Eleanor Wing - Photographer Paragraphs

Roger Ballen

Roger Ballen is an American photographer mostly active during the late 20th century and early 21st. He has been living in South Africa during the 1970s and his work is characterized as dark, gritty, and at times schizophrenic. South Africa was often the inspiration for his photography, especially race relationships and the aftereffects of apartheid. His early work is mostly street photography with some portraiture but by the 1990s his work begins to become more focused on people, usually using subjects that are old or mentally ill and staging intimate closeups in photos that are pretty disconcerting or uncomfortable to look at. He takes this concept further and in the 2000s starts creating photographs that are in a specific interior and are staged to appear unreal, often using both people and animals together in an unsettling way. The interior spaces use a lot of surreal and symbolic props, like wire structures, skulls, and dolls. These photos (like all his work) are all in black and white, have little depth (the subject is usually one or two feet in front of the wall), and are cropped abruptly (all as squares), creating odd shapes body shapes and forms. The photos also have pretty low contrast so the entire photo is grayish and gritty. The photos are pretty uncomfortable and at times grotesque, but I find them very powerful in their ability to create a tangible and physical reaction when I look at them.

Joel Meyerowitz

Joel Meyerowitz is an American photographer and has been creating work since the 1960s. He is an incredibly prolific photographer and his work has changed and gone in many different directions throughout his life. His early work is mostly street photography, both in color and black and white, and is pretty comparable to Gary Winogrand’s photos, a contemporary and friend of Meyerowitz. Some of his later photos start to focus a little more on the landscape and setting, photographing subjects smaller in the frame to capture more of the surroundings and in the 70s his work begins to delve away from capturing people and instead showing just settings often showing a sense of depth and emptiness within the setting. In 1976 he switched from using 35mm to large format and began creating the work in Cape Cod, in a series called “Cape Light” which I find the most engaging. These photos from the 70s were of settings with no people, places like gas stations, pools, and suburban houses, usually taken at twilight with an eerie sense to them. The lighting is strange and alien, often he would photograph places with neon lighting and signs, and the coloring creates a very strange effect. The absence of people gives a sense of vastness and emptiness especially because these photos usually have a large depth of field. In the 2000s he started photographing more natural landscapes although to me, the suburban landscapes are the most poignant and provoking work for me me.

Floria SigismondiThe photographer Floria Sigismondi is an Italian-Canadian photographer with a very specific and jarring photography style. Her work often features celebrities, notably Marilyn Manson and David Bowie, and is often highly saturated, blurry, and disturbing. Through editing she creates double exposures and blurred subjects that are nearly unrecognizable. The settings for her photos are almost entirely in weird interiors that look like a mix between an abandoned insane asylum, a haunted church, or a mad scientist’s laboratory. My favorite photos of hers are lit with highly saturated blue and red light and feature moving subjects. The people she photographs are usually in some sort of dramatic, unnatural makeup and outfits that she has designed and created herself. The photos have very high contrast and dark, so extremely edited that sometimes the photos have only 4 or 5 discernable colors. The props and setting are central to the photos and she uses metal contraptions that look nearly like torture instruments or severed body parts. I find her interesting because of how dramatic and visceral her photos are, it’s hard to look at them without a reaction, even though they are not necessarily “beautiful”. In addition to being a photographer, Floria Sigismondi is also a filmmaker or director, and it is is easy to see the narrative link within her photographs.