Two - Laurie Simmons

Artist : Laurie Simmons
Date : 2009-2011
Title : The Love Doll

Laurie Simmons is an American photographer born in New York in 1949. In mid 70's she began shooting staged photographs of dolls and dummies.

When I first looked at this series, I was shocked that the model was a doll! It is amazing how Laurie Simmons can create such lifelike portraits using a life size doll. I think the main thing that makes these portraits so life like is how she chooses to pose her model. She uses very natural poses and composition in order to create a realism within the viewer.

One - Larry Sultan

Artist: Larry Sultan
Date: 2004
Title: Photo from The Valley Series

The Valley is a series of documentary style photos taken by Larry Sultan depicting the downtime of pornographic film shoots in California. In 2004 the series was published in his book titled The Valley. I believe Sultans objective was to capture a less obvious but interesting side to the pornographic industry. The images show actors, actresses, and crew taking breaks in between filming, which exposes a realism we otherwise wouldn't see about this industry. The photo above is one of my favorites in this series because of the information captured. We are shown two different aspects of a pornographic film shoot: to the right of the image we are shown a glimpse of the crew during filming, while at the same time experiencing the casual nature of these shoots by the naked woman on a break to the left of the image. 

Tech 1

Shallow DOF

Wide DOF

Fast Shutter

Slow Shutter

Abandoned