3 Photographers' Style - Emily Hannak

Francesca Woodman

              Born April 3^rd 1958, her life was surrounded by art from the start. Her entire family were talented in several forms of expression; her mother was a sculptor, her father a painter, and photographer, and her brother a video artist. She picked up photography in her teenage years and quickly developed her own distinct style. Like Sally Mann, she shows off the human body in her work as art to view. However, Woodman’s work takes on a particular feminist tone regarding the framing of the female figure and the stark lack of men in the limelight of her photos. Her work is primarily in black and white with a few exceptions in her collection entitled On Being an Angel, being colored self-portraits. Her aesthetic heavily resembles Surrealism, as shown by the sometimes strange composition, poses, props, or setting she chose for the image. She states in her preface that she takes inspiration from a photographer that she described his work of detailing “dictums on death, dreams, homosexuality, and the cosmos.” One of Francesca’s most distinct style elements is her use of long exposure in nearly all of her work. It adds to the sense of Surrealism and captures the mystery of motion of the subjects that you cat quite figure out as the viewer. She used a Yashica 2¼ x 2¼ for most of her career and used black and white film. She took her own life in 1981.

Sally Mann

              Sally Mann is known to be one of the most controversial artists of the past century. Her subject matter disgusted the masses as it often featured her own underage children in the nude. However, her style and technique is what set her apart as a staple in the photography world. An example being her published book entitled Proud Flesh, her style is a very intriguing display using wet plating techniques on gelatin silver print. She perfected using an 8 x 10 view camera and black and white film. Her subjects in this example feature adult subjects, highlighting the beauty of the human body. Sally utilized dramatic lighting to create bold shadows and shapes that made the image unique. The stark contrast between the lights and darks give a vivid sense of depth and gives the impression that she took her time with each image, carefully constricting the environment to accommodate each subject. Every subject is also very at ease, conveying a special sense if intimacy and relaxed nature. Her objective of this collection, as with all of her works, is to capture what is real and raw. This was her earlier career before her work shifted to barren landscape photography after the death of her son, the imagery suggesting death and decay inspired by her grief. 

William Eggleston

              William Eggleston was born in Tennessee and raised in Mississippi, making him as American as you could get. His work reflects this, often featuring classic Americana artifacts, even if that was not his intention. He wanted to capture the beauty in the mundane, and photographed ordinary objects and scenes that others may overlook. His subjects were often discarded or damaged things that he found interesting. While this makes up a majority of his work, he also would take images of people, some of them being black and white portraits, as seen in his publication The Democratic Camera. The scenic and object based images often feature unique lines and shapes to captivate the viewer into looking deeper to see what William sees. He also uses a lot of shadows to cast unique shapes to enhance the image, or does the opposite by using bright natural light to highlight an object or a person. His human-based work is often much softer than his object-based; the women he photographs are always in a soft, beautiful light to highlight their features and their dresses. Their wardrobe and makeup are also distinctly vintage, again carrying the unique Americana style. He used both color and black and white film using a Fuji camera, and also used a view camera on wet plates in his earlier work.