Sydney Ferrell 3 photographers

Christer Stromholm

Christer Stromholm, also known as Christer Christian is a photographer from Sweden. He is known for is photos of transsexuals in the streets of Paris in the 1950’s. He wrote that his photos captured insecurities, the subjects of his transsexual pieces are people that he says he relates to. He was also one of the founders of Fotoskolan academy in Sweden in the 60’s. The critic of a magazine even called him “The father of Swedish photography”. His photos are full of very sharp black and white photos. He always captures his subjects in very relaxed/natural emotions. In most of his street portraits it looks like he is using a telephoto lens because the depth is very compressed. On Christer’s website I found that he did multiple types of photography. He also took pictures of random objects like a box of keys or snakes. Snakes seem to be a reoccurring theme in his pictures, I think they were a type of exotic prop that he used to symbolize sex being that the only time we see them is with a woman wearing little to no clothes. Maybe they snakes were his favorite animal. In his fotoform exhibit I noticed a theme of shadows. The shadows are usually on a plain, light colored wall and the photo comes out to look kind of like a silhouette.

Michael Wesely

Michael Wesely is a German photographer. He studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts with other well-known German photographers.  Wesely is known for his ultra-long exposure photos. In 2004 he took photos of the construction of a museum and called it the Open Shutter project, it was shown in the same museum, Museum of Modern Art in New York. He also has exhibitions of portraits with long exposures. In these portraits the background is clearly in focus but the subject is very out of focus, capturing movement. The only way I can think of this style of portrait working is if he had the camera on a tripod, put the shutter speed at like seconds and told the subject to move slightly. I find this type of photography extremely interesting because it is drastically different from everyone else’s portraits. Wesely’s portraits are basically the exact opposite of what people define as a portrait. The photos have less to do with how the subject looks but instead focuses on the movement and change of his subjects. His work shows interest in the way things move and change over time. I think of it as the real depiction of a subject, the background stands still while life and the subjects keep going. His work is a symbolism for life.

Lewis Baltz

Lewis Baltz is considered a visual artist and a photographer. He was born in California and studied fine arts at San Francisco Art Institute, then later got a graduate degree from Claremont Graduate School. Baltz was known for his landscape photography. His work has been shown in multiple big name museums. He likes to show desolation and destruction in his work. He mainly takes photos of walls, windows, buildings and parking lots, these all have a few things in common. It looks like he liked using a prime lens to take his landscape photos because of how sharp the photos look. All of his work has very straight lines and are in a soft black and white. His photos have great composition; the lines in most of his work are very straight and strategically placed to make the area look extremely aligned. Baltz was also a part of the New Topographics movement in the 1970’s. I admire Lewis Baltz work because it is very strategic in his own way, some windows or buildings might not be perfectly centered but somehow he makes everything look aligned nicely and very smooth. The feeling of his work is very simple and quite satisfying.