Fernand Fonssagrives was a French photographer born in 1910 – 2003 and he is revered as one of the e”arliest and greatest practitioners of ‘beauty photography’ in the 1940’s”
His work could be seen on the pages of Vogue, Harpers, Town & Country.
The most memorable work he created was through the unique partnership he had with his first wife, model Lisa Fonssagrives.
Lisa was in fact responsible for Fonssagrives picking up a camera – she gave him a Rollieflex.
“My objective was to try to understand what life was all about and to be free. And there’s no place you can do that but in America. This is why I am here – this passion to be an individual. It is possible in America, despite all these miserable trends. But you have to buck the system at times.”
Once the highest paid photographers in the world, he preferred to remain anonymous. Little was written about him, even at the peak of his success.
Fernand Fonssagrives has been a massive inspiration to me throughout this project, I knew that I wanted to create images with light and shadow on the human body, such as, the face, from the beginning. I wasn’t too sure on whether these images would be part of my finals, but I knew that I definitely wanted to experiment with the idea as it has been something I have always wanted to do. The way he works with light, creating shapes and figures on the human body evokes particular feelings, making the audience realize there is more to photography than pointing and shooting. There is an idea behind the camera, the lighting, the use of shadows, and I see that this photographer has truly captured that in their work.
I used artificial lighting (a torch) and created my own backdrops, and my own textured lights with kitchen appliances, wrappers from food, bubble wrap etc. I put these materials in front of the torch, with the help of the models used for this shoot, and took the photographs and these are the finished results.
I am extremely happy with how these images have turned out, due to the strength in the shadow, the facial expressions and the backgrounds. They are extremely soft yet strong, dramatic images due to the light, which I decided to turn black and white to bring the colours together, with simply black and white being shown, helping the contrast come into view.
I experimented with the models looking away in the distance, and looking into the camera, breaking the forth wall.
My photographs:
PHOT40106 / Visual Communication, Jorja Jones, Supporting Work 