Contemporary Photographers

Contemporary photographer has always been a weakness of mine, it's a subject I never studied or looked into (except this one time I looked up David Lachapelle on my phone). I actually don't know that many famous photographers. Whenever someone asks me who my favorite photographers are my answer is Eddie Adams, Vincent Laforet and my boss Ezra, because those are the only photographers I know...

I'm reading a book called "the photograph as contemporary art" and I'm finally being exposed to a world of photography that is more than just flickr and instagram posts.

For most people, photography as contemporary art is mostly just anything offensive or homeless. This book has a lot of both... BUT there are some really interesting photographers out there.

For instance. Georges Rousse. George Rousse sticks out to me because I love perspective shifts. Long before the days of photoshop, artists used to (and still) build things in order to tickle our brains by deceiving and entertaining our eyes.

His use of line and color, getting the light logic accurate and correct, everything he does looks so tedious and time consuming.

And then he takes the reality and distorts it. I really like this picture. It's like having an extreme fisheye inside a rectilinear lens.

This one is a great play on plane shifts.



And then there's Philip-Lorca diCorcia.

His "Head Series" is really interesting. What he did was he put some lights on a construction scaffolding near a busy New York street and stood really far away with a telephoto lens. When people walked under he would capture a portrait of them, without them knowing.

People act weird in front of a camera. They never either stand awkwardly or they have a specific pose that makes them look good. Although I do feel like this is an invasion of privacy, I feel like this approach captures what a person really looks like.

I wonder if he ever got in trouble for these...