Friday 18 February 2011

Fernanda Montoro

Fernanda Montoro is a Photographer a have come across who produces lots of work using Polaroid film. She produces a lot of commercial work including fashion photography using Polaroid film which I quite like. Most of her work seems to have a dreamy nostalgic feel to it, poetic even and her use of natural light is particularly interesting. The style and subject of most of her work does not altogether emulate what I hope to produce however there are certain images she has captured (particularly within her personal work) which I do feel I can relate to and have posted these select images below.
600 Series

 Of all five portraits within this series, the above image is my least favourite however only because its more focused on being dreamy and artistic than documentary and thats the only reason. Infact I like the image, it's elegant and romantic and that's why I posted it.




The image posted just above is my favourite of this selection. I like the element of ambiguity and I can imagine a photograph or this type of structure working well with the type of series I intend on creating. Furthermore an element of uncertainty in meaning could be interesting when the viewers are able to view other images of that same subject and put ideas together, let their mind wonder into how they feel the image represents the subject.

Chocolate
This is the only image I selected from the 'Chocolate' series and its because it felt so different to the rest. There are lots of elements that make this image interesting, the style of wall paper and sofa, and the fact that it was photographed in monochrome makes the decade in which it was captured questionable, their attire however seems to echo more recent times. I like the way they are sat, the way the girl on theh left has one leg informally tucked under the other to me implies a relationship of some sort between the women, as does the fact that the one on the left is looking at her. With both their hands clasped and tucked safely between their legs there is also a sense of tension within this relationship. Moreover perhaps this is a very strong relationship and we are being made aware of the strain within in every relationship, be it platonic, sexual or a family one.
Literary

What I like about the portraits above it the simplicity in their taking and the use of natural light. What I dislike however is the subject, Cynthia Sin-Yi a writer and consultant, blantantly pretending she is unaware of the camera's presence, it looks a bit too fabricated.
Tokyo Series
What I enjoy about the above image is its blurry quality and its lightheartedness. The subject has her face in her hands which usually reflects some sort of depressive emotion or exhaustion, however I dont get this off this woman, rather I'm thinking maybe shes just rubbing her eyes, or being playful. Perhaps this is the vibrant lighting of the colour, I'm not quite sure, there is something enigmatic about the image which I think comes from the fact that it was taken in colour. This image being photographed in black and white I think may have consequented in my immediatly seeing it as dejected, however in this light I have no idea.

http://www.fernandamontoro.com/

Polaroid Snaps

I decided to take a look at some Polaroid images, just to see how they have a tendancy of being taken and the typical result. I literally just looked up polaroid images through google images and just looked at as many as I could find most of which I am posting below. Some of them have been blatantly taken of models for some fashion shoot or something to that respect but I posted them anyways because the purpose of this particular post is to merely look at as many images as I can which have been taken specifically with Polaroid.
































In my previous post I discussed my uncertainty towards whether I will be captioning my images or not. Therefore I decided to seperate the labelled images, just to be able to look at them on their own to better see how the text works.