2. Tierney Gearon
Tierney Gearon was born in Atlanta, GA,
and is a contemporary photographer who
is based in Los Angeles. She acquired
images of her family on various trips
around the world, where she was then
discovered by Charles Saatchi. Her images
became an overnight sensation when the
images of her kids suffered public
scrutiny. Her other work also gives the
viewer and intimate look into her
relationship with her mentally ill mother.
They capture the raw intensity but also
her free spirit. In her work titled
“EXPLOSURE” she pushes herself and
uses double exposure to produce
amazing narratives. Her projects acted as
personal journals for her and her family,
following the birth of her two children
and the breakup of her marriage. Her
exposure work was created manually,
inside the camera, and each image has
been carefully composed by combining
two images that act as counterparts to
each other. Tierney used the more
traditional method of double exposure, as
she did not use photo editing software to
produce her work. However, her work is
still classed at contemporary because she
uses modern technology, such as a DSLR
camera, and her work is displayed in
galleries and also in books.
3. Melinda Gibson
Melinda was born in the UK and studied
photography at the London College of
Communication. From 2006 onwards, she
assisted various photographers including
Martin Parr and Wolfgang Tillmans. During
this time she also continued to develop her
own photographic practice. Her well-known
work, titled “The Photograph as
Contemporary Art” analyses the educational
text by Charlotte Cotton. Each of Melinda’s
images for this project contain a trio of
images taken from the book. It shows various
images made into one as Melinda literally cut
pieces out and stuck them together to create
pieces that are both playful and haunting,
sparking questions in our minds. The
audience begins to question our educational
system, copyright and licensing, and also
their own participation into such work.
Gibson said that by slicing, cutting, and
decontextualising these images she gained a
greater appreciation of the other
photographer’s work. She claimed to then
understand why the images were created
and how they were created. Melinda most
likely created her work by using Photoshop
to cut out pieces of different imagery, which
is a more non-traditional method than if she
had done it by hand. Her photography is a
modern representation of the system that
we live by.
4. Clarence John Laughlin
Laughlin was an American photographer who
was best known for his surreal photographs
taken of the Southern U.S. In his work Lost
New Orleans, which began in 1937, Clarence
attempted to capture the authenticity of the
old buildings in New Orleans. The buildings in
this imagery were not renovated or
modernised for the tourist trade, instead they
were “lost” in time. He approached these
building as if they were poetic documents, and
shunned narrow viewpoints of their history
and architecture. I think that these images are
quite ghostly and eerie. I may think this
because these are much older to me than they
were to Clarence when he photographed
them, but the destruction and order
comparison is very interesting. The shadowy
figure in the top right image makes it look
more mysterious, and the two bottom images
show the impact of destruction and gives you
an interesting perspective of the chaos shown
in the photograph. Laughlin’s work is obviously
historical, and given the time when he
produced this work he will have used
traditional methods when capturing these
images. When Clarence died, he left behind a
huge collection of books and images. His work
continues to be shown around the U.S. and
there are a number of books displaying his
work currently in print.
