Assignment: Individual Blog Post #2 :: VISUAL INPSIRATION

This post is due before class on Wednesday, July11.

What is your visual style?  What imagery is compelling to you, and why?


For this post you need to gather 5 to10 images: stills from films, movie posters, photographs, movie covers, magazine spreads, website pages… any images that move you [make you think, feel, provoke, inspire, etc.] These images could be things that you love or hate... just talk about why. 


Write a 250 - 300 word reflection on the stylistics elements of the image, such as the framing, composition, color palette, aesthetics, etc... how is the FORM influencing your reading / reaction / understanding of the CONTENT (or message) of the imagery.


Embed images that you discuss in your post & where possible, link to the artist's site or the site where you found this image.


POST YOUR RESPONSE ON YOUR BLOG!


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DOC's EXAMPLE:

In this image by photographer David LaChapelle, he provides us a "clean" slate - the imagery is free of the normally cluttered and visually overwhelming imagery typical of his work. I "love" his use of the bottom left lower third (though the cropped frame being almost square sort of disrupts the typically layout and composition), like this mess of an image of Christina Aguilera:

Back to the image at hand (pun intended), he places her protruding rear at the bottom left, while strategically placing her eyes in the top third, dead center of frame. The color o the light, a soft center spot light illuminating her head and bust, matches the warm tone of her brown skin. The good: technically this image is clean, it's strong, and it speaks volumes. The bad: the message here disturbs me. What I read is that Kim (and in a sense all Black and Brown women's bodies) are there to be displayed (strategically), and literally stamped with branding and sold, no more or no less than a knock off Louis V purse. The ugly: This imagery circulated heavily in Vibe magazine and has become an iconic image, but maybe it's better than his depiction of Kim as an infantilized blow-up doll:

One of my FAVORITE photographers, whose work is stylistially very much in contrast to the work posted above is Brian B+ Cross.

In this documentary style photography of Lauryn Hill, you see a very different depiction of Black womanhood and sexuality. The color palette is also a brown, earthtone scale, but is dark and shadow - Hill's face is coming from out o a dark shadow. In this image her face is framed in the upper left third, forcing our eyes to have to move to the left to look her in the eye, and still the low-key lighting doesn't fully allow it. Unlike Kim's blow-up doll with perfectly high-key lighting, framing and color that leads the camera right to her eyes, Lauryn engages us in a very different way....

You catch what I'm going for here? If you don't email.