Research. The Constructed Image.

MISHKA HENNER

Mishka Henner was born June 8, 1976. He is a Belgian artist living and working in Manchester, England.

His work has been featured in several surveys of contemporary artists working with photography in the internet age.

Some has described him as a modern-day Duchamp due to his appropriation of image-rich technologies including Google Earth, Google Street View, and YouTube and for his adoption of print-on-demand as a means to bypass traditional publishing models.

Many of his works resulted in print-on-demand books, films and installations that featured in large-scale museum surveys in France, Canada, and the US.

He is known for conceptual art, appropriation art, documentary photography and post internet.

Photographs taken by Mishka Henner are extremely interesting as they are usually close up shots of people. It appears as if the people in the photograph have been printed on a square piece of see-through paper, placed on-top of each one at different angles, layering it more and more which is what gives the image a faded soft feeling.

The photographs themselves appear to have maybe been taken in a controlled environment due to that fact that the models faces are well lit and soft boxed. She is looking directly into the camera lens, which is what gives the photograph a personal feel. There isn’t a lot of colour in this image and I think that it was intended that way because the photographer wanted the audience to see the model and only the model in an interesting way. As the image goes on, its clear that it is fading out and it is getting lighter each time.

However, unlike a lot of this photographers other pieces, it is obvious that these photographs are in black and white, which gives the photograph a much more atmospheric feeling, making the background match well with the background, concluding that the image looks even more faded than in the coloured photographs that have been used. It has, again, been layered and the focal point is the girls face due to the fact that it is the lightest part of the image, despite it being all the same colour. This shows that the photograph has been taken in a controlled environment because of how soft and light the girls face looks. She has a neutral looking facial expression, making the photograph appear a lot more atmospheric.

I think that these images are extremely effective due to the piercing direct stare of each person and due to the way that we can only see the persons face, we as the audience, are unable to see the background, the body, we have lost the ability to see past the blank expressions on their faces and because of this, there is a slight eery vibe to the images.