cainsuleyman

[cainsuleyman]

Environmental Portraiture - 25/1/2018

I have a close connection with my Turkish Cypriot family and will soon be travelling to Northern Cyprus to document the journey. I intend to visit places to piece together the transient memories that currently are only held in their thoughts and stories. The journey will bring together past and present feelings when revisiting places that hold significant memories from my grandparents’ lives in and around the village where they were born. I will be documenting this trip with five generations of my family from five to ninety years old.

To start this project, before the trip, I wanted to spend a day with my Turkish grandparents to hear stories of the village, Louroujina, before they immigrated to England. Whilst there, I wanted to capture aspects of their daily routine including house jobs, pastimes and their relationship with one another. This information will help form the rest of the project.

[cainsuleyman]

Commute - 20/9/2016

Living in Brighton, I used to take journeys to college by public transport to and from Croydon. This is where I got my inspiration for this collection of urban images. I was particularly interested in people’s journeys and their surroundings. The idea that people repeat the same routine every day, which becomes an auto pilot activity, is something I wanted to capture.

At the time this series was taken, commuters like myself were experiencing the worst period of train strikes and delays seen in my whole four years of commuting. After the first couple of months, I noticed a lower mood amongst the regular passengers who I was familiar with seeing on the same journey every day. I wanted to create a short series of images that summarised the sights and feelings I was surrounded with during this difficult and tiring time.

[cainsuleyman]

Untitled - 15/11/2016

I feel that the first image in this collection is a successful portrait as I have captured the subject in a moment of unaltered emotion. This portrait portrays the ambiguity of the subject’s identity, placing the spectator in a position of uncertainty. This relationship encourages a curious and active engagement with the work. The more time the spectator spends viewing the work, the more ambivalence is revealed about the subject’s gender. His expression and facial features challenge traditional assumptions of masculinity.

Studying Musical Theatre has meant I’ve been surrounded by many wonderful and eccentric people, who routinely adopt roles that mask their identity. I wanted to remove the character to capture their true personality. This was my intention behind the series of portraits.

Each subject had taken five minutes from their rehearsals to sit for the portrait, which was captured in a corridor during the school day. Under these constraints, I developed a relationship of trust which encouraged each sitter to momentarily step out of their character. This situation offered each individual respite from a rehearsal and me a deeper insight into their personality.

[cainsuleyman]

This is the future that you left us? - 28/1/2018

I took influence from the spoken word artist Kate Tempest, who’s work tackles current affairs such as social inequality, climate change and pollution, caused by corporate businesses.

In this project I wanted to explore a visual representation of the polluted world that is being created by industrialisation.

My main inspiration occurred when watching the news covering the rise in pollution and increased global warming. Despite this being a truly horrifying article,my 5 year old cousin who was playing with her toys in front of the TV, was completely oblivious to the unsettling facts being presented in the program.

This was sad because I was watching what the world is turning into for Farrah and she has no idea of even the meaning of pollution and global warming that is happening in the wider world around her. I wanted to represent this in the image by explicitly showing her innocence next to a large contributor of pollution.

[cainsuleyman]

Lady Bird - 24/9/2017

Music has been at the core of my artistic inspiration running throughout my life, as far back as I can remember, with gigs being a regular activity. Since taking up photography I have been fascinated in capturing what I see at gigs in a singleimage. Live music is animportant part of today’s culture and I wanted to capture this in a series of images that presented a perfect snapshot of the live experience. I have shot a number of bands in different sized venues but I felt that the intimacy of this series particularly mirrored what I experience at live gigs.

Lady Bird are a small band attracting a smaller audience to their gigs, but still putting in the same amount of energy that a larger band would. When I discovered the band I immediately approached them and was invited to shoot them a couple of days later. I jumped at the opportunity to capture what I had experienced being exposed to their music for the first time.

[cainsuleyman]

Nadav Kander analytical essay

In this essay I am going to analyse the technical aspects of a piece taken from  by the photographer Nadav Kander. In doing this I will discuss how he uses his photographic skills to create strong and engaging imagery that perfectly expresses the subjects personality in context with the TV show she is from.

Nadav Kander was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1961 and has since lived in South Africa before settling in England in 1986, at the age of 25. It has been recorded that Kander purchased his first camera at the age of 13 and continued his photography through his time in the South African Air Force at the age of 17. Upon coming to the conclusion that photography was a desired pathway for him, Nadav Kander set his sights on his photographic career and moved to England, where he would eventually land his first publication and exhibition ‘Night’ at the Michael Hoppen Gallery, London.

He is well known in the photography world for his careful use of lights and how he uses lighting to set the mood he intends to communicate in his pictures. He is famous for taking images of Actors, such as Ron Perlman and Jude Law, and Politicians such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. His powerful and emotional imagery of many recognisable faces has been recognised by the world of film and television, who have hired the well respected photographer for promotional images for films such as ‘Gone Girl’ and TV programmes such as ‘Mr Robot’.

The photograph I have chosen to analyse is taken from the promotional collection for series 3 of ‘Mr Robot’. In this shot, we see one of the main characters, Darlene, and nothing else in the frame. This is the same amongst the whole of the promotional campaign.

Looking at the image, we can see that Kander has opted for a high key studio setting to be used, with soft boxes being the chosen attachment to decide how the light falls on the subject. This is evident in the way that there are no strong highlights on Darlene and there is an equal light balance across her face. We can also see that the lighting favours the right hand side of the image with the potentiality of a reflector being used directly in front of the subject. The shadow to the left of the image covers her cheek and temple but are not an overpowering feature in the frame. The subtlety of the shadows imply that a reflector has been used to lift away the darker tones, that are created by the lighting, on her face without removing them completely. This is a good use short portrait lighting in the way that the sitter’s focus direction is aimed at the lighting source, with the camera facing side of her face being in a position where the lighting source is unable to reach. Moreover, the shadow on her cheek creates a stronger direction of focus on the sections of her face that radiate her emotions most.

It is universally known in photography that a viewers attention will be drawn to the most exposed part of a photograph first. Bringing this theory to the image of Darlene, the predominant channel of light doesn’t cover her complete face, but enough that will allow the viewer to spend their energy focusing on the more important parts of her face, thus being able to take in the full extent of her melancholic expression.

The lighting used allows the viewer to see everything that was in front of the camera during the shoot. Her face is the centre of attention, being the most lit section of the frame, with the rest of her body being less exposed but still easily visible. This lighting technique gives the implication that there is nothing to hide in the image. A common trait in photography is for certain sections of an image to be hidden by shadows, objects or underexposure. This can be perceived that there is something in the frame that the photographer doesn’t want us to see. We see the polar opposite in this image in the way that the subject is fully visible. This puts Darlene in a completely exposed position where she cannot hide her expressions.

In term’s of framing, to convey the subject’s emotions, Nadav Kander has misused the rule of thirds to express the unease in Darlene’s physical and emotional being. In an image like this, it would be expected for the subject to be placed at the centre of the frame to bring more power to the image. In this instance, Kander has placed her ever so slightly to one side of the frame. This is an unconventional use of the rule of thirds, however the breaking of the rule has been done in such a way that it brings an even stronger meaning to the characters emotions within the image. The fact that she is not quite where she, technically, should be could be perceived that this mirrors her personality in the fact that she is not her usual self, hence why she finds herself in a disjointed placement within the frame.

Having watched ‘Mr Robot’, I have been able to connect with this image because I am familiar with the character and have been fortunate to follow her story, therefore understanding her emotional state in the context of the story. In the show, Darlene becomes increasingly detached from her emotions and surroundings. She is dealing with the slow disconnection with her brother and has previously grieved her father.

The aspect of Nadav Kander’s skill set that is poignant in this image is that he has told the subjects story in a raw and true way. There is a strong sense of vulnerability and disconnection in this image, which has been cleverly constructed in the direction of Darlene’s structure. The other images in the series show various characters looking directly into the camera, which allows the viewer to have a strong connection with each individual by having the ability to look in their eyes. Although this could have been a strong way to represent the character, Kander has decided to move her direction of focus away from the camera. This has the ability to make the viewer increasingly inquisitive about the overall feel of the image because they don’t have the same certainty about the character, that they do with the other images, because there isn’t the same eye contact that is present with the rest of the characters’ portraits.

The final element about the image I wish to discuss is the lack of colour that is present in the frame. Darlene is well known, in ‘Mr Robot’, for having an alternative dress sense. She wears clothing such as leather jackets, knee socks and elaborate heart shaped sunglasses. In order to match her current emotional state, Kander has dressed Darlene in a simple jumper with bland, lifeless colours. This is a subtle yet powerful way to further express the disconnection from her usual self. This is something that will be recognised by followers of the show, but Kander has been clever in this subtle change to allow his intentions to be seen by people who don’t follow the show. We can see that she has pulled her sleeves over her hands, and the way Darlene holds her structure is almost as if she is hugging herself for comfort. This further induces the sense of insecurity and upset that is present in the characters feelings.

In conclusion, Nadav Kander has used his photographic skills and specific style to create an intriguing representation of the character Darlene from ‘Mr Robot’.

Kander has decided to take lesser expected options to express the character’s emotions. This has been in the form of breaking the rule of thirds and unconventionally having the subject looking away from the camera to further express her feelings of disconnection. He has also used high key lighting to remove any heavy shadows, that would cover up sections of the image, to allow the viewer to see everything in frame, showing that there is nothing to hide and that every element of the picture is as important as the rest.