Personal Background
Henry Hargreaves was born christchurch new Zealand where went through school there until the end of collage. He liked photography as a hobby but didn’t go into it, rather pursuing fashion. After 4 years of being a model he wanted to be the one behind the camera. He learned some techniques about photography over the years of modeling so he had already had somewhat of an idea of how to go about it. Now being 43 he has earned 3 awards and has worked with some of the greatest photographers in history.
Style
Henry Hargreaves is a food photographer who uses a lot of stylistic approaches when it comes to his work. He makes a large collection of food with all of them being related to each other in series. He brings a lot of humor to his photos with his “Fortunes Of A Nation” series and his “Birthdays That Will Never Come” series where he pokes fun at things. He said “If it makes me laugh or consistently comes up in my mind without me having to write it down, I want to try it. Once I've decided to execute the only challenge is motivation.” He makes ideas that he likes which is a good way to follow a profession.
Philosophy
He believes that partnering with people is the best way to grow as a photographer because you learn their ideas and tell you what might work better. He partners with people in almost all of his works. He shows a lot of issues in government with his works such as his work “Power Hungry” where it shows a table littered with really good expensive food and another table with more dull and not as tasteful food showing the divide between the wealthy and the poor. While he doesn’t only do food photography some of his older works that touch on the political aspect include “Price Of Oil” where there are guns and war helmets covered in oil signifying how much it costs to obtain it and what we’re willing to lose. He also touched on issues in the world with corporations with his “Waste Of Space” series where he shows how much of chip bags are air and not containing any chips.
Influences
He finds influence in other photographers whom he works with in a lot of his photographs but he also finds influence in the media. He likes to take photos about shows and movies with his “Cocktails Of Film Literature and T.V.” where he made drinks representing movies and shows.He further shows his love for film in his “Celebrated For You” series where he showed how people would celebrate the birthday of films they like the most. He takes influence from games to where in his “Game Over” series he shows artistic versions of popular games like chess and connect four. Lastly he takes inspiration from Hemingway with his “Hemingway's Two Toed Cat’s” series and his “Becoming Hemingway” series where he creates art around Hemingway and his work.
This was the hardest because of the specific spoon, bowl, and background where I edited it in post because of it being easier to cut out. I shot all of these in the same place so they would be easier to take (I also didn’t have anywhere else to take it without natural light). I couldn’t get the napkin to look like that cause it seemed to require master origami skills.
I couldn’t find out what sauce he was using for the two so I ended up using mayonnaise and ketchup. I feel like the ketchup was right but probably not the mayonnaise. The original background was blue but I edited it in photo.p to match the background in Hargreaves photo.
I needed to change a lot about this and the background was the hardest because of how small the pieces were which made this editing process the hardest of all of them. I had gone with a normal print for the fortune because that’s what I assumed would work best. I folded the paper on the fortune to match how it would look and I think I did a really good job on it.
Artist Statement
I wanted to choose this artist cause he was very creative and had some cool ideas that he used for his photos. While I couldn’t incorporate all of his ideas into my photos I still think I got a good amount of the idea and covered it well enough. I chose these images because they were what I thought would be the easiest and I definitely could have chosen some easier ones but the ones that I chose still provided a lot of depth and meaning. I never exactly had the issue of lighting but getting the photo as the focal point was harder cause of the angle I was having to take them at. All in all this was a pretty fun process and next time I would chose a object photographer cause they seem a lot easier to photograph.
Sources
1.https://henryhargreaves.com/Info
2.https://henryhargreaves.com/
3.https://www.finedininglovers.com/people/henry-hargreaves
2.https://henryhargreaves.com/
3.https://www.finedininglovers.com/people/henry-hargreaves