Slow

Referencing classical portraiture and traditional printing techniques, this series is a connection and display of the benefits the analogue process has added to my own photography. Slow is a series of studio portraits depicting friends in a classical light: photographed with Medium Format cameras, black and white film and a traditional platinum printing process.

This series pays homage to photographer Irving Penn, whose approach in the studio was more akin to a painter, particularly in contrast to his contemporary Richard Avedon’s dynamic fashion portraiture. Penn remarked that while Avedon brilliantly captured “an aspect of truth which is completely momentary”, he himself was pursuing a “fatter aspect of the truth”.

By virtue of slowing the photographic process down, my photography has become more deliberate. Using an unglamorous and simple studio setting, my method for this series of portraits has been to approach the subject slowly, attempting to draw out something that wasn’t immediately evident at first glance. The intention with this approach is to extract an element of truth from the subject which is more than just momentary.