Breven Walker Digital Media and Design
︎ brevenmwalker
Culture
Digital Photography
In these series of photos, I created a body of work that draws inspiration from African and African American art of all mediums. I drew inspiration from different historical and contemporary areas of art history involving African and African Americans and how they used light, color, form, texture and more.
For these photos specifically, how light shaped form was my main technique in creating my photos. You can say my light was my sculpting device. Highlighting and drawing from the history of African sculpture, I approached photography as a form of sculpture. Sculpture is very prominent in African Art. My intention was to draw inspiration from that specific medium. On the African American side, I drew from specific inspirations from the civil rights and post WWII eras. I looked specifically at compositional structures used, traditional colors, and color theory.
I used a combination of wide and telephoto lenses to capture these images and also used different compression mechanisms. I also used external flash lighting setups. Some of the setups included a single key light while others involved multiple sources of light. My goal with my lighting setups was to sculpt the figure into a 3-dimensional silhouette.
It is an honor to be able to create this body of work and share with others the experiences of being an insider and outsider at the same time.
