Fantastic portraits - DPChallenge Forums

Fujifilm XF 10-24mm f/4 R IOS

12/12/2014 06:57:26 PM · #1

Check out Lee Jeffries...

https://500px.com/LeeJeffries

Message edited by author 2014-12-12 19:00:48.

markwiley

Fujifilm X-Pro2

12/12/2014 08:39:54 PM · #2

Wow. Thanks for posting.

Garry

Canon EOS-7D

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II

12/12/2014 09:17:37 PM · #3

They're great. Heavy processing method - almost like a Dragan effect.

tanguera

Nikon D750

Nikon AF-S Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8D IF-ED

12/12/2014 10:17:01 PM · #4

They're very impressive. His subjects are clearly already having a hard time of life, and I wonder why he feels the processing has to be so heavy handed.

franktheyank

Canon EOS-5D Mark IV

12/12/2014 10:25:08 PM · #5

I can't speak for Lee. But I assume the the processing dramatizes the life of these street people. This video is a great ads for his book "Lost Angels". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8tTcdkpf8I

rooum

12/13/2014 05:11:58 AM · #6

Hum, I'm never too sure what to think about Lee Jeffries. I find the whole mini-genre of homeless people portraits problematic in lots of ways and it often leaves me feeling a bit icky. I have the same problem with the 'cute, wide eyed and poor third world children covered in dirt' genre as well. I think the best comment about Lee Jeffries work I've read was by a DPC member, I think it might have been

ubique, and it was along the lines of Lee Jeffries' portraits being more about Lee Jeffries than anyone else and that has always stuck with me.

Beetle

Canon EOS-5D Mark II

12/13/2014 05:16:51 AM · #7

Originally posted by rooum:

...leaves me feeling a bit icky. I have the same problem with the 'cute, wide eyed and poor third world children covered in dirt' genre as well.....

I hear you, I get you, I agree with you and I thank you for having the courage to say so.

Tiny

Apple iPad mini 4

12/13/2014 08:13:17 AM · #8

Nail head hit, you did that right Clive, thanks.

12/13/2014 10:57:28 AM · #9

Here's what Time Magazine had to say about Jeffries:

"The photographer�s passion has become his life mission. He uses his photography to draw attention to and raise funds for the homeless, posting the images to Flickr and entering the work into competitions. Over the past three years Jeffries has placed third, second and second in an annual Amateur Photographer magazine award contest, and has won separate monthly contests which come with a camera as a reward. Each of the half dozen cameras he�s won has been donated to raise funds for charities, including homeless and disability organizations. The proceeds from Jeffries�s Blurb book, which features homeless portraits, go to the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles and the photographer allows any charity to use his images free of charge. Jeffries also runs the London and New York marathons to raise money for Shelter, a U.K. housing charity. He�s committed himself at a more personal level too, buying lunch for a man who had lost his fingers and toes to frostbite or taking a woman with a staph infection to the hospital when she was sick. Jeffries estimates he has given thousands of dollars to these individuals, but what he has given them in terms of a sense of dignity and outpouring of concern is immeasurable."

Time article

franktheyank

Canon EOS-5D Mark IV

Pentax DA 18-135mm F3.5-5.6ED AL [IF] WR DC

12/13/2014 11:58:23 AM · #10

Originally posted by Olyuzi:

Thanks for posting this Jeff. Nice article. I hope this dispels the notions of other photographers as to Lee's motives.

Message edited by author 2014-12-13 11:58:40.

rooum

12/13/2014 01:11:21 PM · #11

Originally posted by franktheyank:

Originally posted by Olyuzi:
Here's what Time Magazine had to say about Jeffries:

"The photographer�s passion has become his life mission. He uses his photography to draw attention to and raise funds for the homeless, posting the images to Flickr and entering the work into competitions. Over the past three years Jeffries has placed third, second and second in an annual Amateur Photographer magazine award contest, and has won separate monthly contests which come with a camera as a reward. Each of the half dozen cameras he�s won has been donated to raise funds for charities, including homeless and disability organizations. The proceeds from Jeffries�s Blurb book, which features homeless portraits, go to the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles and the photographer allows any charity to use his images free of charge. Jeffries also runs the London and New York marathons to raise money for Shelter, a U.K. housing charity. He�s committed himself at a more personal level too, buying lunch for a man who had lost his fingers and toes to frostbite or taking a woman with a staph infection to the hospital when she was sick. Jeffries estimates he has given thousands of dollars to these individuals, but what he has given them in terms of a sense of dignity and outpouring of concern is immeasurable."

Time article

Thanks for posting this Jeff. Nice article. I hope this dispels the notions of other photographers as to Lee's motives.

Oh, i don't really doubt his motives. It is, of course, fantastic that he raises awareness and money for homeless charities and is charitable in his own personal life. There is no reason at all that we should have such poverty in the UK and other very rich nations and the fact that homelessness and things such as the amount of food banks is rising so rapidly here is obscene. Social documentary photography is a valuable tool for documenting this and raising awareness. None of this really has anything much to do with his actual images. My problems with it tends to be that his work is not documentary in nature and is a very stylised approach to portraiture with a style that is very strong and he is obviously enamoured by. What is Jeffries trying to say in his photographs? That underneath every homeless person is an extra from Pirates of the Caribbean trying to get out? Is this what homeless people look like? He obviously chooses his photographic subjects to suit his photographic style and of course this doesn't really represent the actual reality of homelessness in the UK where a large percentage are under 25. I find his style, as great as it is, a distraction. Don't get me wrong, i think they are absolutely wonderful portraits and i would love to be able to come out with them, but i do find the actual approach problematic. Within those parameters, as a survey of homelessness in the UK, they become stereotypical, clichéd and often border on caricature. Just as the notion of the 'noble savage' has a huge amount of problems and baggage then so too does the notion of the 'wise old down and out'. There is a sentimentalism there which i find a bit icky. His book is called 'Lost Angels' which i think sums up this sentimentalism well and, to me, it comes across as patronising.

As to the wider issue of exploitation in photography it's a tricky one. I love Diane Arbus and Roger Ballen is perhaps my favourite photographer these days. What makes Jeffries work less appealing to me than the portraits of Arbus or the weird documentary/psychological abstractions of Ballen's recent work? I'm not entirely sure i can really put into words what the difference is to be honest but i do think there is a difference.

Message edited by author 2014-12-13 14:17:15.

tnun

Ricoh GR III

12/13/2014 02:14:17 PM · #12

what Clive-Patrick said.

Nikon AF-S Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8D IF-ED

12/13/2014 02:30:52 PM · #13

Originally posted by rooum:

Originally posted by franktheyank:

Originally posted by Olyuzi:
Here's what Time Magazine had to say about Jeffries:

"The photographer�s passion has become his life mission. He uses his photography to draw attention to and raise funds for the homeless, posting the images to Flickr and entering the work into competitions. Over the past three years Jeffries has placed third, second and second in an annual Amateur Photographer magazine award contest, and has won separate monthly contests which come with a camera as a reward. Each of the half dozen cameras he�s won has been donated to raise funds for charities, including homeless and disability organizations. The proceeds from Jeffries�s Blurb book, which features homeless portraits, go to the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles and the photographer allows any charity to use his images free of charge. Jeffries also runs the London and New York marathons to raise money for Shelter, a U.K. housing charity. He�s committed himself at a more personal level too, buying lunch for a man who had lost his fingers and toes to frostbite or taking a woman with a staph infection to the hospital when she was sick. Jeffries estimates he has given thousands of dollars to these individuals, but what he has given them in terms of a sense of dignity and outpouring of concern is immeasurable."

Time article

Thanks for posting this Jeff. Nice article. I hope this dispels the notions of other photographers as to Lee's motives.

What is Jeffries trying to say in his photographs? That underneath every homeless person is an extra from Pirates of the Caribbean trying to get out? Is this what homeless people look like? He obviously chooses his photographic subjects to suit his photographic style and of course this doesn't really represent the actual reality of homelessness in the UK where a large percentage are under 25. I find his style, as great as it is, a distraction. Don't get me wrong, i think they are absolutely wonderful portraits and i would love to be able to come out with them, but i do find the actual approach problematic. Within those parameters, as a survey of homelessness in the UK, they become stereotypical, clichéd and often border on caricature. Just as the notion of the 'noble savage' has a huge amount of problems and baggage then so too does the notion of the 'wise old down and out'. There is a sentimentalism there which i find a bit icky. His book is called 'Lost Angels' which i think sums up this sentimentalism well and, to me, it comes across as patronising.

As to the wider issue of exploitation in photography it's a tricky one. I love Diane Arbus and Roger Ballen is perhaps my favourite photographer these days. What makes Jeffries work less appealing to me than the portraits of Arbus or the weird documentary/psychological abstractions of Ballen's recent work? I'm not entirely sure i can really put into words what the difference is to be honest but i do think there is a difference.

Jeffries says that his photography is not documentary but about capturing emotion. His work with/for the homeless seem to be a personal approach and conviction and not so much a promotion of the plight of the homeless.

"My portraits portray emotion. I want nothing to dilute the power of that. On a basic level I�m shooting a portrait� but looking a little deeper, what I�m really doing is taking their likeness and instilling a greater meaning. Religious iconography some have described it as. My images are not documents."

and

"I have a romantic conception of art which has its roots in the nineteenth century. My approach promotes the art, awakening in the viewer a moral sense. My images are far from reportage photography, often documented in text and captions, and farthest yet from photojournalism, with the aim of covering the news. My images are timeless pieces, and the characters I portray may have existed a hundred years ago. Photography has facilitated my vision of spiritual representation as painting did for the great renaissance artists."

PhotoWhoa article

rooum

12/13/2014 02:48:50 PM · #14

Thanks for the link to the interview Jeff. Interesting stuff and kind of confirms my view about his work really. Like i said, i do actually reallly like the actual photographs themselves if taken out of context. If pretty much any of them popped up at DPC in a challenge it would get a 10 and a favourite from me. It's interesting that he traces a lineage of his photos back to the 19th century as they do have that kind of Victorian romanticism which is part of what i object to. The romanticising, mythologising and sentimentalising of the homeless in the portraits is kind of what i have a problem with. The 19th century also produced people like Jacob Riis whose approach i think is far more suited to raising awareness of poverty i feel

tanguera

Nikon D750

12/13/2014 03:22:26 PM · #15

I'm also struggling to put my finger on what bothers me about these images. As Clive has said, it has nothing to do with the caliber of the work, nor his intentions with it. But it somehow feels a bit manipulative to me. And I suppose that is precisely what he's trying to accomplish. Sure, it serves a greater good, but I feel that if he really wanted to represent the face of homelessness, his subjects should be much more varied in both age and decrepitude. I think it underserves the homeless community that they are being represented as old, sick people, when in fact, currently the greater percent of homeless is much younger.

Bear_Music

Samsung Galaxy S21, S21+, S21 Ultra

Sony 24-70mm F4 Vario-Tessar T* FE OSS

12/13/2014 06:24:02 PM · #16

It's the old, sick ones that most break my heart, though. There ought to be more dignity in old age :-(

12/13/2014 06:25:26 PM · #17

I'm not sure he's making homelessness the context. It sounds like that's incidental to his aim of what he wants to accomplish with his art, which is to use the homeless in portraits that convey base emotion, which may not be as raw and exposed with other folk, so he finds it more easily in the homeless. Plus, his methodology is very respectful and sensitive. He treats them like fellow humans. The question should be what emotion is being conveyed in each photo and what emotions are elicited in the viewer, not how is he defining homelessness. In fact, he crops out all context of street to make it about facial expression. His use of the wide angle not only gives him berth to choose what features to emphasize but also gives the viewer an idea of the intimacy of these interactions. Not a common POV but as a result the viewer can empathize more easily.

He strives for archetypal, iconic images that everyone can relate to in one way or another. Looks to me like his gritty, bold, and high contrast style of post processing may match that aesthetic but your opinion may be different and is just as valid.