Daniel Stier's portraiture work
German born Daniel Stier creates documentary style photography with a subtle humor and lasting grace. His wry style and remarkable range of subjects as he is well known for his portraiture, fashion shots and landscapes. This means he is in frequent demand of publications such as wallpaper, vogue, GQ, arena, the telegraph magazine, the Observer magazine, the New York times magazine and the guardian.
After graduating with a diploma in photography at FH Dortmund, he moved to London in 1994 to work as a freelance photographer, and since then has spent time between London and New York.
Exhibitions of Stier’s work have included those at the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris, GOOP Gallery in Frankfurt, and Notting Hill Arts Club, London. In 2001 he won the photography prize at the Festival des Arts de la Mode Hyeres and a few of his numerous celebrity portraits are in the National Portrait Gallery collection.
Advertising campaigns Stier has worked on have included those for VW, Sony, Nike, Orange, Skoda and Renault and this year sees the publication of his first book on his project ‘Man, Nature, Technology’. Current projects include ‘In My Country’, exploring immigrant communities in London.
Stier’s image for Wallpaper* Selects is of a prototype telephone photographed in a workshop at the Ivrea Institute, an experimental academy and think-tank outside Milan.
From what I saw and learnt in Daniels lecture is that a lot of his photographs look washed out and bleak, however he went on to tell us that most of his photos are un-edited the look of post manipulations is purely from what he has created with the camera, with I think creates a nice originality as most images that we see now are manipulated if not only by a little.
I only saw one black & white photograph in his set and it was a portrait shoot of an mid-aged man with a white textured hotel wall behind them. He didn’t seemed to thrilled with this photos and went onto say that he doesn’t like photographing in black & white or sepia as he feels it takes away from the photograph.
Before going into the lecture I wanted to know what camera Daniels uses, this was answered while he was discussing the photos he’d take on a commissioned project called ’Star City’. He did several portrait photos with a large format camera which he apparently enjoys using due to the extensive detail you get from the photos. He explained that he likes to use the large format cameras but due to practically he tends to use digital cameras.
Ed Swinden is based in Manchester, and covering the north of England, Ed Swinden is an award-wining former journalist, writer and multimedia artist. He went freelance in 2004 after working as an AP if Several years at the BBC, and prior to that as a writer for the Manchester Evening News and Metro News. As well as accepting short and long-term commissions, Ed exhibits widely and publishes in a range of books and journals. His work has been featured in publications in the British Journal Of Photography, Ag, Aesthetica and digital photographer. Ed is currently preparing his solo "shoot the Street" show, to be exhibited at the FORMAT International Photography Festival at Derby in March 2011.
