Mandy Chou - Style Writing

Flag by Lauri Lyons

Lauri Lyons, a contemporary photographer, was born in the Bronx, New York in 1971. However, her family is from Jamaica and later then immigrated to the United States. Lyons is from a military family because both her parents joined the Air Force in US. And Lyons traveled around places like Brazil, Africa, Europe and Australia. For most of times, Lyons uses film and video cameras. And she has a preference for old types of cameras like Mamiyas and Yashicas. In this book, Lyons illustrates people from different cities and countries holding an American flag and talking about their views toward America. The words being mentioned mostly are freedom, violence, crime, beautiful, politics, racism, changes, etc. I think Lyons hopes to connect photos with people’s opinions to show how people from distinguished social hierarchies and diverse cultural background think about America in reality and how people understand the American dream.  

Lyons’ photos are colorful, full, saturated and warm tone. People in her photos look relaxed and pose naturally. Because Lyons combine the environment that they belong with what they are doing at the moment. I would describe Lyons’ photos as interesting and comforting. Even without the side note, I can still feel there are some stories and deep thoughts from the expressions in that person’s eyes. And Lyons also combine the circumstances in vivid colors with people’s postures. There are so much fun for me as a non-US citizen to look through every single photo with unique side note. 

Signs by Peter Granser

Peter Granser was born in Hannover, Germany in 1971 but lived in Austria. And he is a contemporary photographer. He uses film cameras and some with wide angle. Peter travelled widely through the Texas to know more about Texas’s culture, economic conditions, politics and climate. He took photos of all kinds of signs he saw from advertisements, posters, flags and slogans in different places like wasteland, parks, auditorium, parking lot, offices, sidewalk, etc. Peter collected these signs which contain indications of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, religions, immigrants problems, conservative politics, patriotism, american pop culture and others. This photo series of signs in Texas raises the thoughts about thinking about nation’s identity and social problems. Audiences could find out some stereotypical and biased thoughts under theses signs.  

Peter’s photos are also colorful, saturated and warm for most of them. And some of them are symmetrical which are visually pleasing. Every photo has a center which draws your attention at the first sight to look at. The compose of photos are also very natural with the combination of signs and landscape or people. I would describe Peter’s photos as fun and worth to think. The signs are concise but reflecting a lot about the society in Texas. And there are details included in the environment which add more fun and interpretations to the photo.

Night Walk by Henry Wessel

Henry Wessel is an American contemporary photographer born in New Jersey in 1942 and graduated from Penn State. Sadly, he just passed away last month. In Peter’s whole life, he used only on type of camera which is a Leica 35mm film camera with a 28mm wide angle lens and Kodak Tri-x film. In this book, he took photos of neighborhood at night in Los Angeles. There is a beam of light in every photo. Some are from the house and some are from the street lamps. Peter wants to capture how differently the mysterious light at night makes the neighborhood looks like from the daylight. The dim light and shadows will be ignored for most of the time.

Photos in this book are all black and white. And there is always a center which is a dim light for audiences to look at at first. These photos are somewhat lack of ambient light but that’s how it makes photos become unique and mysterious. I would describe these photos as unusual but still witty and interesting. Because it gave us abundant space for audiences to imagine what is going on in the house or around. By looking at these glimpses of neighborhood at night, I will wonder what kind of people are living in this house and how the district will look like in daylight. This is the magic of these creepily interesting photos.