Valerie Belin

With the same thing in mind when I was looking at Thomas Ruff I came across another great portrait photographer Valerie Belin whose portraits are still fairly basic however look completely different with several key changes. First of is unlike Ruff the models, as you can see in the images below, are now not looking at camera and due to this their bodies are now pointing away from camera as well, say 45 degrees right. It’s a pretty powerful look, Belin has obviously paid a large amount of attention to the facial expressions of her models as Ruffs are almost soft and with out emotions but Belin’s have an almost empty look about them, maybe straight on it would look much more like Ruffs however I’m not sure. I think this pays heavily with the change to a black background and the models being topless as it has taken away every distraction and has somewhat bought out the complexion of the people’s faces. I’ve got to say I like her work, probably a bit more then Ruffs just because it seems a lot more striking which to be is really good. In my own work I think what could be good is to take picture from 3 different angles, say 45 degrees left, straight, 45 degrees right and overlay them as that could be quiet effective I feel.


'The Portrait, Photography as Stage'