Samuel Fosso: Final Project Inspiration




The photographer I chose as my source of inspiration for my final portrait project is Samuel Fosso. After looking through a lot of Fosso's work, I found many of his portraits align with the idea I had planned for my final portrait project. For my final project, I wanted to take portraits, all in a very similar sort of setup and with models posed essentially the same way, in order to mimic a school yearbook portrait. Each portrait would have a very generic and expected background for school photos, but in each portrait, my subject will be portraying a different "character" or "personality type" through aspects such as their expression, attire, and even hairstyle. These different personality types will be conveyed through somewhat stereotypical portrails of a different personality types within a high school like, the "jock", "nerd", or "artist".

    The reason I thought Samuel Fosso's work would be a good source of inspiration for my project is that much of his work follows a fairly constant setup, that is fairly similar to a posed portrait students are used to posing for in school. The majority of his portraits are studio portraits, with an individual posed directly in front of the camera and a fairly plain backdrop, in extravagant attire and/or utilizing props. This is very similar to the style I want to utilize for my portraits for this project. I too want my subjects posed in a studio setting, in front of a plain backdrop (one commonly used in high school yearbook portraits), and through stylistic differences in their appearance or clothing, and the use of props, I want to be able to convey various personality types or personas in each of my portraits. 

    While Samuel Fosso's portraits are not yearbook portrait photographs, they follow a similar composition with his models frequently being seated or centered in front of a plain background, holding a very generic pose, and facing towards the camera. This is exactly what students do each year when taking their school pictures. They are posed in front of a very plain backdrop, face the camera, and hold the generic pose them, and all their other classmates are as well. The main thing that separates  Samuel Fosso's photos is not their composition or style, but the models themselves, how they are dressed, and what they look like. This is the same for yearbook photos. Students are all posed the same in front of the same backdrop, separated only by their physical appearance and attire. This is what I plan to do with my portraits: make the style and props utilized by my models crucial in making each "personality type" or "persona" easy to identify.


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