Research Blog

 Ernst Hass was born on March 2, 1921, in Vienna, Austria. He was mainly a photojournalist and color photographer and spent 40 years in his career.  He spent his early years studying art and gaining an education, but once World War 2 broke out, he could no longer study due to Germany's invasion of Austria. After his father died, he started gaining more interest in photography which later culminated into a long and highly decorated career. He became president of Magnum Photos and had his photos in many museums and popular magazines, such as Vogue. He was listed as one of the 10 greatest photographers in the world by a magazine and he won the Hasselblad Award. After his death in 1985, he had multiple awards named after him such as the Ernst Haas Award for Creative Photography. While browsing through Ernst's pictures, this one really caught my eye. It's a landscape photo showing a suburban road in the 20th century. There are a couple of things I like about this photo. The firs...

 Jeff Wall was born in Vancouver, Canada, on September 29, 1946. He is a well-known artist focused on photography.  He went to the University of British Columbia where he used to be a painter, but after he finished this thesis, he stopped making art and focused more on his photography. He became renowned for his ingenious ability to create large, staged photographs that explored many complicated themes. His photography was inspired by movies and art history and focused on challenging long-standing notions of perception and representation. His works earned him worldwide fame and respect and forever molded him into one of the most impactful creators of contemporary photography. He won the Hasselblad Award in 2002, the Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, in 2006, Officer of the Order of Canada in 2007, and the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievements in 2008, showing his influence in the art world. This picture seems to show a messy room with a man hunched over, and hundreds of ...

 Edward Honaker is a 30-year-old man from California, who suffered from depression and anxiety disorders throughout his life. In order to help him cope with his mental illnesses, he decided to get into photography. He used it as a medium to explore what life is like with mental illnesses, to convey the confusion, hopelessness, and stress he encountered in his day-to-day life. Using his expertise in the manipulation of color and light, he creates amazing self-portraits that perfectly encapsulates his emotions. As I just mentioned, his main focus is on self-portraits, using this specific style of photography to educate others on the struggles of mental illness, while creating deeply profound and beautiful pictures. This picture immediately stuck out to me while I was looking at Honaker's works. It shows himself laying down, looking tired or defeated, surrounded in empty white space. It looks like he used negative space and centering, as despite being in the middle, the figure doesn...

Adam Ferguson was born on October 1978, in Sydney, Australia. In order to fund his passion for photography, he travelled on a boat on a crew. Eventually, during 2009, he went to Afghanistan to take pictures of the US-Afghan war. His pictures went on the New York Times and even the National Geographic, further propelling his career as a well-known photographer. He also won multiple awards from well-renowned organizations as a result from his work. He mainly focused on portraits, but he also dabbled in other forms of photography.  This picture was taken during the bombing of ISIS, and this is what I presume to be an American soldier. I like the gloomy feeling of the portrait.  The background is completely dark which brings all the attention towards the face. It looks like the light was pointed at the lighter side of his face because the shadow and postproduction completely block the other half. I like this picture because it emphasizes his expression and more importantly, his ey...

Irving Penn is the still life photographer I want to talk about in this post. Born on June 16th, 1917, he was known for his photography in still life's, portraits, and even fashion. Throughout his long career he had many accomplishments, most notably he volunteered with the American Field Service to take pictures in warzones during World War II. He visited and took pictures of soldiers and their lives in both Italy and India. Eventually, he came back to America and continued to work with Vogue magazine and even founded his own studio. He was most well-known for his fashion photography as he took many pictures that continue to be praised long after he died, which was in 2009.  The picture above is one my favorite still life works from Irving. There are a couple things that stand out to me in this photograph. The first is the color. I think the extreme contrast between the white background and the black faucet really creates a good focus on both the faucet itself and the water drippi...

 Lee Friedlander was born on July 14th, 1934, in Washington. His main focus was on documenting urban life. He would take pictures of stores, buildings, signs, and more using reflections as his main photography style. Due to his achievements, he has won numerous accolades and even had his work put into multiple museums worldwide such as the Museum of Modern Art based in New York and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Personally, while I do find some of his pictures pleasing to the eye, I don't really see any deeper meaning or a new perspective he's trying to convey. All these pictures are to me aesthetically pleasing noise, nothing groundbreaking or transformative.  One example of what I mean is this picture above. It's a black and white picture showing a man inside an older-looking car holding onto the steering wheel. Behind him shows a nice view consisting of many homes. I think that this picture is very interesting and visually appealing. I like the fact that ...