Marten Lange

I was reading the iPad Winter 2011 edition of the British Journal of Photography and saw some of the work of Marten Lange (http://martenlange.com).

Lange works in Sweden and initially through necessity he had to use flash due to the long periods of short days and long nights. However he was also fascinated by the unusual, unfamiliar and sculptural look that this gave the subjects. He's made no attempt to make the flash cast a natural light, but instead used this unnatural, cut-out quality as a key characteristic of his work. The photographs contain no sign of being a lived in environment, they could be official records of an evacuated town, taken years after the event.

The below shot is mainly black and white with limited mid-tone. It's the shape of the house and the slope of the road which dominates. Good example of the combined use of diagonal, triangle, horizontal and curve.

Difficult to see the below shot against the white background. Good example of a single point.

More triangles and diagonal lines below. It's the light and contrast which makes this interesting, but the compositional aspects which keep the eye moving round the shot.

Diagonal lines with a wonderful long meandering curve (or set of curves), which adds interest and movement. But the jumbled curves are literally pinned in place by the diagonals.

Another wonderful curve and then vertical line.

I've shot these myself (for the "curved" contrast type for Assignment 1), but with the cold, harsh lighting and unnatural shadow it looks completely different and more alien.

The box below sits perfectly in the frame. It's a diagonal lines nice offsetting the frame itself, but perfectly proportioned with it (the box is too big to be considered a point). The texture of the cardboard also contrast subtly with that of the ground.

Another wonderful curve.

The next shot is from a series on crows. I've never seen a photo like this before. The foliage has a wonderful consistency to it, with very little contrast. This in turn sets off the very small, but highly contrasting crow. Great example of a point, but one which work s well in the centre of the frame (if it was anywhere else we may not spot it!), probably because the frame is square.

The below is from a series on the sea. Another good example of a point which is unusually small. And a horizontal which nearly halves the frame. Not sure why this works, but I really like it.