Style

Tseng Kwong Chi

Kwong Chi, born in Hong Kong, is an American photographer. Most active during the 1980s, self-portraits were his most well-known body of work.

Self-portraits, in a way, can be described as his style of photography. In many of his work, he photographed himself wearing a “Mao suit” standing in front of famous tourist destination and natural sceneries. Looking at his work feels like looking at his life story touring around the world while keeping his identity in mind as a Chinese. He even appeared in many of his studio works, with his subject and also in his “Mao suit”. Through his facial expressions it is easy to see his passion in photography, and all his photos seems to be expressing his love of life.

His work also focused on identities. In his photos, he almost always appeared in his “Mao suit”, which was a symbol of China during that age, while his subject are usually symbols of the western world. The contract created a tension in his photos, while his confidence smoothed out the awkwardness of the photos. This brings the idea of east meet west to all of his photos.

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams is an American photographer, most famous for photographing landscapes. Living in the mid-20^th century, his photographs are almost all in black and white.

His works are perfect examples of basic photography theories. Most of his landscape photos used the idea of foreground, midground, and background. For example, the photo winter sunrise, he used the cow as the foreground, the mountains as the midground, and the sky as the background, the use of the techniques brought depth to his images. Other basic photo principles such as the rules of the third also commonly appear in Ansel’s photographs, he usually placed the skyline at the upper or lower third of the picture, depending on the main subject.  

Ansel also likes to use lines and curves in his photos. Use the photo ‘Tetons and Snake River’ as an example, the s-shaped river catches viewers’ eyes and bring them into the picture.

In conclusion, Ansel’s works are highly technique based, which are perfect depictions of the beauty of the nature.

Mitra Tabrizian

Mitra Tabrizian, born in Iran, is a British-Iranian photographer. Most of her work are portrait of people in which the scene was carefully set up. The background are usually scenes in the modern life, which tend to be simple without a lot of detail to focus on. While the subject, never look directly at the camera, all shared a similar facial expression full of sadness, and looks lost. All her photos seem to have a narrative behind the setup, the subject is usually doing things the is ordinary and common in everyday life, such as ironing clothes and walking across the street. While they are not actually paying attention to what they are doing, the man ironing the cloth seems to be thinking about something else and the women walking across the street is not paying attention to the cars on the road, which make the viewer wonder what is going across their mind. Her photos, rather than trying to tell a story, focused on representing her ideas, which seems to be the loneliness and isolation in the modern life.