Yesterday we made a pit stop at a Walmart in Hondo, Texas. Two photographers ended up photographing the same subject. A couple questions come to mind:
- How do the two photographic approaches affect the way the viewer sees the subject?
- Who were the two photographers? Does it matter?
Left: more naturalistic in its representation of context and use of available light. Fully 3/4 portrait lets the viewer take in all the details of this guy’s face, beard, hair cut, clothes, the location. An empathetic image. Feels “cool” even though it probably wasn’t.
Right: claustrophobic framing, unnatural light from fill flash (to get the eyes out from the hat’s shadow, I’d guess), lens distortion of the face shape make for an unsettling picture. Feels “hot”.
Who made them and does it matter? I’d guess the lefthand is by Alec Soth. I’m less familiar with the rest of the Postcards crew, so I’d have to research to make a guess as to who made the righthand image. Knowing Alec’s work probably lead me to say “empathetic”. Not knowing the hand behind the righthand image mean’s I’m just reading it wholly on the image’s contents plus what context I know of the project and that the picture was made in a Texas Wal-Mart parking lot.
