Finlay MacKay, "Changing Pace, David Weir" for "The Road to 2012"
Born and raised in Scotland, Finlay MacKay studied photography at the Glasgow School of Art before moving to London in 1998. Finlay began working professionally in 2003. His first photographs revealed a highly original style, drawing upon dynamic action, group portraiture, street art, and illustration, as well as classical forms of painting. His imagination, technical knowledge and lighting skill have led to Finlay's recognition as one of new generation of elite photographers working today.
Finlay has photographed some of today's top athletes, entertainers and celebrities.
For the National Portrait Gallery/BT Road to 2012 Project MacKay has moved away from traditional sports approach. By observing and responding to the narratives that the athletes and their training locations present, he has created a series of contemplative scenarios to tell a story of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games from singular perspective.
In this image like most of them from this series - objects are centralized. Also all the athletes are dominant in their natural environment: training places. Big depth of field opens to spectators to feel their environment power. Splay road gives speed sense. Photographer using flashes in his most photographs in this series. Camera position usually same, sometimes tilts up.
Toby Glanville, "Actual Life", 2002
Book of photographs by Toby Glanville taken over three years and starting from two Kent villages, Westerham and Goudhurst. The title, Actual Life, suggests that there is a polemic concealed behind the gentle face of these pictures (the majority of which are portraits). There are many pictures of people over 60 or younger than 20 but not very much in between. Alongside these pictures are a number of photographs taken in schools, giving small institutional details of the kitchens and dining halls. They suggest order, a well bedded down security and will provoke a faint nostalgia for departed youth on the part of anyone who attended such a school. In both his documenting of a particular area and in the manner in which he has photographed people living a life that seems as yet untouched by mobile phones and computers, Glanville is like a latter day Emerson capturing a world soon to disappear - or which has already gone.
Similar to MacKay’s picture this is a portrait in their working environment. Object centralized as well. Lighting is natural here – as most of them in this series. One of dissimilarity between MacKay and Glanville is that Glanville using a natural light in their pictures. However similarity is that environment fills a big part of the pictures. In Glanville’s Actual life series are not only portraits. There is and environment pictures where these people are.
Ulrich Gebert, "Freischneider", 2004
German conceptual photographer Ulrich Gebert was born in Munich and lives and works in Munich and Leipzig. He received his Masters in Photography at Royal College of Art, London, and studied at the Glasgow School of Art and with Timm Rautert at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. He studied in same Art school as MacKay. Ulrich Gebert is interested in principles of ordering: what do they mean, what are the consequential problems of ordering systems? In Ulrich Gebert‘s photography work, nature – explicitly the botanical – as raw material for the human being who, incidentally, likes to maintain order comprises but just the outer layer of the analysis of the relationship between human being, shrubbery and patterns of order. In addition to pictures of vegetation, tamed and cut into form, „Freischneider“ (hedge cutter) also portraits the men who carry the blades.
Gebert interested more in nature: trees, woods etc. By this particular portrait artist’s concept is how humans cut vegetation into unnatural shapes. In this series more pictures are with trees and nature and only one close-up portrait of a man with blades. In my opinion Gebert’s portrait had least similarities with other two task pictures.
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