This photograph is a close up portrait of a girl with messy hair and her mascara and eyeliner are smudgy and messy around her eyes. We can see her from just below her shoulders to just below the top of her head, and is also cropped on one side so that we do not see her entire arm. She is standing outside in the grass. There are a few pine trees behind her, and some other trees even further away, but it looks like she is alone in this field, and everything but her is out of focus. She holds her one hand up to her neck, and we can see that she has a plastic ring on her hand with a heart on it that says, "God Loves Me", and she is wearing two necklaces, one beaded, and one that looks like fake pearls. She is wearing a blue sweater that looks like it is too big for her. Her hair is a mess, it is flying all over the place and has been dyed different colors. She is very pale, and the sunlight is casting a shadow over part of her face. Her facial expression does not have much emotion.
This photograph makes me feel very sad. To me, this girl looks very sick. Her hair is messy and looks like it may be falling out, such as a cancer patient's hair does. Or maybe she cut it off herself because of depression or some other disorder. She is very pale, and her messy makeup makes me believe that she has been crying. She looks like she is miserable; her face doesn't give much expression at all, other than her eyes are slightly closed, as if she doesn't want to "open her eyes" and see real life. She must have lost weight recently, because she looks very sick and also because the sweater she is wearing appears to be too large for her by many sizes. I feel like she is wrapped up in herself and can't look at the whole picture - this feeling is emphasized by the photographers use of a close shot, but still cropping off parts that we normal expect to see in portrait photography. The shadows draped across her face make you think that perhaps she has done something bad, and maybe she is not a good kid. The "God Loves Me" ring on her finger feels almost like a joke, she is clearly miserable and not optimistic about her future.
This photograph of Brittany by Lauren Greenfield fits in well with her other photographic work. It differs in that most of her other portraits are set up so that the subject is centered and there is very little cropping of anyone's body. She does have some other portraits where there is a little cropping, or the subject isn't in the center, but this example seems to be the most severe of the cropping - I think she does this on purpose though to really emphasize Brittany's feelings. This photograph is also similar to other works by Lauren Greenfield because it captures a moment of reality and real feeling by the subject, and we can tell that this is really how Brittany feels and she is not putting on a show. Lauren spends a great deal of time with the people she photographs, and I feel that this is a good photo example showing that - no one else would be able to capture these images but her, as she has spent months getting to know them, and getting them comfortable with her.
Video links for presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m5vu2lzygY
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