Kylie Radick Photographer Styles

Kylie Radick

Photography 202

Style Assignment

3/20/2018

The first photographer I found an interest in was Stefan Banz and his “SMS” book. Stefan Banz works as a freelance artist and presents his work at many solo exhibitions.  Stefan is a photographer, author, painter, and architect.  His “SMS” book is a large collection of digital photographs that relate to sex and nature.  He tends to capture a lot of couples kissing, sunsets, mountains, and body parts.  Most people say his book reads as a “still love montage.”  When looking at Stefan’s style throughout his photos, his entire book seems to focus on the relationship between the picture on the left side of the book to the one on the right side. Along with that, one picture almost always seems to be a close up image with more focus on one individual thing and the other is a further away image with less focus.  Another thing that stands out about Stefan’s photographs is that it seems like he tries to relate colors, shapes, and textures to one another. Overall, the way Stefan relates image to image, and the relationships throughout each to one another seems to make his style “his.  I find it tricky to connect some of the images, but after staring at them for a while, I will always find at least one thing that relates to the other.

The next photographers I chose was Peter Fraser and his book “Material”.  Fraser purchased his own camera by the age of seven and started studying photography once he reached college.  Soon after that, he gained a strong love for photographing in color and he also loved capturing metaphors.  Fraser used film throughout the beginning of his career until he picked up a digital camera.  Once he picked up a digital camera, he put down the film and never touched it again.  Fraser used film for his “Material” book.  This book is a collection of all different types of materials that are used to make things. Fraser wanted to capture different materials because everything is made out of material from start to finish whether it is something being put together or taken apart.  For example, this book captures certain materials that could be found at the construction of house such as wires, insulation, paint, rust, and pipes.  Due to his love for color photographs the images in this book are very rich in color.  His style also includes all telephoto images.  Each image has an extremely strong and clear focus on the material itself.  He also focuses strictly on horizontal photographs.  Overall, Frasers use of color and focus in each photograph of the materials makes his photos all relate strongly to one another. 

The final photographer I chose was actually a set of brothers who completed a book of all the same things due to the fact that they went out and photographed together.  These brothers are Francois and Jean Robert. Francois is an ex-graphic designer who switched to photography later in his life by teaching himself how to photograph using a 35mm Pentax.  Jean, who worked for a design firm, asked for his brother’s help one day with graphic design promo piece.  Robert quickly thought of the idea of capturing objects with faces and that is where their idea began.  Their book, “Face to Face”, that they created was a collection of inanimate objects that look like faces.  The way they picked up on this idea was the idea of framing and mental cropping.  Once they recognized one padlock gazing at them with an intense look, they began to capture anything that had a face including locks, bags, outlets, door knobs, keyholes, and much more.  These brothers work with a mixture of vertical and horizontal pictures.  The entire book is black and white and are cropped with very simplistic backgrounds.  Overall, the brothers use of black and white, vertical pictures with minimal background, helps capture the faces of each object, making each piece “theirs”.