The American photographer Irving Penn did a project called “Small trades, Big Pride”, This is a series of photographs in a portrait style of workers. All his images are studio which can be also seen as a decontextualized photography. By looking for the definition decontextualized means “To remove an action from a context” (Collins English Dictionary, 1998). Which if seen in photography one can say that a portrait taken in a studio does not say anything about the person. By looking at an image from the photographer Richard Avedon (Figure 1) although he is almost covered in bees nobody can say where he works and what he does. Figure 1: (Richard Avedon - M.Johnson,2010) The photographs were taken in front of a plain backdrop but people are in their working attire and also holding their working tools. This project started in the 1950 in Paris while Penn was ‘working on assignment for Vogue magazine, he began photographing different people working on the Parisian streets.’ (The Reel Foto, 2011). Although this is a collection of 252 images full length portraits and done in a simple studio lighting, some of them according to the research done light was natural coming from a skylight above and from a side window (Figure 2). Figure 2: (The Reel Foto, 2011 ) ‘You would thing that taken out of their comfort zone (their work place) and placed in a photographer’s studio that these people would look rather uncomfortable. On the contrary, armed with their working tools or simply dressed in their uniform, they look confidently into the camera. It becomes quite clear that these men and women are proud not only to be respective vocations but also to be photographed as a representative of their livelihood as well.’ (The Reel Foto, 2011). Figure 3: (The Reel Foto, 2011) Regarding to the research done what is being said that although these people were taken out of from their working place by giving them their working props they still felt comfortable in front of the camera and gave their utmost. Moving on to the Australian photographer Fred Kroh which Kroh himself stated that his work was inspired from Irving Penn’s however what Kroh wanted to do is to photograph these people and their lost trades. ‘This made them exciting to meet and photograph. The fact that across the 2 days there were 14,000 visitors to the fair and the makers barely had time to take a breath let alone have a picture taken, along with constant protestations of “I’ll break your camera” made them quite a challenging subject matter!!’ (F, Kroh, 2015). Although from the research there isn’t anything about how people felt in front of the camera one can still notice that Kroh had a good response to his project for the fact that people didn’t hesitate to go out of their workplace and get photographed to have another memory of their passion and what they do for living (Figure 4 is some of his work). Figure 4: (F,Kroh,2015) References
"A Trug Load Of Portraits! Lost Trades Fair 2015. - Blog". Fredkroh.net. N.p., 2017. Web. 17 Dec. 2016. profile, View. "Irving Penn: Small Trades, Big Pride". Reelfoto.blogspot.com.mt. N.p., 2017. Web. 17 Dec. 2016. "The Definition Of Decontextualize". Dictionary.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 17 Dec. 2016. "Trees And Bees And Mysteries". The Online Photographer. N.p., 2017. Web. 17 Dec. 2016..
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