Andrea Bricco and Henrik Bonnevier

Andrea Bricco

Context

These are professional photographs taken by Andrea Bricco, who is a food and lifestyle photographer. Mainly influenced by her Family‘s restaurant with the presentation of the food and the recipes severed, she managed to weave in this love of food with photography. Her work has been published in many magazines such as GQ, Angeleno Magazine, Urbanite Magazine and Art Culinaire.

Meaning   

For my further understanding of her work I have continued to look at her other pieces of photography on her website. It is clear that she mixes in lifestyle with her love of food, she does this by featuring the person who made the food in their environment, I think that this is a theme running through her photos.

In the photos featured here I don’t think that lifestyle is shown so much because they are not showing the person making the food or in their own environment. I think these pieces are a lot different to her other ones because it looks rather messy and to me the food doesn’t look very appetising compared to the other ones, as it is chopped up and half eaten. This may mean that it is showing the artists nature towards eating food, which she loves it so much that she just wants to get stuck into it and doesn’t care about the mess that is created.  

Aesthetic

A few techniques have been used to create the photograph; she has used the traditional still life and has also sketched out a pumpkin and a garlic to be featured instead of having just a plain background. The sketches are very simple contour drawings and no detail or colour has been used towards these drawings for detail either. I think the pumpkin drawing in the left hand side photo reminds me of the fairy tale when they turn the pumpkin into a carriage in Cinderella.

The colours used are very dim; this adds to the old feel that I get towards this photograph. I think the objects used in the photograph also helped towards this old feel because of the fancy looking cutlery.

Personal response 

When I first saw this piece I didn’t like it very much, this because it didn’t stand out and to me looked very bland. My favourite part of this piece was the chalk drawings in the background. For some reason the photograph reminds of a time set in the 19^th century, I think it’s because of the food featured and the old looking cutlery. 

Henrik Bonnevier 

Context

Henrik Bonnevier is a still life photographer who uses block colours in his pieces. He is sometimes known to advertise well known brands like Heinz, whilst also photographing for his own satisfaction. 

Meaning

To help me with the understanding of his work, I have looked through other pieces of his on his blog, most of his pieces are used to advertise in some way, in this photograph for example the artist has used a Chanel perfume bottle. His photography, especially in this photo gives off a very vintage feel; I think even the colour emphasises this is the colour is not totally bold it's slightly faded giving it an old feel. The objects used in the photo also emphasise this from the type of shoes to the yellow briefcase in the background. The brief case because you don't see many people with suitcases any more when going to work or in my case college. The furniture reminds me of doll house furniture which also gives off a very vintage 60's feel, even the shape and design of the furniture is rather old.

Aesthetic

Bonnevier has taken time to arrange these objects in a certain way; so as to have each object showing just as much as the other, none of it is more hidden than any other object, which means each piece is equally placed and partitioned. In this piece Bonnevier has just used a simple still life using only two colours allowing for the hints of gold on the objects here and there. Yellow and green are the only colours that are used in this piece, which are two very contrasting colours, which allows for all the objects to stand out. The colour of the objects have been mixed in together, by this I mean that they haven't just used the green as the background and using just yellow objects to create his still life, this means that the colour of the objects don't blend in together. 

Bonnevier has also messed around with the scale of the objects, by using tiny dolls house furniture and mixed it in with life sized shoes and books, this makes his piece unique. I think it also influences the way the person looks at the photograph, if this piece was in a magazine the person creating this would want your eye to turn immediately to the objects that they want you to buy, this is where the tiny dolls house furniture comes in. The furniture is green and the objects that the magazine would want the person looking at it to buy is in yellow, this probably makes these pieces stand out slightly more and so makes your eye turn towards them.  

Personal response   

When I first saw this piece I really liked it because of how much it stands out. It gives a very vintage feel to it and reminds me of something that could be used in vogue magazine. This piece of photography has inspired me to look more into the colour of my own photography. 

Comparing artists 
When I look at both of these artists together one of the main differences between them is the fact that Bricco's photography looks more natural and real whereas Bonnevier looks like his has been edited. The naturalness of Bricco's work means that if these two images where placed together in a magazine hers would be overlooked and eyes would go straight to Bonneviers because of the bright bold colours. Even though both of them have to take their time to carefully arrange the objects in their photographs I feel that Bricco has probably taken more time, so that she could drawn the images, slice up and place the objects in certain places and probably had to view it from different view points to see which direction the camera should be pointing before she took the photo where as Bonneviers was just a simple facing forward view.

These two images are both the originals that i chose to experiment with in photoshop. I have taken on both artists techniques and have mixed them together by using bold bright colours and drawing on a piece of paper like Bricco. The objects in the top image have been placed so they are spaced out, this allows for the outline drawings to be made. To me it looks like the object has been moved, so is showing movement like a photo blurring when taking a picture of someone running for example. The bottom images has lots of objects in the photo just like Bonnevier however seems to be more squished in and does not leave space so looks rather hectic.

This is created by taking the saturation down so it makes the image black and white and then putting the colour back on in the places you want them using a white paint brush. I like the way that I have put the colour back on the flowers as I haven't put the colour back into to all of it I chosen bits and let it blend black into black and white. I could use this to make the object on my advert stand out more against the background that I create.

These ones were created by messing around with the hue/saturation, and duplicating layers and deleting sections so colour comes through on only some of it. I think I prefer the blue one as you can still see all the objects as it is not as dark as the other one and the blue only subtly comes through, the colour however is much stronger on the purple one and would stand out in a magazine more than the other one. In the purple one as well the white flowers against the bold purple can still be seen in this one, just like the original image and I actually quite like this as it is.