Pastiche - Page 2.

Research for Pastiche

Gottfried Helnwein

Helnwein  is known for his obscure photographs. A potratit photographer, who chooses his subjects carefully. His most recent work contains a large number of photographs of young children, mostly girls, painted pale as a ghost. His work is very strange, but as I looked through his vast collection of photographs, I found a series he took in the 1980's, black and white potraits of celebritites, including Michael Jackson, Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger and many others.

these photographs are all taken with controlled lighitng, and appart from the one of Mick Jagger, there is a slight chance that they were taken inside a studio. This is why I decided to look at Helnweins works. He does seem to have a specific way of lighting his subjects, he uses a lot of shadows in his potraits, which is quite different compared to other photographers of this era.

Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon's work is one that is known world wide. A very famous celebrity portrait photographer, who has also worked in fashion. He's photographed such famous stars as Marilyn Monroe, Charles Chaplin, Elizabeth Taylor, Andy Warhol and many many others.

His classical approach to portrait photography has given his portrait a historical touch, ones that will be remembered. Perhaps not your average protrait shots, the three images I have chosen here show not one of the subjects looking directly at the camera, which is quite an interesting factor to his photographs.

Yousuf Karsh

After browsing through each of the six photographers works, and even after researching more into Avedon and Helnwein, I found myself constantly going back to view the portrait photographs of Yousuf Karsh. He is a very well-known photographer, who's work has been displayed in Galleries all over the world. He's photographed Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali and Winston Churchill. His subject are much more familiar to us than those of the other photographers.

His photographs almost have a kind of mood lighting about them, I think this is what drew me to his portrait photographs. They are also always full of infinate detail. Every close-up shows you very single wrinkle to be found on a face. They seem effortlessly perfect, simply but yet complex, and this is why I have chosen to do my pastiche using one of Yousuf Karshs portrait photographs. The one that kept catching my eye, was his portrait of John F. Kennedy taken in 1960.