Film Noir
1. Project Outline: What is the work about, how does it manifest itself? What ideas, issues, concepts are you interested in that have a direct bearing on the work.
What I’m trying to achieve for my final major project is challenge myself by exploring the notions of performance within photography, It is because of my admiration of classic Hollywood movies I have decided to recreate Film noir style images that will look like film stills, most of them staged, models performing and dressed as different characters as expected in Film noir style movies.
I see Film noir as stylistic approach to photography, it is beautiful and inventive cinematography that is still highly popular within modern film industry. What draws my attention to it is black and white contrast photos with intense shadow and lighting. It is a narrative representation of fictional characters,
I believe that Film noir period can be identified between 1941-1958 beginning with the great masterpieces such as John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon and ending with Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil.
What I found most fascinating about film noir is constant opposition of light and shadow, it’s oblique camera angles, and it’s disruptive compositional balance of frames and scenes, the way characters are placed in particular shot which could be quite unconventional.
For me it is also very important to understand the gender development in Film noir context. The portrayal of the Femme fatale and rapidly defined gender roles by building up the powerful and independent women.
Film noir the femme fatale was a portrayal of women as they had never been seen before. She was the exciting, illicit desire of the male protagonist. She could lure a man to commit murder for her own purposes. The murder would usually be that of the man's wife. In film noir, the gender roles had changed, the woman was usually the stronger character and sometimes the villain.
The femme fatale was impossible to resist. She destroyed the
What I’m trying to achieve for my final major project is challenge myself by exploring the notions of performance within photography, It is because of my admiration of classic Hollywood movies I have decided to recreate Film noir style images that will look like film stills, most of them staged, models performing and dressed as different characters as expected in Film noir style movies.
I see Film noir as stylistic approach to photography, it is beautiful and inventive cinematography that is still highly popular within modern film industry. What draws my attention to it is black and white contrast photos with intense shadow and lighting. It is a narrative representation of fictional characters,
I believe that Film noir period can be identified between 1941-1958 beginning with the great masterpieces such as John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon and ending with Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil.
What I found most fascinating about film noir is constant opposition of light and shadow, it’s oblique camera angles, and it’s disruptive compositional balance of frames and scenes, the way characters are placed in particular shot which could be quite unconventional.
For me it is also very important to understand the gender development in Film noir context. The portrayal of the Femme fatale and rapidly defined gender roles by building up the powerful and independent women.
Film noir the femme fatale was a portrayal of women as they had never been seen before. She was the exciting, illicit desire of the male protagonist. She could lure a man to commit murder for her own purposes. The murder would usually be that of the man's wife. In film noir, the gender roles had changed, the woman was usually the stronger character and sometimes the villain.
The femme fatale was impossible to resist. She destroyed the