1 Domestic Landscapes by Bert Teunssen

Domestic Landscapes is a book of portraits of Europeans at home. The subjects are the hosts of their houses. They are either sitting or standing in their own home. Bert Teunssen is the photographer of this book. He photographed those people with his wide angle lens. The wide angle gives more information of the house and expresses a sense of home. The lighting plays a key role in the book. Window light really softens the light, which makes the portraits and environment smooth. The window light also allows photographer to reveal the emotional bonds between people and their home. The facial expression under those lighting condition becomes more interesting. In addition, the series of photographs tell stories. Most of people who were photographed did not smile, which draws all the attention to their eyes and emotion on their faces. The interior design is another important piece. Different colors of the wall, diverse decoration of the wall and interesting small items tell stories of the owner of the house. Some portraits are set in kitchen. Others are set in living room. The photography of unique home settings really shows people’s characteristics, which makes Bert Teunseen’s works exclusive.

2 Three front by Jiagang Chen

I find this book very interesting because what photographer tries to express has strong connection with me. Jiagang Chen is a photographer from China. In Three Front this book, he photographs a lot of abandoned factories railroads and other scenes in his homework Panzhi hua. Those places in his homework represent an era in China. It was the part of history a lot of people start to forget and ignore. Those photograph can remind people of history and warn them not to choose the same path as people did in 1960s and 70s. He used a lot of leading lines to draw audience’s attention to something. We can also see a lot of motions in his photography. A tripod with slow shutter speed is able to present this kind of photos. He used dark and grey tone to replicate the feeling of old time that people worked in bad condition.This tone also suggests the age of places. He hired a model who appear in many images. She always dresses in Chinese traditional dress with bright color. The contrast between dull environment and bright color from dress conveys his ideology of photography. It also becomes his own style to present history in present. He said “western photography documents the present, I want to photograph history.” It becomes a really exclusive ideology of documentary  in China, even in the world.  Because China made a lot of changes in late 1970s, people started to focus more on developing economy and catch up with western world. We, including me, don’t pay attention to the history anymore,

3 The space outside by Guy Russell

My first impression of this book is Minimalism, a expression ideology of being simple. Photographer Guy Russell really focus on lines in this book “The space outside”. In order to accomplish this effect, he photographed those things in strong lighting condition. I would guess a lot of them were photographed during midday or afternoon. The strong sunlights really draw distant lines between shape of items and shadows. High contrast is another obvious feature of his style. Most of photographs are full of white and black. The grey part only play small roles in this book. The subjects he photographed are not hard to find in our life. They are all around us such as white walls,  windows and trees. However, because of minimalism, those things become extremely extrusive in the photos. They are geometric beauty with clear lines, but at the same time, they all have special meanings. Moreover, I notice shadows are crucial for those photos. They give extra feelings for audience. It is really hard to articulate the exact meaning of his photography, but they all leave enough space for people to imagine. A great amount of his works are pretty abstract. That’s why those photos belong to him.