Assignment 0: Recreate

The photo I chose to recreate was "Ginger Seippel, Miami, Florida, November 12, 1977" by Stephen Shore. It was featured in his collection entitled "Uncommon places," which consists of a series of photographs of everyday objects, places and people throughout the United States that provide a unique sort of "inside" or "slice of life" feeling, capturing common moments that create icons of their era.

The original photo shows a woman with long red hair standing against a brick wall, gazing casually off into the distance, as though she is watching something with mild interest or intrigue, or waiting for something to happen or someone to arrive. It uses bright, warm colors, primarily orange and red, and what appears to be outdoor lighting. The clothing and natural look of the woman are very typical of its time period.

For my version of the photo, I replaced the female subject with a male and leaned towards a darker color palate. I selected a subject who has a similar hairstyle to the original photograph and kept the pose and expression as similar as I could, but went for a different overall feeling. The original brick wall background is very neat, bright and clean, but for my photo I selected an old, weathered and rundown brick wall with ivy growing on it. This shows a sort of "passage of time" between the old photograph and the one I took- perhaps they were at the same location, but the wall has changed since 1977? (Okay the bricks are a different pattern, but you get the idea!) It is meant to contrast the original while still maintaining the same composition and a visually similar-although opposite-subject.

Additionally, the hair color of the woman in the original photo almost matches that of the brick wall she is standing against, and her red shirt contains a checker pattern that also reminds me of the pattern and color of the wall she is near. I also tried to pick a location where the color of the bricks matched the color of my subject's hair somewhat. His dark sweatshirt with the bright yellow inside mimics the dark wall behind him and the brighter, yellowish exposed portions of broken bricks. This creates an integrated feeling between the subject and his surroundings, as is the case with the original photo.

I tried this photo against a wide variety of different types and ages of walls- ones with ivy, ones without, ones with spray-painted graffiti and ones without- but to me, this one felt like the most natural progression from the original. It has enough differences to still maintain its own mood and style, but has enough similarities to remain reminiscent of the original. I also felt that the fact that it is outdoors and a brick wall were important elements for me to maintain- the ones taken against concrete or other types of wall or indoors felt too different and untrue to the original.