3 Photographers. Defining Style.

Steve Fitch - Gone

Tends to photographs abandoned places in different stages of decay. Images all feel desolate and “left in time.” Often show items that would be used by people, but are left untouched. For example an empty collapsing couch, trailer, doorway, stage, living room, kitchen, television. All items appear to have been unused for a prolonged period of time. All the rooms and colors are dated. Mustard yellows and pea greens are common along with dark wood. There is always muted light that catches dust, wood chips, cracks and chips very well. The light shades appear to glow, and the dark shadows slowly seem to slowly obscure parts of the image. Random objects are centered but just as often placed on the left or right. Images all feel as though I am in the space either standing and looking straight ahead or down. The camera must be kept at eye level for all his images.

The content of the images (usable objects), condition/appearance of the spaces, lighting, and chosen point of view create a frozen moment where it feels as though I am in that moment. The desolate homes or rooms all at one point had inhabitants that left all of this behind. Fitch’s work makes the viewer question who, when and why?

Catherine Wagner -Home and Other Stories

Images all feel very static in black and white. There are hardly ever shadows, making the dark objects always pop on the gray or white backgrounds. Compositions never hold too much. Rooms feel empty and bleak despite objects like balloons, pictures and drawings. Not everything is always neat and tidy, but somehow even the messier rooms feel empty. There is almost always a centered component, or something filling the frame. Often images are in related groups that correlate to an overarching subject (i.e. a birthday party). The lights are often at times on, but seem to not exhibit any light, same goes with open windows. Curtains and lights just seem to glow, while the whole room remains at one constant brightness, from no single source. All images are taken within a home that seems to lack an sort of life.

All items in the frame appear like signs of a positive family life; pictures, childish drawings, portraits, hand stitched pillows, food, balloons, pets, plants, but the use of black and white and an overall gray image seems to transform the homey setting to a bleak empty unused place. It feels as though the happy people in the photographs on the walls must have never been here, or they just dropped off the earth. Each one of Wagner’s images also makes you wonder. What happened here? Where did they go? 

Duane Michals - (PHOTO) (PHOTO)^2…

Uses sequencing to show a story. Often dark and ominous or supernatural. One object will enter a room, a man will pass another then disappear, and angel will engage with a woman in bed only to become a man and flee, the viewer will be transported through many mirrors, etcetera. All her images even those that are not sequenced are black and white with heavy contrast between light and dark. A sense of mystery and fear is found in the lack of detail and focus. Often the blacks consume the details of the image, hiding the subject or cloaking them. White is rare, more often is there gray. She also compiles sequenced images into faded overlapping figures. Mirrors, too are common. The subject can be found in the mirrors reflection distorted or out of proportion.

Michals creates questionable settings using nudity, mirrors, unnatural events, black and white, strong shadows, and dimly lit frames. The viewer rather than having a question can often grasp the meaning or message behind an image. Each sequence or picture seems to propose a concept or point of view, whether it be demonic or about self awareness. Michals seems to cover a broad range of ideas with her images.