1. Ed van der Elsken was a Dutch photographer that moved to Paris in the 1950’s. He focused mostly on the west bank of Paris because that was where the artists and creatives found themselves living at the time. He shot the same people over a short period of time in what came to be a new style of document photography. Ed van der Elsken chose to shoot all of his photographs in black in white with the subject clearly in focus and mostly in the center of the frame. He wants the viewer to focus solely on the subject in order to view all of the emotion inside his chosen frames. He accomplishes this through his use of perfectly placed lighting and intimate posses.
2. The photographers intent from this series was to create an intimate autobiographic perspective using film photography. Most of his photographs feature the same woman, his muse, Vali Myers. He wanted to capture the emotion and free spirit that she embodied. He followed her and her “gang” as they drifted around the west bank trying to capture the essence of the time period and what they called being ‘apart together’.
3. I am drawn in by the allure of the black and white film photos and the subjects portrayed in them. When you look at one of the images in this series you can almost feel what the subject is feeling. Ed van der Elsken does a great job of portraying emotion through his use of lighting, the subjects pose, and his choice of black and white film.
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