Mary Ellen Mark Photography (portrait)- LO1

A: Photographic Category
Mary Ellen Mark specialises in portrait photography.

B: Purpose
Mary Ellen Mark's photography has the purpose of showing a person of importance, sometimes for the person itself 'to use for a biography or website or social media page (like Twitter or Facebook) but also for magazine and internet articles of people without them doing a specific event or something (as in that case there'd be some kind of photo at that event). An example of a sites or magazine that will feature these people would be Heat .

C: Image Analysis

Mary Ellen Mark's portrait photographs on surface level, share many similar characteristics such as the greyscale filter similar to the photography of before colour cameras were commercial, the fact the people shown are generally not doing a major action (this has exceptions though),  and how the locations of the people tell stories on how people are like. As far as lighting goes, despite being a portrait photographer, Ellen Mark relies mostly on natural lighting. A more obvious reason is that a lot of these photographs are outdoors and while studio lighting can be done outdoors and these photographs mostly look planned in advance, even in a studio like Don Ameche's photograph, it seems that the lighting isn't high key. This could be because of the pre-colour style on how Ellen Mark pays tribute to classic photography by not incorporating a more modern aspect like studio lighting.



In this particular photo, the subject of the photo is on three on the four focal points when it comes to the rule of thirds which places him as easy to see immediately as he is in the centre of the image. The lighting looks very natural and non-artificial, without being low key or too high key, making it seem like an ISO of around 800 would have been used. In terms of aperture, a medium aperture may have been used at around F.6 may have been used. For shutter speed, a speed of around 1/60th would have been used to make sure a lot of light got into the image since there wouldn't be any motion to avoid capturing. The subject (Don Ameche) is wearing a bowler hat, a blazer and striped tie to connote the classical,  pre-1960s style, found in both Ameche and Ellen Mark's photography. Since the photo denotes just Don Ameche standing without anything in the background, and people standing are vertical, the orientation is portrait as it connotes Ameche is significant as he is just what you see in the photo, not a lot of background imagery or anything. The shot type here is midshot as it looks like it goes down to his waist. The image denotes Ameche holding something, with is either a wallet or piece of cloth, and to make sure it is in the image as well (As it may connote significance to Ameche's personality) a midshot is used.

D: Meaning

In this particular photograph of Matthew Barney, the meaning is to connote multiple personalities. The obvious reason for this is because Barney is in front of a distorted mirror, the kind of mirror that changes how someone is viewed. Because of that fact alone, you can already make that assumption. However, Barney is facing the other way from the mirror rather than looking at it, connoting he is rejecting his other self in a way, and he seems to have an unpleased facial expression to further prove this. This is especially important when you think about how these Mirrors are usually in a circus or a theme park where people would usually laugh at the distortions, making the lack of humour denoted here seem like there is a deeper meaning in this photograph