Sam Taylor–Wood Crying Men

I looked at the work of Sam Taylor–Wood in my AS year and was influenced to reproduce some suspended images after looking at her ‘Self Portrait Suspended’ series. Although I looked at the Crying men work she did last year I have explored that further when considering my topic portrait in unit 3.

Crying Men is a series of photographic portraits of famous film actors by Sam Taylor-Wood. Taylor –Wood asked each of these actors perform and cry for the camera while she photographed them.

Taylor-Wood wants the viewer to decide for themselves which were real tears and which were fake. She did say it was difficult for some of them to show their feelings and she had wanted to get masculine men and show a different side to them

I think if these subjects were not known or were not famous we wouldn’t even question if the sadness was real. We would assume it was real.

I think portraits, whether they are taken on film or digitally still depend on the photographers ability to use decent light and pose the subject. Taylor-Wood has a skill of bringing in the unexpected. She goes one step further to make you question what you are seeing. In her ‘self suspended’ series she made me think ‘how does she do that?’ with the ‘crying men series’ she will get a response from the viewer. Either ‘are these tears real?’ or its not what people expect, men crying. Will the viewer think about themselves, would I allow someone to capture something private?

As well as photography Sam Taylor-Wood makes films that challenge and provoke emotion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkp4t5NYzVM&feature=player_embedded