (around 500 words) and present your findings via your learning log or blog.

 – IaP Coursebook, p.47

For the exercise on reportage in Context and Narrative, I took two series of quite traditional street photographs. Now I wanted something less Gary Winogrand and more Phillip-Lorca diCorcia; something pulled back, something more truly covert.

fig.1 – untitled

I like Walker Evans’ subway pictures, but this time, I took as my starting place a different set of pictures by him – the eleven anonymous portraits of workers leaving a factory in Detroit, published in Fortune magazine in 1946 as ‘Labor Anonymous’.

The 150 pictures taken for that assignment caught their subject moving obliquely across Evans’ field of view from right to left. The camera Evan’s used was held at waist height and the pictures were cropped down into a regular composition before they were published. Continue reading →