Connecting Essay 4

Picture I have found:

This image that I have chosen, is a portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe. In this photo there is a plain, white background, and then leaning in towards the middle of the image, from the right is a man. However, we can mostly see his arm, and slightly see his face and body. I like this photo because the man is smiling as though he is teasing the photographer by only leaning in and not fully being in the photograph. On the other hand, i like that the model is mostly on the right-side of the image because it makes us look at that side first and the most, and then we look at the rest of the image. 

My Photograph:

My photograph is from a location shoot where we had to take photo's based on Mapplethorpe's work. As this was the location shoot, I have used a brick wall as a background. In this image we can see the model's arm stretching over from the right to the left of the image, and then we can only see less than half of his body and face. Obviously the first thing that a viewer will look at is the model because he's 3D, however, as his arm is stretching over most of the image, I think the viewers follow the same motion and therefore look at the centre of the image as well, and so look at the background too. I like the brick wall as a background, although it isn't plain, I don't think it is distracting because the bricks are set in a repeated pattern, and so each part of the wall is more or less exactly the same. 

The connection:

These photographs are similar because both make the viewers start looking at the right hand side, and then gradually attract them to the rest of the image (the centre and left hand side). In both of these images the first thing that we see is a man reaching his arm out from the right, to the left, and we can also see almost half of his body and face. These portraits also connect because in both, the model's arm looks slightly careless and droopy, as though he's not even trying to reach for something, he's just stretching it across the surface of the background. I also like that both images almost tease you with not being able to see model fully.