Experimental photography

By Lusi NdojaTask 1

Wes NamanWes Naman is a Mexican based experimental photographer. He is not recognised in the public eye as he lives very low profile but has produced some excellent work, such as his most famous work of all he scotch tape photography. The weird and hilarious method he has used to produce these photographs that are effective and unusual.

This is a great techniques used as he has used something as simple as scotch tape has been used to transfer the face and great a different mood. All the images used with scotch tape are all portrait photography. I liked this technique as it is simple and something that interested me as the images are very humoristic.

The photograph is contemporary as the techniques used are more modern and also have used non traditional methods such as Photoshop to get a sharp result to tweak anything that might need adjusting. Wes Naman has also used a similar technique but this time he has used rubber bands on the face. He has purposely used this techniques to emphasised the facial features as the idea originally came from when he and his assistant (Joy Godfrey) and she then put a piece of scotch tape on her nose making and awkward expression. This then gave Wes Naman an idea to use this for his photography. Another technique is that using tape to make the unusual facial expressions it shows that even experimenting with yourself you can discover something new.

These sort of photography could be used in magazines as they could be used by famous celebrities as the public are interested in reading articles that have a sense of humour. Also they could be used in advertising such as commercials as they are eye catching and unusual giving the images character.

Philippe Halsman Philippe Halsman is an American portrait photographer, born in Riga Russia and then later in life moved to Latvia died in 1979. He is an iconic photographer as he has worked with one of Hollywood's icon of all time Marilyn Monroe. He work has been featured in Vogue fashion magazines once he got a reputation in France as one of the best photographers.

Halsman began to experiment with his photography and came with with unusual and surreal photograph as he made the models that were featured jump! As you can see with the images I have selected you can see that he has made the images more eye catching and something that will grab the audiences attention. The first images id of a women in nude jumping in the air and in here surroundings there are objects such as baguettes and liquid, Halsman has captured this image simply by using unusual lighting, unusual angle, unusual composition to create the perfect picture.

In the second image he has used a similar technique like jump but this time using more objects and manipulating the mind of the audience. the image features different props such as a chair water, painter and a painting in the air, creating a surreal image. the images throughout are monochrome as old fashioned cameras were used. However the black and white works as it gives it a classic and more historical.

the technique is historical as the work is very old as it was used back in the late 40’s before technology was not quite used as today as there was no digital cameras. No Photoshop has been used as you can see on the image below Halsman has used string to make the objects float as part of his experimental photography.

John StezakerJohn Stezaker is a British conceptual artist born in 1949. Most of his work consists of collages. As you can see b the images I have selected you can see that john has used two or more images to create one image.

Most of his work is based on protraits and used this to build his collages.

His work is surreal in tone and is often made using collage and the appropriation of pre-existing images such as postcards, film stills, and publicity photographs.

In he images I have selected you can see that john has used male and female protraits of famous icons. it makes the images look interesting and also give the images a different meaning.

Stezaker became known for his pop art and the majority of his work is based on collage.

Comparing Wes Naman work with Stezaker you can see the similarities

As the both use portrait images and change the facial features giving it a totally different outcome. Naman uses tape on the face to give a weird and hilarious portrait transferring the face.

However Stezaker uses collage and gets two different images to create and transfer an image. This is two different type of experimental photography by transferring the portrait.

Also this shows the difference between modern day photography and historical just by looking at the images itself.