PHOTOGRAPHYSUBJECT EXAMPLES

• Light •Place• Pattern •Visual Analogy• Time and Motion •Portraits• Documentary •Reflections• Abstraction •Set Ups• Self Portrait •Cindy Sherman

LIGHT• Explore the aesthetic

quality of light. Choose any subject matter that interests you and interpret it in terms of how it is defined, altered, amplified, enhanced or fragmented by light. In this case, light is the defining force and not the object itself.

Ansel Adams: Mt. Willamson, 1944

John Loengard: Bill Cosby, 1967

André Kertesz: Man Diving, 1917

PATTERNS •• Look for repeated shapes, designs or patterns which are interesting and fill your viewfinder. Look for multiple patterns or grids.

These can be either organic in which the pattern is random or man-made in which it is often regular but not always. Patters can be decorative or functional, regular or irregular.

Ansel Adams: Boards and Thistles, 1932

Minor White: Capitol Reef, Utah, 1962

Gary Winogrand: World’s Fair, 1964

TIME and MOTION• Time embodies one of the basic

properties of photography, the ability to capture a fleeting instant, a discrete slice of ongoing action. Beyond the frozen moment, blurred motion can convey a sense of life and time, as well as adding excitement and anticipation to the experience of looking at a “still” photograph. Try moving the subject or background during exposure to convey the passing of time.

Frances McGlaughlin Gild: April Afternoon, 1956

Echo Danon, Chapin Student: Untitled, 1992

Easel Dostortion

Duane Michals: Death

Comes to the Old Lady, 1969

DOCUMENTARY

• To see, to record, to comment--go beyond a mere descriptive record or a person, place or thing and make a story out of it. The image should lend itself to narrative interpretation. Your point of view is critical.

Margaret Bourke-White: Louisville Flood, 1937

T. Hsieh & L. Montana: Tied Together for a Year, 1983

Ann Meredith: Delta and Her Daughters, from “Women with AIDS”,

ABSTRACTION

• Make an image which attracts and holds attention because of its form rather then its content. Look for forms, surfaces, tonal scale, design which create an abstract image. The beauty of the part as opposed to the whole is what you’re lookling for.

Brett Weston: Broken Window, 1937

Phillip Galgiani: Conjunction

Tina Modotti: Worker’s Hands, 1923-26

SELF PORTRAIT

• See yourself in your environment, with friends, personal affects, toys, etc. Explore moods, memories, fantasies, fears, your self as an image.

Echo Danon, Chapin Student: Self Portrait, 1994

Duane Michaels: Self Portrait as Dead

Edward Steichen: Everyday Things, 1930

Robert Mappelthorp

Iraqi Boy

PLACE

• Explore your feelings and interpretations of a particular place, your room, a street, a contemplative location, a landscape. Be specific about your feeling and consider the lighting and time of day in terms of how you want to represent it. Is it beautiful, frightening, peaceful, hectic, fun?

Sarah Strife, Chapin student, 1992

Charles Sheeler: Crisscrossed Conveyors, Ford Plant, 1927

Rebekah Hirsch, Chapin Student, 1992

VISUAL ANALOGY

• Make two photographs of different subjects that have similar form. For example, a shot of a crowd of people showing a mass of heads and a field of flowers. Look for the surprisingly different but similar due to the way you photograph them. Avoid the obvious and strech possibilties.

Philip Galgiani: Visual Analogy

Dorothea Lange: Road West, New Mexico, 1938

Arnold Newman: Igor Stravinsky, 1946

PORTRAITS

• Do an informal portrait of a friend or family member which you feel captures your subject’s personality. Broadly interpreted, a portrait need not show the face. Gestures, hands, body language may be appropriate but should somehow convey some important aspect of who the person is.

Diane Arbus: Pro-War Parade, 1967

Alfred Stieglitz: Georgia O’Keefe, 1932

William Wegman

Imogen Cunningham: Dream Walking, 1967

Yousuf Karsh: Winston Churchill, 1941

Robert Frank:Political Rally, Chicago, 1956

Dorothea Lange: Migrant Mother, 1936

REFLECTIONS

• Look for an interesting reflection. Make the reflected image the subject and the reflecting surface the means of interpreting it. Set up a configuration of mirrors or search for interesting imagery reflected in store windows where what is behind the glass somehow relates to or interacts with what is in front of it..

Eugéne Atget: St. Cloud, 1926-27

Jack Welpott: Anna in Her Room, 1964

Edward Steichen: The Maypole, 1932

SET UPS• Instead of going out and

searching for your image create your own at home. Invent a miniature landscape, use doll house scale to create a dramatic scene, use light and small objects that have no relationship with one another to create an unusual still life, cut out figures from magazines and put them in dramatic situations to photograph. Invent your subject.

Sandy Skoglund

Bruce Charlesworth

James Casabere

CINDY SHERMAN• Cindy Sherman has

created a whole new way of making a “self-portrait” which is derived from our understanding of movies and other conventions of representing the self in which identity is put on like a costume. Try dressing up in costume and make up and invent a new identity.