Arnold Newman
Arnold Newman:
Newman was born in NYC in 1918 and raised in Atlantic City and Miami Beach. He is known for his environmental portraits, still life and abstract photography. He studied art at University of Miami, he was discovered by Alfred Stieglitz. He is famous for his environmental portraits of politicians and artists, he would capture them in their true environment- not posed. Newman died in 2006 in NYC, he has 2 sons and 4 grandchildren that are still living.
C & T: Rule of thirds (off-centered), selective focus (people in front vs back) and grouping (of people).
F8, 3 Filter, 3.5 secs
C & T: Formal balance (center of photo), selective focus (on the face) and leading lines (counter edge to the person).
F8, 3.5 secs
C & T: Informal balance (stairs on one side and curtain on the other), selective focus (face vs background), and slight framing (the stairs around her head).
F8, 3.5 Filter, 4 secs
C & T: Informal balance (full head v half a head) and selective focus (foreground v background)
F8, 3.5 Filter, 4 secs
C & T: Rule of thirds (2/3 with people and no windows, 1/3 with no people and a window), informal balance, selective focus (people and instruments v window/wall) and there is a shadow cast across the guitar.
F8, 3 secs
C & T: Informal balance (person, window and drums v half window and empty wall), selective focus (person v background), framing (the drum set frames the person) and leading lines (parts of the drum set lead back to person)
F8, 3 secs
C & T: Selective focus ( guitar v background), leading lines (guitar and strings), and rule of thirds (the guitar fades out in the final third)
F8, 3.5 secs
C & T: Informal balance (trees v person), selective focus (foreground v background) and grouping (of trees)
F8, 3 secs
The subject of these images are people in their, somewhat, natural environment. I took most of them in rooms with lots of light coming in windows and one outside. To make these images I used my film camera, the dark room and photo paper. I chose to take these environmental portraits instead of the ones with the typical grey background and then head centered because they are more interesting- to me. In each of these there is a great range of value and defined lines.
These images started on 2 rolls of film which I processed, cut & sleeved and then made contact prints. After making contact prints I chose images I wanted to try. To process the film, contact sheets, test strips and final images I went through the process of using developer, stop bath and fix. These images weren't super hard to print because they all had a pretty nice range of value. I listed their exposure details above.
Each of these images are portraits and show a person in their environment. This environment ranges from being surrounded by music to being surrounded by trees. I think that taking portraits like these is much more important than taking posed and stylized images, each image has a story. This project relates to my life because I chose how to capture each of these people in their environment being themselves. I know the story behind each image. I think a few of these images could be stronger if they didn't have spots from the dirty negatives, to fix this I could work on cleaning the negative and reprinting each image.