Art and Photography: Erwin Olaf - Report Example

Erwin Olaf Erwin Olaf is both an art photographer and a commercial photographer, born in 1959 in Hilversum, the Netherlands. In 1980, Olaf graduated with a degree in photojournalism and newspaper journalism from the Utrecht School for Journalism. Since then, his commercial work has earned him numerous Silver Lions, including the London Sunday Times, Vanity Fair, and New York Times Magazine. Flatland Gallery, Hasted Hunt, New York, and Utrecht Paris all represent him. His solo exhibition opened in September 2008 in Fotomuseum, The Hague (Olaf, 2008). Olaf highly stylized image making mode delivers velvet-gloved emotional impacts to the audience. His works exhibits a blend of noir and mid-century modern aesthetics evident through a contemporary, fashion-inflected lens. His collection of images is truly enticing and enigmatic. Olaf manages to seduce the viewer through a restrained, mannered palette that replete with golden-hued oranges, subtle lilacs, and faded avocado greens. Each of his sleekly composed and richly colored images offers a reinterpretation of Norman Rockwell-like characters and iconography, manifesting a form of nostalgia that wryly and burlesques celebrates the American society during the 1950s and 1960s. Olaf assesses many advertising forms and substantiates how he feels about the society’s need to illuminate that perfect images. As a commercial photographer, Olaf pushes the boundaries in numerous promiscuous ways, with the advertising world finding irony in satirical messages that concern themselves. The iconic photographer manages to divide his artistic and personal photographs, taking viewers on emotional roller coasters while at the same time representing evocative and ambiguous presumptions of the world in his advertisements (Kooijman, 2008). Olaf tends to search for beauty in unconventional ways as evidenced in majority of his photographs where he questions, “What is beauty?” In the advertisement world, Olaf uses salacious parodies to provoke his audience. This, among other factors, contributes to how people in the public notice his image works. Analyzing his photos, he seeks to communicate with the audience by showing them sexual implications, which is what they want to see. Olaf manages to do this by undressing a firmly built, male body, and since this is easy for the eyes, the audience wishes to continue glaring at it to create a clearer understanding of the message that Olaf wants them to comprehend and appreciate concerning human race. Olaf manages to push the boundaries with fashion images because of his commercial works (Bavister, 2001). He creates images that properly suit the world of fashion needs, as well as their devilish approach to the human race. In his advertisement for Diesel Jeans (Diesel “Dirty Denim”, 1998), Olaf shows his capability of altering and controlling the message from an esthetically pleasing photograph with interesting divisive connotations. The advert campaign reflects his idea that anyone and everyone can wear the Diesel jeans despite old age and wrinkles, and that their partner will still find them attractive. Olaf manages to demonstrate this by provoking the customer’s thinking that the Diesel jeans have so much quality. This diverges from advertising prospects and challenges it with a simple form of humor and wit. This is exactly the form of practice that Olaf uses to win his audiences. The icon appropriates most of his personal work into advertisement campaigns (Olaf, 2008). His venture as an artistic photographer had a central purpose: making equality awareness in the world. In the Blacks series (1990), Olaf created a drift from a photograph from the previous year collection called Memoriam (1989), dedicating it to Robert Mapplethorpe, his photography mentor. The latter was integral in his photography career, as he showed him all the basics of photography. It is worth noting that Olaf did not have any photographic qualifications apart from the photojournalism from Utrecht School for Journalism. In this particular collection, Olaf developed the notion of “everything and everyone black” to reiterate that the color of an individual does not matter in light as all humans have the same color in darkness (Kooijman, 2008). To clarify his point, the iconic photographer ensured that all the models had concealed eyesight, with one of them being blind. Olaf clearly features each of the individuals by way of their sitting, posing, and clothing, as well as representation of the wreaths items. Olaf tends to fuse his philosophical perspectives and artistic talent in the Blacks series to come up with a personal generalization on trans-globalism. He achieves this by combining his opinions on world equality and his art practice, then majority of people in the world will see his artworks and consider the impacts of what he is trying to achieve on the millions of people and other artists such as David LaChapelle (who emulates his works) (Koch, 2009). In the process, he may manage to mould a community that has a greater awareness of the world they live in. Initially, Olaf did not embrace the use of digital photography in his woks, preferring to use the older techniques and manually print images. He had trouble in transforming from the ‘black and white’ to the digital technology and practices of Photoshop, as he disliked the appropriating techniques in creation of images. During the preparation of the mature series, Olaf realized the need to use Photoshop as the photographs mainly consisted of elderly women ‘pin ups’. Dreading the label of a recontextialist because of reusing old women, he began to use Photoshop to reshape their appearances, especially their stomachs. This experience with Photoshop provided a new outlook on the aesthetic purposes of Photoshop that bring out the post-modern form of visual culture (Perring, 2008). Currently, Olaf is a devoted post-modernist whose works demonstrates that such prescribed categories as ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ are far from obvious. As he progressed with his work, especially in the Royal Blood series, he ventured on the ‘white-on-white’ experience. Thai particular series was in direct contrast with the Blacks series by entirely using young models with blue eyes and blonde hair. Olaf used low light reflecting on the hair and skin of the models to allow each character ‘death traits’ to become clear when viewing the image. The lighting changes position for each model, for instance the Jackie O after and before shots, more light comes from the above to emphasize the shadowing of the costume. Therefore, the result of the photo shows spurted blood on her face as natural (Kooijman, 2008). The photos do not simply hold images of familiar royals, but also re-contextualize post styles in previous images. Olaf uses Photoshop in Royal Blood to enhance digitally the spurted blood in some wounds in the images. The representation of Lady Di, for instance, is obvious and presents a clear resemblance of her world famous death. Olaf incorporates a Mercedes emblem to remind the viewers of how she died, that she was traveling in a Mercedes when paparazzi were chasing her prior to his death. The expression of ‘Lady Di’ is sour, and tends to remind the viewers that they are partly responsible for her death and that the vindictiveness of being an important icon needs to stop and is repulsive. He tends to invoke the communities emotional responses through such practice (Bavister, 2001). Olaf uses graphic type horror in all images to dramatize the ugly side of the labeling as a key figure in society, making the audience realize the conflicts in mass media and their potential consequences. The digital photography of Olaf continues to abject post-modern theories when he poses the question of what constitutes beauty. Olaf methods, which equate his understanding of perfect picture and beauty, result from his experience in the advertising industry. Some analysts argue that he constantly averts the conventional perception of what is wrong and ugly, confounding individuals who equate beauty with purity (Perring, 2008). The narrow mindedness of the society towards crucial topics irritates Olaf, as he tends to think outside the box of everyday conventional beauty. In conclusion, the work of Olaf is successful as he considers the needs of society within the realms of his advertising, playing on them with satirical phrases that contribute to self-evaluation. Since the conversion to digital photograph, Olaf has dedicated all his efforts to enable the spread of his messages. He manages to transform artistically the conceptual thinking of people by sharing his personal knowledge on beauty and its overly advertised way in the media. In addition, he manages to represent “sex” with a degree of wittiness with his appropriates iconoclastic issues and personal collection to convey public issues (Koch, 2009). References Bavister, S. (2001). Lighting for Portrait Photography. Hove: Rotovision. Koch, R. (2009). Photo: box. New York: Abrams. Kooijman, J. (2008). Fabricating the Absolute Fake: America in Contemporary Pop Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP. Olaf, E. (2008). Erwin Olaf. New York: Aperture. Perring, C. (2008). Art and Photography. Retrieved on April 9, 2012, from: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4586&cn=166 Read More