Hassan Hajjaj-
Hassan is a Moroccan photographer who is known for his portrait photography that uses a pop art type of style in his images. What’s the idea behind his work? the idea behind it is that he wants to break the wall down between any type of race, culture, gender or origin put simply any sort of discriminatory label that can be put on anyone, in his word there are three things to take away from his work commitment to truth, necessity of play, and pride in one’s origin. Meaning that he wants people to view his images they should embrace where they are from, their sexuality, skin colour etc. which is why i have decided to study Hassan as his images may not be what I’m inspired by but his idea behind them is what got a hold of my interest.
for example an image like this dives into this persons culture and background as traditional African clothing is known for its patterns and its loud colours. and the reason I picked this image is because Its relevant to the work I want to achieve as its got the same concept to what I want to do as his work captures wider social narratives, meaning that his work helps show people different cultures can be unified through a simple photo. another thing that interest me was his influence for his images hip pop, fashion, west African and UK lifestyle, this interested me as he is able to create all these images and mixing in so many different ideas into to one singular photo. which is what I hope to achieve throughout my project but I also want to make sure that I makes sense throughout my project as I don’t want it to look like a bunch of different ideas crammed into one book.
image analysis:
technical:
Lighting: when looking at location of the image I believe its fair to say the images lighting would be natural daylight and when looking at it I wouldn’t say that the lighting has been manipulated in any sort of way. however the border around the image is a big contrast when looking at main colours popping at (red, blue, yellow, green). the image isn’t saturated as your seeing the image for what it is people wearing loud clothing items in the middle of the day.
white balance: when looking at the mix of colours shown in the image i think its fair to say its got both warm and cold colours such red and yellow and blue and green for cold colours. which fits perfectly when looking at the context of the photographer Hassan wants to bring a mix of different cultures as people together he isn’t just doing this with the people he photographs but with the colours he’s showing in the images as well.
Shutter speed: the image contains a short exposure as we don’t see any blur or colours seeming to be over exposed which would be apparent with the amount of colours that are in the image. and there also any recognisable motion blur as everything in the image is clear and focused in the image.
visual:
when looking at this image the visual elements that pop out straight away is the form, colour, and tone as they are the elements that catch your eye straight away we get see a light tone with a ray of colour all over the image and the boarder around it as well serves as the layout of the image making it look like a painting or something that has been framed. In my opinion the image lacks balance as its got so many different colours in one photo as you have red layering a bold blue light and the same on the other end with a bright blue layering over a yellow light.
contextual:
when looking at this image you might just think of it as a crazy fashion shoot with a wide range of things happening in the image (all the colours, what people are wearing). however there’s more to the image that meets the eye when looking at the photographer who took the image Hassan Hajjaj he likes to unify different countries and continents, which explains the amount of colour and type of clothing has been used for these images as it helps show off the Muslim culture he wants to show off and for all we know the people wearing it may not even be of the culture.
conceptual:
the concept behind this fashion photoshoot is the unity of cultures, its expressed in this image though the the location of the image and not just the colours and clothing as its expressing the Muslim culture in a European country this is because the Muslim culture has spread all over the globe but mostly in Europe in places such as France who is home to a lot of designer brands but also lots racist stereotypes due to how diverse the country is. which is why i believe Hassan has done this photoshoot to break the barriers between the issues some of these countries may face because of the diversity in culture and race.