Photography Traces - Sam Taylor-Wood style VS Richard Billingham style

In my tutorial it was made apparent which I agree with that I have very two opposed styles with in this series so far. One style was very dark and composed artistically and one was very brash and documentation styled. To help me better understand these very different styles I decided to look into the two very opposing artist references she gave me:

1) Sam Taylor-Wood

Sam Taylor-Wood is a artist who works across a variety of mediums but mainly film and photography. I have looked into her suspended series of photos previously and I really liked these however this time it was suggested that I look at her still life video works as these were in a similar style to some of my photo experiments:


I can see how my work relates to hers in terms of style. She has created a still life piece which has deliberately been set up to reference old artistic paintings and then she has used these old set ups to create a film about decay which makes a really nice message about how everything decays over time. I feel like this style works in her favour to add more to her piece however I am not sure what is added to my work in the images where I have referenced this particular style other than making the audience aware that its art/photography which in my opinion for this topic is not a good thing. I feel like it just cheapens my images by making these references because there is no solid rooting to them unlike Taylor-Wood.


2) Richard Billingham

Billingham is primarily a Photographer who is best known for his photo book in particular 'Rays a Laugh'. I really enjoy this set of images and have looked into it before to help my own works progress. I am very interested in his style and also in the very obvouse and basic way he creates his images. Here are some from 'Rays a Laugh':

I feel like these pictures are showing the real truth behind his family and I feel like he really revealed everything he possibly could through these images. I feel like this style links to the style I attempted in the canteen in terms of colour and in composition because I too made the colours bright and kept the compositions basic and straight to the point. I feel like it works well in his and my work by having these bright brash colours because it makes the image jump out at the viewer even more catching their attention. I feel like his compositions aren't always but can be very closed frames for example with these two above he has framed in very close to the subjects only getting in what was necessary to make the statement he wanted to about the subjects. This is what I need to do more of when I am capturing my left over food images as it will make them much stronger and they will have a bigger impact.

After doing some extra research and finding more inspiration I have decided that I still defiantly prefer my brash colourful images that I took in the canteen much more than the dark muted coffee shop/litter images. I will progress further by taking more images in the canteen in this bright way but now after looking into Billingham's work I have decided I will compose them in a very basic way but cropped in a very small frame to show only what is necessary. I will tie all the images together by focusing specifically on left over food on plates.