Research Log - Terry Richardson

Terry Richardson

Terry Richardson works with celebrities and is famous for his funky portraits of them. He first started photographing scenes of young people partying along with the New York nightlife before he caught his 'big break'. His use of props, make up and backgrounds all vary, making his pictures even more exciting and fresh for his viewers. One of the things which I found he's really good at is showing the viewer the personality of his subjects. He does this by capturing certain facial expressions on his subjects and by using props, which would add to their facial expression and show off their personality even more. He has also shot campaigns of fashion brands and designers, adding to his fame.

This portrait of Beyonce lacks colour, showing her maturity. The glasses further emphasises this but is then contradicted by her facial expression, suggesting that she's not quite reached adulthood and is still enjoying life.

In this picture, Miley is smoking and this prop has been used so that she is portrayed as a carefree, wild person. This shows her personality and the plain background forces the viewer to concentrate on Miley.

This picture shows Mila Kunis laughing. Once again, a prop is used to highlight her facial features and make the viewer focus on her smile rather than her eyes.

This picture is similar to the ones above but it's still unique. The personality of the subject is portrayed through her clothing and the cigarette in her hand.

As I looked at more and more of his work, I became even more interested in his portraits. Personally, I think they are all extremely original and each portrait matches the person's personality well. His use of facial expressions really helps him to achieve a connection between his viewer and the person in the picture. He makes the viewer feel as if they know the celebrity in the pictures; they know their personality and some viewers may even relate to the portraits, depending what mood is being portrayed. I would like to explore even more of his work and try and apply his techniques to my work when I do portraits.

This photographer has influenced me to a large extent. I am absolutely fascinated with his work and I've fallen in love with his portraiture techniques. I love how he uses facial expression and no more than one prop to show the personality of his main focus. I would love to do more work on this photographer and use him as an example for my work. His white backgrounds are plain yet effective; the viewer has nothing to concentrate on in the picture other than the person.

I have shown these techniques in some of my work. I have tried using facial expressions and a prop to make my subject stand out; this what Richardson does. I think this has worked well for me because this technique has allowed me to create a relationship between the viewer and my main subject. The fact that my subject is looking straight at the camera further adds to this relationship.

In summary, Richardson's work is incredible and although his techniques are repetitive, somehow they still work just as well in each portrait. This may be because of the different moods and emotions each picture gives out, setting the atmosphere for the viewer. They are intimate and can be argued to have one or two similarities to Mapplethorpe's work.