Photographer Research

Arnulf Rainer

Rainers images couldn't better suit the purpose of being desolate, the idea of a portrait of a person,  (a very simplistic portrait, flat, frontal lighting, and a white background)  just to have their features harshly removed, with that of pen, paints and charcoal, destroying their true identity. In this, it is usual for Rainer to remove features that make a  human face distinguishable like eyes, mouths, noses and any other distinctive features of a subject, to be replaced by block colour of mostly blacks, blobs and harsh, carelessly drawn lines, incinerating any form of humanity from the subject. In any portrait excluding eyes and prominent features the subject suddenly can become, personality-less, emotion-less, even portraying the subject almost monster like, portraying them in a light alien to anything the viewer has ever seen before. Rainer uses this to his advantage in any of his work, ranging from portraiture to landscape, with the common trait of post processed vandalism. Even in Rainer's landscapes, a beautiful landscape could be depicted, but with a horrific Rainer style graffiti approach, like an arrow through the heart of an angel, destroying the portrayed hope of a rising sun, by blotting it out with black. To look at Rainers images is both intriguing, but at the same time, often can make the viewer uncomfortable, the thought of such an empty, emotionless, dreamless portrayal of the human form or a beautiful scene, so carelessly but passionately destroyed. Unlike the generic theme of portraiture, Rainer chooses the subject because of their ability to be portrayed, quite simply, as the human form, added to the cocktail of these horrors, a grimace or physically distorted face is mixed in, maybe making the image comical or even just to decapitate any possibility of a shred of hope to be portrayed.

Ed Busiaks images all have recognisable traits to them, where subjects are mostly lacking faces, leaving very little to be said or read from the image, but still portraying a particular scene . In this image, Busiak portrays the image of a man, maybe sitting across from someone or sitting alone at the table, because Busiaks decision to move the face, this makes a quite busy scene (filled with books and posters on the walls) instantly extremely empty, achieving a sense of loss and desolation within the image. Busiak's style in his images means that whatever scene portrayed, the viewer is instantly overcome with this sense of loss and desolation, due to the simple fact that the subject is without a face.

Henning Christoph

Christophs imagery follows a very precise trend in which always the viewer is 'thrown' into his images, helpless not to feel engulfed and distraught by the lack life, the emptiness of the surroundings, the deep, dark grey of the sky really ladles out heaps of despair to the viewer, instantly darkening the spirit of all who's eyes lie upon it. The stark, harsh contrasts and tones, mixed with the smashed brick structures, uneven ground and derelict house and landscape, creates the undesired emptiness, creating the true meaning of desolate for the viewer.

Mark Rothko

Not only are Rothko's images awe - inspiring to behold, the power of each and every image, the brush strokes, the colours, the sheer size, everything so precisely compiled. With every image there is always a single purpose, always to evoke specific emotions within the viewer. Rothko's abstract paintings are unlike any other painter of any generation, with the boldness of his work incomparable to that of anyone else, with such careful precision to be used on such a large scale, with huge block colours but still great time and precsion taken into account for every piece that Rothko created, making each one of his images feel unique and one of a kind and in no way churned out.

With every Rothko image there are always many factors to take into account;

Scale of Rothkos images;

The overwhelming size of Rothko's images becomes completely overpowering to the viewer, making them extremely uneasy like in the presence of a giant, empty and lifeless mass, looming over the viewer, threatening to completely engulf them into such a vast, hopeless state of vulnerability and despair.

The blending of colours;

Carefully considered graduations of colour are used to blend one colour into the next, for the, different style brushes are used for a desired effects.

Colour; Rothko use of colours create many different themes, ideas and feeling like bright colours for hope, joy and wonder and then contrasting to dark, deep colours to portray sadness, despair and desolation. 

Rothkos images are extremely desolate in the form of making the viewer, in whatever atmosphere or location feel completely alone.

Joel Peter-Witkin

A surreal portrait photographer, unlike any other;

Witkins imagery focuses on the odd and unusual, from recreating visions and scenes to creating a freakshow. Witkins ideas are without boundary, creating a recipe of confusion and a weird sense of awe in the viewer. All of Witkins images have a meaning to them, an purpose in which the image has been composed, to portray the not always so obvious, riddled with hidden meanings and concepts.

Story from a book, 1991

Witkin's inspiration for this image of a corpses head with apples on top is more than just what it seems;

The representation, desired by Witkin is that of the fruits of the mind, so bountiful, even delectable, like the contents of a book, a source of adventure and imagination and of knowledge.

It is the idealism of the 'mind', the single, fabrication of the contents of the book 'escaped of its pages', blindly looking forward onto boundaries of which we do not know (pages that have not been reached) and the magic is yet to unfold. To the viewer, there is the mysterious and curious sense of awe, confusion in which the viewer can be overwhelmed with what they are seeing, trying to decipher what exactly it is our mind really sees.

These harsh and controversial ideas given birth by Witkin, creating dark, contrasting, harsh images where the subject is either dead, disfigured or dressed to shock, it is in these techniques that Witkin creates a huge sense of desolation, making the viewer and subject feel very much alone, physically and with thoughts riddled with confusion, becoming uncomfortable at the 'freak' that they are looking at. The viewer creates a sense of sorrow for the subject, the viewers mind is then in turmoil. Witkin usually uses a single subject, in dark, dank rooms and corners, as if they're worth no more, devaluing their human rights as they are different.