We were given a task from the second day of fashion rotation to take location shots in the style of Wolfgang Tillmans. Firstly I researched Tillmans further, as I was already familiar with his work and had seen his exhibits at the Tate. His images are in everyday documentary style with grainy overlays and film effects, he photographs everything from portraits to more abstract pieces. So I decided to photograph scenes I found interesting, and also had angular features, on my journey home from Ravensbourne. Once I had some images, I adjusted the contrast, hue and saturation of the image and also added noise on photoshop to mimic the grainy, film feel in Tillmans' work.
In class, we were told to brainstorm, from our knowledge of Wolfgang Tillmans and the connotation of his images, the 'client' or 'costumer' of Tillmans' work, such as age, where they shop, interests, magazines they read and music they listen to. This reinforced how important it is to address a target market in depth when looking at fashion promotion and the importance of 'brand value' and how you can increase your brand value by really understanding your clients' needs and wants.
Now that we had our wearable pieces finished and our location shots, it was time to plan the final shoot. This involved creating a shoot narrative that I wanted to convey in my spread. We were told that narratives could stem from one of four themes; expectations, memories, stories and relationships. I chose to focus on expectations, we were then given a couple of minutes to brainstorm words and concepts that we associated with our chosen word, and then to choose two of those words that stuck out to us the most and brainstorm them further until we had a theme of our shoot. From this process, I chose 'rebellion' as the theme of my shoot. And from this theme, we had to make a design board for our shoot so that the people involved in the shoot had a clear idea of the concept we wanted to achieve.
Then it was time for the shoot; my design board showed I wanted strong powerful poses from my model taken from a downwards angle and architectural/angular/geometric backgrounds.
Once I had taken the pictures, I edited my favourite two by adjusting contrast, saturation and adding noise, keeping in mind Wolfgang Tillmans work.
Lastly, we looked at how Tillmans laid out his work in a magazine spread-type layout. Wolfgang uses a variety of pictures of different sizes and themes and overlaps them in an interesting, disjointed composition which adds to his edgy, gritty images, attracting his target audience.
We used this as inspiration for our own spreads, using our images and location shots.
During the brainstorm of the Wolfgang Tillmans 'client', I concluded that they would read i-D magazine because they have the same target market and Tillmans' work has been featured in the magazine. So I decided to take inspiration from the text in i-D, as often they have bold phrases being repeated over pages, and create something similar in my work, as I feel the 'client' of Tillmans would appreciate this. So I used the phrase 'revolt and evolve' repeated in my spread, as it stands for my narrative them of rebellion.
I think this spread is very successful and would grab the attention of a Tillmans 'client', and that it also conveys rebellion and angular themes. I really enjoyed this task and found it very inspiring, making me want to continue using this style as inspiration and fashion promotion concepts.
