Cassie Luzenski Style Paragraphs

1.    Woodlands by Bernhard Fuchs

Bernhard Fuchs is a landscape photographer who focused on the landscape of his hometown. He took photos of the rolling hills around him on different days, times, and seasons to capture the different light, color, and precipitation that would alter the scenes around him. His work is about trying to capture what he would see as a child and try to capture his own day to day reality. This landscape that he was photographing was of the woodlands. He would include the grass, the hills, and the trees in almost every photo. He used a wide-angle lens to capture these hills around him. His photographs were taken in a horizontal frame. The landscape would often take up the bottom two-thirds of the frame and the sky would remain in the top one third. He would occasionally take photos that showed more detail in the land around him. This could mean he focused more on the road or fences or the trees. The images he created were very successful in creating almost a story about the different changes in the same area. The images he took are simply landscape photos but because of all the emptiness in the landscapes, they feel very still and quiet. This gives off a sense of loneliness and makes them seem almost ominous in a way. What makes these images his own is that it tells a story of the land around him and shows how he is experiencing its changes over time. I could replicate this style by going off campus to the many farmlands and rolling hills over the course of the next week to capture the different settings of the different day. There I would also follow his style of either using 2/3 of the frame in a horizontal manner and I would take a few that were a little more involved in the landscape. 

2.    Fragile A Project by Franco Gobbi

Franco Gobbi is a portrait photographer who in this body of work focuses solely on taking portraits of women. He wanted to tell a story that focused on women’s inner characteristics. He wanted to touch on the sensitive, vulnerable, and fragile sides of women. The women he photographs he finds to be some of the most inspiring women he knows and of our time. They are women of strength and who are grounded. By photographing them in this way they feel vulnerable and therefore the photos feel a little uncomfortable. He uses a telephoto lens and he leaves the shutter open for longer than usual. He does this to create motion from the figure. By doing this it creates this feeling of delicacy and fragility. I think the images look unique. They are very unlike normal portraits that one sees where a subject is simply a still object usually looking at the camera. Gobbi instead decides to capture the motion while also providing heavy contrast in his black and white images to create portraits of women that are unlike others. I would replicate this style by photographing women in a similar fashion. I would find a plain background that would allow for heavy contrast with the figure and then I would set the camera up with a longer shutter to capture motion without letting in too much light. I know that he only takes portraits that are restrained to the head and top of shoulders but I think it would also be cool to apply this style to other parts of the body instead of solely faces. 

3.    David Hilliard 

David Hilliard is a narrative photographer. He takes multiple photos to piece together and create a scene that tells a story. Sometimes he will try to recreate memories that he found significant and other times he would simply be so fascinated with something at the moment that he would photograph his reality. Hilliard said that he likes to photograph with a 35mm lens and film camera, however, I do not know if that is what he used when taking these photographs. In his work, he takes multiple photos of the same scene at different locations so that he can piece the images together once they are printed. This allows a story to be created since the viewer is experiencing multiple photos as individuals and then experiencing them as a whole image. The story can sometimes be subtle and other times more noticeable. His work varies on what it is about, he normally photographs people that he knows to recreate memories but occasionally he will photograph people he does not know when he is just trying to capture his reality. The work regardless is telling a story and the whole point of his work is to narrate a moment in time. I love the way his images turn out individually, but even more so as a whole. When he pieces them together, depending on what each individual image is focusing on different pieces may be in focus and others are out of focus so when the images are pieced together it can create this really beautiful and unique full image. Many of his photos have one image of the series that is the focus of the piece and helps the most with telling the story.  I would recreate this work by creating a series of images that tell stories. I would take multiple photos at the scene so that I could later piece them together to create a full image.