I am currently in the part of the course that deals with street and studio and so I am coming to appreciate the significance and choices of either approach and the impact that it can make.

I’ve been reflecting on the fact that outside context is equally important and today was reading an article on the bbc news website about Ian Brady (Berg, 2019).

In the article there is this image.

It is a well known image and instantly recognisable to most people. I think it is hard to know if it is that outer context knowledge that makes Brady look sinister or does he just have a sinister looking face.

Also in the article was the image below.

Although he isn’t smiling this is much more like a shot of a film star grabbed by a reporter. This ‘look’ is driven in part because of the scenery, the fact that we can tell it is an image shot by chance. So here, the street versus studio effect is having a huge impact. It’s not that every studio photo looks like a police mugshot but certainly a shit like this drives the viewer down a certain thought process I think.

Just to finish the post, here is the same image but with the policeman cropped out to further the effect. Although the image is no longer nicely framed, there is now nothing to suggest that Brady is not Hollywood’s latest star.

Bibliography

Berg, S. (2019). How Ian Brady got access to teenagers in jail. [online] BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-48751178 [Accessed 26 Jun. 2019].