Blake Fitch

Blake Fitch

Biography
Blake Fitch was born in 1971 in Rochester, NY. She majored in Photography and minored in Photo History at Pratt Institute in 1994 on full scholarship for photography. She continued her education at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998, and received her masters in Art Administration from Boston University in 2001. Her art focuses on humans.

Significance
Her photography focuses on portraiture, and capturing the human condition, such as identity, rites of passage, and civil rights.



Art Historical or Photographic movement
Her portraiture could be a snapshot, but she uses the lighting in very creative ways. She often uses the ambient lighting, but effectively to create a portrait that might look like the lighting was placed intentionally.

Review
Her work has been described as graceful and confident.

Composition
Many of her compositions follow the the traditional rules of portraiture, but often they look more like snapshots, with the tips of heads cut off, or the other way around and there is a lot of space above the head. Sometimes, she will have the subject stand in front of a flat background, but often she will have them in a space, such as sitting at a table or in a field. In her series Expectations of Adolescence, she photographs her cousin and half-sister, always in a setting that helps describe the portrait. These are very snap-shot-y, but continue to utilize the lighting in a very intentional way.

Concept
Blake Fitch likes to show humans and our lives, exploring relationships and growing up and the similarities between our lives, like the enjoyment of relaxing and how ex-boyfriends effect our lives.

Method
She uses a traditional camera, though I'm could not find if she uses mainly film or digital

Motivations
As she is really interested in humans, her motivations include discovering why people do things and understanding what people are thinking. As most people are often surrounded by people, her subject matter and inspiration is plentiful.

My Opinion
I really like her work of her cousin and half-sister, because it is always interesting to see people grow up in pictures. I really want to photograph my kids artistically and have a series where I see them grow up. You feel like you really know the person when you're done with the series because you literally watched him or her grow up.