Max Slobodda | Artist Research
Max Slobodda is a professional photographer who studied at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Dortmund, Germany and received a Ba in Photography. He creates work centred around performative, surrealistic photography in his free time.
I’m particularly interested in his most recent series named “Stranger Things”, where he explores different forms and objects in a bizarre manner meant to be illogical, and the viewer is intended to decipher the image themselves.
In the following, he describes his project,
“What we see, believe to see, want to see and can see, are all things that work together and simultaneously against each other. In ‘stranger things’, I want to let the incomprehensibility be incomprehensible and not to force any logical explanations but rather let the emotions decide absolutely free.” (Stranger Things from Max Slobodda, 2018)
Slobodda is trying to photographically explore the surrealistic genre departing from street photography, where he is more concerned about the aestheticism of his photographs. In figure one, Slobodda captured an image of a masculine person bent over, standing on top of a set of stairs which resembles a person on a diving block ready to enter a pool as the model stretches their arms out in front of them. Initially viewing this image, it comes across as deadpan and devoid of emotion, but this demonstrates impartiality between the photographer and the viewer, which empowers the viewer to impart their feelings and perspective onto the photograph as Slobodda intended. In my pictures, I want to use the aesthetic of Slobodda’s image, where he has completely blown out the model with a flash, similar to the technique I implemented in my first set of photographs. I want to utilise this technique again because I want to use it in a different location than the studio. Possibly capture a model on the beach at night to represent the isolation and despair my mother felt while separated from me, so I will not be making mine as deadpan Slobodda has done.
In figure two, there is a model with their hands reaching toward the sky as if they are attempting to catch the falling snowflakes. The image is lit using the same technique as figure one, but they seem to have used the red gel on top of the flash to thoroughly saturate the image in red, which has completely changed the image’s tone compared to figure one. The red light, which seems aggressive in an image with a subject that has gentle gestures, seems to juxtapose one another and betray the connotation of the image. Slobodda may have intentionally used this as he wanted his images to be nonsensical and allow the viewer to impose their emotions onto the image. I want to implement the same technique in my images but use red lighting to accentuate the rage within the image. I want my images to be surreal by still portraying an emotion using performative photography.
Bibliography:
Exploring Trends: Deadpan Photography In 2018 (2018) Depositphotos Blog. Available at: https://blog.depositphotos.com/exploring-trends-deadpan-photography-in-2018.html (Accessed: 29 April 2021).info – Max Slobodda Photography (no date). Available at: https://slobodda.de/Info (Accessed: 27 April 2021).‘Interview with Max Slobodda’ (2017) in-public.com, 30 June. Available at: https://in-public.com/interview-with-max-slobodda/ (Accessed: 27 April 2021).‘Max_Slobodda_Portfolio_aktuell2021.pdf’ (no date). Available at: https://files.cargocollective.com/c39213/Max_Slobodda_Portfolio_aktuell2021.pdf (Accessed: 29 April 2021).‘“Stranger Things” by Photographer Max Slobodda’ (no date) BOOOOOOOM! Available at: https://www.booooooom.com/2018/01/17/stranger-things-by-photographer-max-slobodda/ (Accessed: 27 April 2021).Stranger Things From Max Slobodda (2018) IGNANT. Available at: https://www.ignant.com/2018/01/11/stranger-things-from-max-slobodda/ (Accessed: 29 April 2021).Surrealist Photography (article) (no date) Khan Academy. Available at: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/dada-and-surrealism/xdc974a79:surrealism/a/surrealist-photography (Accessed: 29 April 2021).
