Lighting Repicate

Multiple Models

David Bailey Lighting Recreation

Environmental Portrait

Analysis of Katy Grannan

A black woman sit on the side of the road.  She is dressed in what looks like crocheted lingerie in a rusty orange color.  On her feet she's wearing heels with ankle straps, black in color.  She sits almost dejectedly with one leg folded under her while the other is fully extended with the heel of her left shoe resting on a rock.  Her right arm rests limply in her lap while the left supports only its own weight on the ground.  Her tattoos on her left leg and scars on her chest are faded into her skin to the point where they are only shades darker.  Though the woman looks tired and dejected she still looks at the photographer and her camera out of the corners of her eyes. 
The road in the photo is made of stone and dirt alluding to this being  a rural environment.  Behind the woman there is nothing but green grass and trees.  Grannan used natural light to capture the brashness in this photo and omitted the information  from the sky.
She seems used and forgotten because her posture is very limp and her body isn't what society would call virile or attractive anymore.  This idea is enhanced by what looks like cigarette burns on her collar bone.  She's in what we assume is a neglige on the side of the road like a street-walker kicked to the county's equivalent of a curb.  This piece was part of a series Grannan did that took average people and placed them in a wooded environment in little to no clothing juxtaposing their vulnerability with the ruggedness of the outdoors.  In some of her earlier works she photographed young women in their undergarments or nude in familiar environments.  I believe because of this and because of the way she uses men and women on the street in her current work it does tie in to the rest of her work.

Lighting Excersize

Group Shoot (unedited)

Studio Group Shoot Lighting

Lighting

 Broad

 Butterfly

 Rembrandt

Short

Self-Portrait

 

I don't take myself very seriously.  I create characters all the time because I love dressing up in costumes and I make myself become them.  I especially enjoy the style of the 1940s and 1950s because I think the hair and make up were so elegant and complicated.  It blows my mind when I think about how women used to wake up 4 hours early just to their hair for work or school but the end result is so stunningly beautiful I can see why they would do it.  I'm also obsessed with old photographs and when I found a bunch in Brooklyn this weekend I was immediately inspired to do my self-portrait in that style as well.