Coloured Portraits

Alec Soth

http://alecsoth.com/photography/


for the next part of this project we were asked to produce coloured portraits. This is the first time i have used coloured film in any camera other than my 35mm. Without intension i have noticed that all the photographers i have previously researched for this project have captured images in black and white, which is obviously very fitting as that is what we were asked to produce for the first part of our project. 

When researching photographers that produce portraits in a coloured format, the work of Alec Soth caught my eye. Alec Soth's work follows a documentary style, and as he produces portraits of people, he presents them along side documentary style shots of the buildings and surroundings of these people. Each of his projects tend to be named after a place, for example 'Niagra' and he seems to do is document the area and the people within it. His series of images appear to tell a story, and as the viewer, you tend to find yourself linking the images of the building or surroundings with the people in the portraits. 

Documentary photography is without a doubt my favourite style of photography, so i really am inspired by the way in which Alec Soth incorporates portraiture into his projects and series of images. I find the colours and tones in Alec Soth's images very interesting as they seem to give off a 'retro' kind of feel to the images. The places and people he choses to document rarely every seem to be of a high class, they tend to me more everyday working class kind of people/areas. I personally think this makes the series more interesting to look at as they feel real and down to earth. 


Ive chosen the images which catch my eye the most out of a couple of Alec Soth's projects, I've then included a couple images of buildings that Alec has documented just to give an idea of what his series of images look like, and how well the documentary style images of buildings ect go with the portraits. 

Again, like my previous research i have chosen a lot of portrait images of couples. I find it really interesting in the way in which the two people stand together. I feel a lot of Alec's images of couples look posed, as though the couples have been told to stand in this way by the photographer. You can feel the awareness the subjects have of their photograph being taken.