my friend hooked me up with the ' picture perfect ' documentaries the other day & I fell deeply for stefan Ruiz, people see him as a portrait photographer, he also gets called a travel & landscape photographer. His plan has always been to let the photograph speak for itself showing different lifestyles & contrast between the rich & poor.
What I also loved is that he was a hoarder, I see myself as a small time hoarder, I find it really difficult to get rid of certain items, so I end up getting collections of the most random things & see'ing what he collected was really cool. I love looking through random things at bootfairs & old tins see'ing what random things jumped out at you.
He mentioned that he used to be a very shy man, so becoming a travel photographed has brough him to being thrown into situations, being not sure of who he's going to be photographing & where he's going next, that to me is a real sense of adventure which also links to my enviromental project. His love for photography began when he taugh Drawing & Painting at the ' San Quentin State Prision '. He then began photographing the prisioners & made a notebook of his photographs.
His first commision was by CAT who wanted him to do some advertising photographs in the style he used to frame the prisioners ( no pun intended ).
So I suppose I shouldnt really go on about his history, what really interested me as he had no interest in portrait painting, but slowly grew into liking renaissance art & began incorperating postures into his portraits, when he traveled, He was more interested in the person & not there way of living' he wanted to keep them very clean, shooting only against white walls or backdrops, in the documentry I saw, he set studios up down back alleys & outside clubs & the local kids got interested & had there photos taken, His aim was to photograph there hair styles & clothing, as it was quiet out the ordinary. & working sometime for colours magazine, Im guessing it was a piece for them.
here are some works linking to the paintings.
I though the last one was just way to good to be true.. I feel like this has helped me a little bit with my portrait piece, I dont feel iv'e looked into it so much, but probally due to the fact I only shoot landscapes..
gonna carry on researching into portrait photographers using simular styles.



