Yinhao Feng Style Paragraphs

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese photographer and architect. At the age of 12, his father bought a large format view camera but soon gave up learning how to use it. It was then passed down to Sugimoto, and he learned how to use the camera and started photographing. His photos are taken on black and white film and printed on gelatin silver prints. He uses both horizontal and vertical framing in his photographs. Some of his photos have sharp focus, while the others are completely out of focus. In his out of focus photographs, there are strong guiding lines, geometric shapes, and symmetry. He also frames his seascape photos so that the sky and the sea each takes up exact half of the frame. He masters the use of long exposure, especially in his theater photographs. His exposure was the same as the movie’s length. He seeks to capture time with his photos, according to his interview, which is why he photographed the whole durations of movies and the seascapes. He explained that the seascape is the view that ancient humans perceived, which makes his photographs connect us with the ancients like “time machines” in a sense. His photos seem to convey a transcendental feeling or concept rather than depicting the actual subject in it. They are balanced and clean, without any distracting objects. His out of focus photos resemble the minimalism style, where there is nothing but shapes or lines in the frame.

Anton Stankowski

Anton Stankowski was a German graphic designer, painter, and photographer. While he is more well-known as a graphic designer, he did experiment with photography using his Leica, Rolleiflex and other cameras to enrich his graphic designs. Rather than focusing on photographic technique, Stankowski looked for concepts from graphic design such as typography in his photographs. His photos are black and white with both horizontal and vertical framing. Most of his photos are close ups of real-life objects, which are possibly taken with a standard or telephoto lens. These photos resemble the advertisement photos or the ones that are used in web designs. They depict the details and texture of things like glass bowls, dishes, and silverware. The objects are deliberately positioned or prepared to convey a dynamic feel in the photo. Plus, likely produced in his indoor studio, his photographs of those small objects have a low contrast and a gray tone throughout. Some of his photos are slightly out of focus, but not entirely, and thus it might be unintentional. Overall, he tried to fill up his frame with his subject most of the time, and it draws the viewer closer to the actual subject, letting the viewer observe the natural beauty and detail of it.

Henry Wessel

Henry Wessel was an American photographer. He accidentally began photography when he was studying at Penn State University. He borrowed a Leica camera and was fascinated by the view through it. Since the start, he had only used a Leica 35 mm camera, a 28 mm lens, and Kodak Tri-X film to make black and white images. By limiting his camera gear, he had almost developed an instinct of manipulating the camera to produce the photographs he wanted. He developed and printed his own pictures. After he took his photos, he set them aside for a year before choosing which one to print. He said it allowed him to make better decisions. He used both horizontal and vertical framing, and the rule of thirds is also usually found in his photos. After a closer look, it is obvious that he framed his picture carefully because each piece of detail in his photographs makes the whole image balanced. If an object is taken out from a photo, the balance is usually gone. Nonetheless, he is not concerned with cutting off objects on the edge of the frame, which could be a result of only using a wide-angle lens, especially in indoor environments. However, his photos in this collection, “Odd Photos”, were not taken deliberately or meant to be in a series. He called them “quirky” and they surely convey an odd feeling to the viewer.