Olivia Parker
'Mostly self-taught she makes ephemeral constructions to photograph and experiments with the endless possibilities of light.' Olivia Parker mostly photographs still life objects, and believes that all of the objects she chooses to photograph provide some signs of life, most of which were inspired by paintings that she had previously seen. She aims to constantly make her viewers thing and reevaluate the photo's meaning by never choosing one focus of the picture.
The photo above shows the remains of some creatures, the bones being placed in a neat arrangement. Parker has made sure to keep a simple colour scheme of white, black and brown to keep the viewer's focus centered on the subject if the photo - the bones. She had documented evidence of a creature's life by photographing its remains.
She has used a wide aperture to allow the whole photo to stay in focus, and likely a fast shutter speed to capture a sharp image. It is clear that artificial lighting has been used as the light reflecting from the brown box is white, and is in the center of the box. This means that Parker likes to have her photographs look very professional and orderly. I like the style of her work - I like how she has put things into different boxes. The meanings behind each set of objects and each photo could be anything - these things are personal to her and have some sort of meaning to her, but it is unclear to the viewer exactly what she wants to show, or how it is personal to her. Viewers of her work can develop ideas about what they may mean, for example, viewers may think that the photo above may represent someone, or something, that she has lost in life - but that is not known for certain. Skills/techniques/ideas to reuse? - The idea of laying out objects in boxes, orderly. - I could use objects that have a personal significance to me and arrange them in boxes. - Instead of boxes, I could open my chest of drawers so that the bottom drawer is pulled out fully, and the top drawer is only pulled out a little bit so contents of each drawer is shown. |