Opening 'Studio Lighting' Visual Research

Nathaniel Goldberg

Honer Akrawi

Karim Sadli

Karl Lagerfeld

Nicole Bentley

William Lord

Sir John Herschel coined the phrase "photography is writing with light." This visual research demonstrates how light has been directed, 'written', to frame the face. Consistent within all the photographs is this soft shadow which effectively sculptures the side of the face. The lighting clearly 'sculpts' the face, of this solely female subject matter, emphasizing the aesthetic beauty of females and, also, their voyeuristic place as works of art to be admired. I will integrate the use of this simple lighting into my photography as an initial technique which will frame the face and also play on the idea, touched upon in my visual research, of the face's position of attention to the 'voyeuristic' onlooker, as a method of deriving information, personality or attractiveness, of the subject. This is a curious notion when it is clear that a photographic portrait is essentially an abstraction of the subject, a reduction of an individual, which constructs/controls the individuality, personality and essence that can be prescribed to the person.