Jennie Baptiste

Jennie Baptiste was born in north London in 1971 where she would then go on to graduate from the London collage of communication in 1994. but what is the style of her photography? The style of her photography explores the idea of music and pop culture but primarily focuses on black British identity, taking pictures of day to day people or even celebrities such as Jay Z, P Diddy.

the idea behind this image was that Jennie Baptiste wanted to take image of people from Brixton so she went to the highstreets and bought people in to take images of people who had tattoos and other features for a portrait project, she also claimed this fitted her idea of youth culture. as when looking at the context behind the image it speaks for itself. As wearing low slug jeans with a belt had become a trend due to American prisoners being banned from using them, which had become very popular between the youth which had gained the attention of rapper Dizzee Rascal. Which is when he then made a song referencing the trend with the lyric “I socialise in Hackney and Bow, I wear my trousers ridiculously low”. The reason why i have chosen this image is because it links to my idea is because as the image is looking into the culture of people from this time period in the UK which is similar to what I’m doing I’m going to photograph people of colour to look at stereotypes that currently exist in the modern day.

technical

lighting: when looking at the lighting in this image we can see that it isn’t natural as it looks like it was taken in a studio with some sort of artificial lighting that is being provided as there is no shadows behind the people in the image.

white balance: when looking at the white balance in this image we can see that the accuracy of any colour in the image is a little off as its been overpowered by the white (the jeans, the belt etc)

ISO: the light sensitivity is slightly high in this image as the image contains a hint of grain that is visible but not overpowering, id also say there is quite a lot of contrast in the image as from the clothes to the skin colour of the people is completely different to the background of the image.

visual

this image consists of contrasting shades of black and white but predominantly white, giving the image a lighter tone. the shape of the image is quite flat due to the background and lighting of the image being so bright it looks like the main focus of the image (the people) in a blank space.

contextual

the context behind this image is that Jennie Baptise liked to base her work around the hip pop culture as during the 90s pop was at an all time high in the UK, and at this time there was a trend from the American culture to wear low jeans with flashy belts which had made its way to the UK due to Dizzee Rascal making the trend even bigger which led her to taking pictures of people that she found in the Brixton high street.

conceptual

The idea behind Jennie Baptiste’s work was to capture the ever changing culture of hip pop in the UK as every month there was always a new wave that everyone one would jump on to and follow, she also wanted to capture the black British culture as just like the hip pop culture the black British culture had significantly change from the 80s towards the early 2000s.