Postmodernism

POSTMODERNISM

Postmodernism - I know that postmonderism is a style in the arts and architecture which represents a department from modernism and by self-conscious use of styles nand conventions with a mix of many different styles.

This photograph suggests that there is a colide in different architectures and he sees the area different to how others see it, the worl is changing and so is everything around him. He could feel that he wants things to go back to how they used to be or even he could have owned the house in an earlier stage of luife and now he is looking back on life with this photograph.

Sherrie Levine                      

Sherrie Levine is an American photograher, painter and conceptual artist. Sherrie is 71 years old and is known mainly for her photography. I have chosen this image as I feel it has meaning that this man looks sad or angry and there is a reason he is like this.

This photograph was taken un 1987 under the postmodernism movement. This photograph connotes a man stood up straight looking towards us with an aggressive look and looking depressed, the man seems as if something has ruined his day with denotes he isn't happy with life and he's living like an old mafia gangster. Sherrie has taken this photo as a medium close up which allows us to see him and his clothes, the photograph connotes a man wearing a fedora and an overcoat which was the stereotypical mafia gangster look, maybe there is something we don't know about this man which denotes he could've possibly killed someone or even multiple people. the angle this photograph is taken at is a medium close up and took portraiture this shows the models shoulders and some of his body, this also connotes how he is feeling and what type of person he is by the clothes he wears.



Allan Sekula


Allan Sekula is an American photographer born in 1951, Allan has also written books and made a couple of films. I have chosen this photograph because I feel there is a story behind this and a reason it was taken and released, this also seems to have journalism/a story that I want to write about.

This photograph was taken in 1973, the year that marked the signing of peace and treaty to the end of the Vietnam War and was Allan's first major work. This photograph denotes an unemployed worker which is in fact his own father and a family in their surrounding social and economic structures. This photograph connotes a family of a father, mother and little daughter, the daughter entertaining herself playing with a ball while her parents look as if they were arguing or going through a divorce/tough marriage time. This photograph is taken as a wide shot and landscape so we can see the whole situation and what is going on in one photo as if we were there seeing it for ourselves.                         this also denotes that these times weren't great for famlies and friends.

Recreation

Here I have tried to re-create the Sherrie Levine portrait photograph of the man stood up looking straight into the camera, this was a rough sketch, idea and edit. I wanted to see how close I could get to recreating this image but if I was to re-create it properly I would face the model to wear a coat and have more of a fierce or even angry look as the model in this image looks more happy and upbeat and this wasn't the idea I was planning on creating, I also had to add the back ground rather than it being in a photoshoot already having a backdrop I had to edit the colour in as close as possible to the image I tried to re-create.

This photograph was taken at a medium shot with a macro lens, this is why the photograph isn't as high quality as I was expecting to achieve but it is as close as i could expect using a macro lens from this far then having to zoom in using Photoshop.
To recreate this image I used Photoshop CC 2018 as this is a professional software and I can use this to my advantage to create any image I would like to. Using Photoshop I used tools such as:
- Rubber
- Polygonal Lasso Tool
- Clone Stamp
- Levels
- Brightness & Contrast
- Brush Tool
Using all these all worked perfectly inivudally as the Polygonal Lasso Tool let me cut out the background of the model and just have him so I can add it into a separate Photoshop Document and start the recreation. The Rubber allowed me to remove the parts of the image background I missed out when using the Polygonal Lasso Tool. Going on to using the Clone Stamp this helped me portion out the size of the models head and the way his hair fell down, when removing the background it is hard to get the head and hair perfectly shaped as it was originally with the lighting going through and the little hairs stuck up so I was available to mostly recover the way the hair and head looked. Leading me to using Levels and Brightness & Contrast this let me get the black and white version of the image look more black and white rather than grey and also helps parts of the model being brighter than the other from the high key lighting environment we were in. The last tool I used was the Brush tool and using this I could colour the background in black using the size 5000 brush and having it set on 100 hardness for the first layer, as you can see the background looks like it has a grey on it I did this by turning the brush hardness to 1 and chasing the colour to grey and adding this over it so it looks as close as possible to the image I tried to re-create without using a studio backdrop.
The shot type I have used to take this photograph is portraiture with a medium close up angle as this is the same way that the photo I have tried to recreate is taken in and you can see from the body upwards.