Russ Flatt- Digital tech week 3

Russ Flatt

Born in 1971 Russ Flatt is a New Zealand photographer who specialises is Fashion and portraiture photography. Russ was born in singapore even though his mother is Maori and his Father is English Russ was brought up a European.One of Russ Flatts work is based on Memories he has from his childhood ,this series was called Paper Planes. Russ Flat was over seas for 15 years 10 years in New York 5 years in London, Russ had to come over to New Zealand for his Fathers Funeral and then came to know that his Mother and sister were diagnosed with terminal cancer both past away within a year of his Fathers funeral. This caused Russ to suffer from depression but i think he channeled his depression into his photography creating some very beautiful and touching imagery. Russ Would have very graphic dreams about his childhood, this would probably be because he was always thinking about his childhood past and how its made him who is today and then he was thinking about the future and who is going to be, Russ was looking through old family photos and came up with the idea of re-shooting the photographs of his Childhood memories. Russ then rented a house for a weekend where he was going to get models to Re-in act his childhood memories and he would photograph, Russ had to think about many things for this photo shoot because he only had 3 days to come up with a body of imagery, because he only had a short amount of time he had to plan the times of the day that he would Re-shoot certain family photographs so he could have the perfect light composition and he also had to think about where he would shoot the scenes, after three days Russ only came out with 11 photographs. Russ Flatt's images all tell a story which makes it more of a personal experience for who ever is looking at his work, It could also bring back childhood memories for the viewers giving them mixed emotions. I feel I can really relate to Russ's work because I come from a small country town myself and was brought up by my grandparents so i was influenced in everything i do by an older generation, just like him.

Experimentation

Here are some portraits i took which was inspired by Russ Flatts photo series 'Perceiving Identity'. In this photo series he has Portraits shot just below the chest and up of men. I took the idea of how he framed the portraits and how he left a bit of a gap above the subject and put into my own photographs. For my images i wanted to photograph people who meant something to me and how i knew them, wether it be for their laugh, smile or love for cricket. These portraits below are of my friends in the village, i feel I've captured their personalities perfectly! Ive photographed each person in their everyday environment so they feel relaxed then i can capture who they are, not the face they put on for the outside world

I actually tried to do an exact replica of this portrait below

And this is my emulation of it... I feel it was successful. The framing of the subject is almost exact only difference is the Tattoo on the chest and obviously the model. Even the facial expressions are similar.