Ksenia Bykova - 3 paragraphs about different photographers

Tobias Zielony

            Tobias Zielony was born in 1973 in Germany. He studied documentary photography at University of Wales and artistic photography at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. Most of the time he is focusing in photographing minorities in suburban areas. Most of Tobais’s photographs were taken in action, it seems like the photographer did not stage his photos. He prefers to take portrait photographs, but sometimes there is some number of landscape and city view photos.

            A lot of his photographs have a shallow depth of field. Thanks to this, viewers can focus their attention on the main figure of the photo. By looking at these photographs, a viewer can feel that Tobias Zielony has some kind of special relationship with his models. He wants to show some personal story behind each of the characters in his artworks. In addition, most of the photographs have dark-blue and green color palette that give a special atmosphere of the cities where photographs were taken. It looks like that most of the photographs were taken with a film camera and it also gives these photographs a special effect and atmosphere.

            I like the way how Tobias Zielony photographs people. Each person on his photographs looks like that he or she has some story behind his or her character. I love the using of shallow depth of field. It looks not only visually very pleasing but helps to understand a model and his or her story better.

Henry Wessel

            Henry Wessel is an American photographer who was born in 1942.  He graduated from Pennsylvania State University with bachelor of arts and from SUNY at Buffalo with MFA. He is focusing in photographing American life, especially in California. He photographs different landscapes, deserts, cities, and people. All of his photographs are black and white. From the very beginning of his career, he’s been using Leica with 28mm lens and Tri-X kind of film. He did not switch to any other equipment throughout his photography career. Thanks to the camera Wessel uses, his photographs have unique kind of light that make these pieces of art very recognizable. On the one hand, Wessel’s photos are pretty minimalistic, but at the same time, each of it tells a different story about a certain place or people. With his photographs, Henry Wessel shows some ironical sides of American life.

I like the simplicity of his photos. A lot of times the photographer found different and weird aspects of American life that can be very interesting, especially for people from other countries. One of my favorite photographs is the one with the desert landscape and “Ice” sign in the middle of it. In my opinion, this simple photograph is funny and weird at the same time. I like the composition of this photo, the way how “Ice” sign is placed in the middle of the frame so a viewer can notice this object right away.

Martin Parr

            Martin Parr is a British documentary photographer. He is focusing on capturing different aspects of life (entrainment, food, leisure) in a satirical way. He shows basic everyday things in people’s lives in some sort of uncomfortable, but at the same time, humorous way.

            All of his pictures are in color, with very hue and saturation. He used to use film, such as Fuji 400 Superior for the 6/7cm camera. Now Parr uses digital cameras and different lenses, including Nikon 35mm and 60mm. In addition, he uses flash, which helps the photographer to achieve high color saturation. Martin Parr claims that he does not use Photoshop for his photos, he tries to achieve this color with flashes and lenses.

            I like his photographs mostly because of the framing. In addition, despite the fact that he shows aspects of life in a weird way, his photos still look natural and non-staged. Thanks to his art pieces, people can start thinking about their lifestyle in a different way. I also like the fact, that Parr does not use Photoshop to edit colors on his photographs. It is very interesting how he can achieve such a high color saturation without any software use.