Xiaoyu Yan--style writing

dark city by Lynn Saville

Lynn Saville, a New York artist, published photography album Dark City in 2015. She is an American female photographer who lives in New York with her poet husband. Her style is pretty special which focus on urban cityscape. Her works can easily different from others’ works, due to the reason that she prefers to take photographs of the version of midnight urban New York city, especially captured the combination of neon light and the shadow of objects or building corners. The New York city she lives is a prosperous city where decorated by shinny neon light, tall buildings and several magnificent bridges, which I think is the reason that contribute to her unique midnight urban cityscape style.  Most of her works are photographed in large cities like New York, Chicago, or some famous cities in California, Illinois, Ohio where full of shinny tall buildings.

I have been to New York a lot of times, so in my perspective, New York is a sin city for me. It is a city includes a lot of people’s dream and it is the center of American development but it is also a city that brings down the dark side in deep heart of people. However, the photographs that Lynn Saville presented really impressed me a lot. Because the photographs she took present the combination of light and dark, and the light part always catch my eyes even all the photographs were taken during night. She presented a totally different New York city in my mind. All her photos are colorful, cold tone and feel lonely even though the photos are bright.

The place of no roads by Ville Lenkkeri

Ville Lenkkeri was born in 1972 in Oulu, Finland. He graduated from one of the famous Helsinki School. The photography album The Place of No Roads, Lenkerri visits two towns in Russia, the photos were taken in a Soviet ghost town where is one of the morthernmost outposts of a Russian mining community in the Arctic landscape. According to his pictures, it is more like a film, and he concentrated his photograph on landscape or certain objects like sofa or piano etc. According to Ville Lenkkeri himself, the album of The Place of No Roads just like ballad in the life.

The photographs that Ville Lenkkeri taken are colorful and cold tone, feels like very old. The color and objects seems pretty nature and put in comfortable construction and present into my eyes. As myself, I am not a fan of landscape photograph however I still choose this book because Ville Lenkkeri’s style impressed me a lot and his style is different from others. In his photos, he can always make very comfortable version of the whole objects or good angle of the nature landscape. Everything seems natural in his photographs. For example, the red color sofa and the white color wall make contrast to catch people’s eyes. In the landscape part, he used deep depth of field a lot to photograph the nature of the landscape. In my opinion, I would describe his style as nature, contrast and comfortable and I have to say his photograph style is my type.

Eikoh Hosoe 

Eikoh Hosoe is a well-known Japanese photographer and filmmaker who born in the era of Second World War. In 1950s he studied photography at Tokyo College of photography. As a photographer, He is a big fan of taking photos to express death, obsession and human body. Most of his famous photographs are successful due to the reason that he really had good skill on presenting human portraits or body arts.  Eikoh Hosoe also managed to experiment with various photographic techniques of dissociation, for instance, a photo titled "Witnesses of the end of the twentieth century" was developed through the combination of the photogram, Ei-Q photo design, and solarisation.

In Eikoh Hosoe’s photography album, all his photos are black and white. I don’t like his style because his photos make me feel cold-blood and very uncomfortable. But I still choose this book because his photographs are different from others and his style is remarkable. He has strong skill on catching people’s feature through camera. He is good at using white light and black shadow to present people’s facial and body language. Some of his photos are focus on one part of human body such as arms, legs, hands or heads. Some photos present sexuality visions. All of them are in black and white. In my opinion, I think black and white photographs can be the best way to portrait human feature. I would like to describe his images as cold-blood, scared and memorable. His images can easily catch my eyes but I don’t like them.