FMP Contextual - Gary Winnogrand

Garry Winnogrand


Garry Winogrand was a street photographer, although I think his work is more social documentary based, best known for his portrayal of the United States in the mid-20th century. Winnogrand worked alongside Joel Meyerowitz, Lee Friedlander, Tod Papageorge and Diane Arbus in the 1960s, photographing the streets of New York.


Winnogrand's work looks really natural in my opinion, the subjects seem to be doing their day to day activity, instead of posing for a shot. I think this is one of the key features to his photography

FMP Contextual - Lee Friedlander

Lee Friedlander is an American photographer and artist. His most famous work was made in the 1960s and 70s, working primarily with 35mm cameras and black and white film. Friedlander seems to work primarily with social documentary and urban landscapes, producing contrasty black and white photographs


Here are some examples of Friedlander's work, personally I think Friedlander has captured an 'eerie' effect with his photographs, they look like there's more than first meets the eye (especially in his landscape photographs, like the one below). It is clear why Friedlander is as popular as he is, his work is quite unique. For example, the first of the three photographs below has really soft whites and greys, with a few bold black parts in the middle, instantly grabbing your attention and standing out from the rest of the surroundings.

FMP Contextual - Thomas Joshua Cooper

Thomas Joshua Cooper is an American photographer. He is considered 'amongst the premier contemporary landscape photographers'.

Cooper was inspired by the works of the photographers of the f/64 group of the 1930s and 1940s, such as Ansel Adams. Cooper states, "I'll live and die by the late works of Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, and I think Robert Frank is the most extraordinary living photographic picture-maker."

Cooper loves being a photographer, but is frustrated by some of the vocabulary that is used in the field. He indicates, "I hate the words "snap", "shoot" and "take" when it comes to making photographs. Everything I do is very seriously built up. They are 'made' pictures."

Not only a photographer, Cooper is a poet and has written haiku books. Most of them are inspired by nature and reflect his photography.

He currently resides in Glasgow, Scotland, where he founded the Fine Art Photography Department at the Glasgow School of Art in 1982. He is now a senior researcher in the faculty of Fine Art, holding a Professorial role and Head of Department. He is married to Catherine Alice Mooney and together they have two daughters, Laura Indigo Cooper and Sophie Alice Cooper.

FMP Contextual - Stuart Redlar

Stuart Redlar shoots mainly black and white architectural photographs. His work focuses a lot on lighting, as can be seen in the photographs below. Harsh, overexposed bits of light seem to be a reoccurring theme to Redlar's work. His use of darkness and shadows allows him to make great photographs that look quite deep. 

FMP First Shoots

I had decided to change my theme from 'musical documentaries' to something more landscape or architecture based, but hadn't quite decided on what to focus on within the two subjects. So I decided to shoot some photographs just to try and find some inspiration and to try to get a theme.

The first lot of shooting I did was based around signs and text, but didn't enjoy the task at all. It was almost like photographing other people's work, and it felt a bit half hearted, so I decided to stay away from shooting similar things, the photographs below are the ones I took.

After photographing signs, I decided to walk through Jack Keys photographing anything that looked interesting, most of which turned out to be plants of fences. I enjoyed this much more than photographing the signs mainly because there was so much more to see. Aswell as that, everything I photographed in Jack Keys was three dimensional, unlike the signs which were mostly flat, giving very little room to work. 

FMP Contextual - Masao Yamamoto


 Yamamoto began his art studies as a painter, studying oil painting under Goro Saito in his native city. He presently uses photography to capture images evoking memories. He blurs the border between painting and photography however, by experimenting with his printing surfaces. He dyes, tones (with tea), paints on, and tears his photographs. His subjects include still-lives, nudes, and landscapes. 

Masao puts up his exhibition without frames, sticking small pictures to the wall. Putting numerous pictures on wall, Yamamoto creates a large scale photograph made of smaller installations. All his photographs are hand printed, and carried round in his pockets for a while to roughen the pictures up.

21st Editions recently published Yamamoto's work in two limited editions, a Deluxe Edition ($9000) and Prism book ($750).

Masao Yamamoto makes very 'quiet' landscapes, they all have quite an eery look to them, something I am considering trying to add to my work. Yamamoto uses very empty, open sceneries in his photographs to make very basic looking landscapes.