Connecting Essay 4

CONNECTING ESSAY 4 

http://www.artspace.com/thomas_ruff

This is a portrait taken by Thomas Ruff of a young lady who is acting as his model. When looking at the lady she appears to be emotionless, without hint of happiness or sadness she is just blank staring into the camera lens. This is apparent in many of Ruff's works when taking photos of people. He seems to adopt the style of just concentrating on faces and not trying to portray any message or emotion. Even though the image doesn't have any message it is still quite interesting, the reason for this is the colours that Ruff has included in the shot. He has put the lady who is wearing a green jumper in front of a pink background which are complimentary colours. In my perspective this gives the photo a very fun, statement look, it makes her stand out from the background but also brings the otherwise boring photo to life.

This image of Ellie is my take on the Thomas Ruff photo. When taking this photo I decided to use the bright pink background the same as the Ruff picture. In this photo you can tell that there isn't really any emotion being portrayed on Ellie's face. She looks quite serious and is not doing anything to suggest her mood. She is wearing a white jumper which contrasts to the bright pink background very well, they don't blend into each other but instead play off of each other. When editing this photo all I done was increase the saturation to make the individual colours stand out more. 

I think these images are very similar in terms of the colour saturation and the way the models are. In both images there is the use of the pink background which is very saturated and compliments the models well. You can also tell from this that they are edited in a similar way, by turing up the saturation to make the colour pop almost unrealistically. Both of the photos also show no emotion as the models are just staring into the camera lens and not moving or trying to portray an emotion. This is effective in both images as you can interpret the photo how you want, it allows the viewer to concentrate on the face rather than the meaning behind it.