The artist that I’ve focused on when doing my project is Tom Hussey. Tom Hussey is an advertising and portrait photographer from American, who created a series of highly conceptual photographs titled “Reflections”, showing elderly people looking pensively at their younger self reflection in a mirror (The Phoblographer). There’s a connection between my photographs and his is because I have taken photos of people in different age groups, and the surrounding environment mainly focused on black and white street style, the theme of my photograph series “Reflection” also connect with Tom Hussey’s style. Also, Hussey’s photographs always contains the element “light” and “shade”, this is something that I also incorporate in my own photographs. When I’m taking these photographs I use the sunlight as the main light source, but since it is a black and white photographs, the light and shade contrast may not be that obvious for us to identify.
Understanding the artist intent: Exploring the artist’s biography, including their experiences, influences, techniques and framework can illuminate their intentions, and Hasse’s photos are all very close to life. When I explored taking photos this time, I also wanted to take photos that are closer to or reflect the current state of contemporary social life.
In the part of innovation, I did make changes to the style of photographs, and how reflection is conveys to the audience. For Hussey, he showed reflection just in the mirror that is typically in front of the person, and most of the photos are very “old” and”colorful”. What I mean by the colors here do not just refer to very vivid or colorful colors, at least they are not black and white. However, for the photographs that I have taken is all black and white style, and I have showed reflection not only in mirrors, it can also be on glass, sculptures or ornaments placed on the street, and even on windows. In terms of presenting the theme of “reflection”, my photos are relatively more diverse. Also, through analyzing these three images above, we can tell that these three people is from different age groups (3 years old baby, between 20-25 years old adult, and around 50-60 years old elder). In addition, I have used dutch angles in my photography, this makes the frame more interesting. And for the other two photography, there’s a blurring object in front of camera, making the depth of field further away. For the editing work, I crop the unnecessary space in the photography, this makes the object stand out more clearly for the audience to see. These are all of the information that is related to my photographs.
