Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Photographer #403: Chadwick Tyler

Chadwick Tyler, 1975, USA, is a fashion / fine-art photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. His work career started in art direction and corporate advertising. In 2005 he began focusing on photography, learning the basic technical competence under the guidance of still-life photographer Larry Wittek. In 2009 he had his first solo exhibition entilted Tiberius. The large exhibition was filled with beautiful female characters in black and white photographs. He played with the themes of ecstasy, hysteria, confusion, lethargy, exhaustion and more expressive emotions. He used 52 models to realise all the images for the show, often in strange positions and showing expressive faces. The result was a strong, refreshing, raw yet classy and brain triggering set of images that challenges contemporary notions of beauty. His photography has been featured in numerous magazines as Dazed and Confused, Grey and AnOther. The first two rows of images come from the portfolio VIII and the last row is Mercedes: Quantum Present.




Website: www.chadwicktyler.com

2 comments:

Stefan said...

Looks like dark side of Helmut Newton

Britt said...

I'm not so sure that these photographs "challenge[d] contemporary notions of beauty" so much as they reaffirmed them. Even in contrast to the fresh faced images of pin-up's like Farrah Fawcett, these women are still obviously beautiful. The only thing not conventionally beautiful about the women might be the grime on their faces and some of their more 'grotesque' poses or emotions...but then that's more a challenge toward conventional ideas of beautiful images and emotions, not beautiful women.

Perhaps that's the point--not that these photos challenge the ideas of a beautiful woman, but the concept of what actions or emotions can be beautiful? I get that this is supposed to make us think about how the exposed spectrum of emotions are beautiful because they are moving, not because they are fluffy, sunny, or sexy, but either way, grime and catatonic stares aside, these women are not a break from the norm of beauty as understood in the 70s or today.

That being said, these photographs are indeed raw and eye catching.