Deadpan Photography

Quick Note - Photograph the flat shapes on the closed down stores followed by text

What is Deadpan Photography?

"These pictures may engage us with emotive subjects, But our sense of what the photographer's emotions might be is not the obvious guide to understanding the meaning of the images. The emphasis, then, is on the photography as a way of seeing beyond the limitations of individual perspective, a way of mapping the extent of the forces, invisible from a single human standpoint, that govern the man-made and natural world. Deadpan photography may be highly specific in its description of its subjects, but it is seeming neutrality and totality of vision is of epic proportions" 
Taken from The Photograph as contemporary art, Page 81. 

• Deadpan refers to a plain lack of expression - applied to the sitter / subject

• "...Neutral expressions and cool, head-on compositions have become one of the signature styles of today's art photography. Some have called it deadpan photography: The tone is impassive, matter-of-fact, detached. Often the people are posed..."

• Deadpan photography is where the subject shows no emotion

• I describe deadpan photography as "It-is-what-it-is" or "Just-the-facts-ma'am" photography. It emphasizes objective over subjective. The photographer works as a documenter of reality rather than an expresser of emotions and invites an intellectual rather than an emotive response from the viewer.

Here, I can now gather that the use of Deadpan Photography is a photograph that shows or hints any form of emotion about it. Mainly by using 100% straight lines and a simple composition. 


Idea - Shape and lines of the building, Nothing else in the photo. Maybe photograph on a large piece of white background that expands around the image to isolate it further from anything else. Use of Photoshop.




"Jitka Hanzlova, for instance, a Czech artist, presents a small body of work that emerged from approaching black women in Brixton and asking them to pose for her. The resulting images are utterly deadpan: the women, about whom we can surmise nothing except that they are open to being persuaded to have their photo taken by a stranger, simply face the camera and wait for it to be over."
Found here


We can make what we want to make from the photograph without being guided or persuaded by parts of the image. It gives freedom when exploring and uncovering images. 


These photographs of closed shops at first would be thought to give dull and sad feelings, but I at the moment think that it is the way we photograph them that gives them the emotion. If photographed straight on and level, it might have less emotion. Or if I reduce the tonal range or boosted up the saturation it may uncover more ideas and new emotions, This is what I do not want, To do minimal editing as possible to the photograph and to show it for what it is at that moment in time. 


Maybe there will be emotion there in the image, if the viewer knows what the shop used to be and now see's it for what it is when it is closed down, that may produce happy/sad feelings to the viewer but that will be different to each person and I dont think there will be a way to completely take that away but to concentrate more on how it is photographed.