Photographer One: Lee Jeffries

Lee Jeffries is an accountant that take photographs in his spare time. Living in Manchester, UK, he originally took photographs of sporting events, but came across a young homeless girl in the streets of London. Jeffries took a photograph of this homeless girl huddled in her sleeping bag, and then discussed the photograph with her. This was the first time in which Jeffries work became unique and was a complete change in his artistic approach. Below is the first photograph of the young homeless girl.



I have chosen Lee Jeffries as one of the photographers that I will go in great detail about due to the fact that his photographs cover a whole spectrum of topics that could be linked with the evidence topic. The first topic could be 'evidence of age'. Jeffries manages to capture age in a variety of manners, depending on what age the person in the photograph is. To ensure that the viewer understands the person is elderly, Jeffries focuses on the wrinkles in the skin, and their eyes, of which look somewhat tired. In contrast, when Jeffries photographs young people, he focuses on the smooth texture of their skin, making them look fresh. Here is an example of how he has captured the elderly aspects of a man.




The second topic that links to evidence could be the evidence of class, or more specifically the evidence of poor people. This is the main focus of Jeffries work, for he manages to capture the side poor people in photograph that could never be seen with the naked eye. One example of a photograph that I found quite influential as one that I could take for evidence of class was the one I have supplied below.



The third way in which Jeffries work links to evidence is the evidence of addiction, or more specifically the evidence of smoking. Although I have already done this topic, I find this work quite influential for Jeffries has managed to capture the smoke in such a way that makes it look unreal, or later edited in. Below I have supplied the image in which I have described, and I hope to create a photograph quite like it in the future:



Lee Jeffries work has influenced me in many ways as I have described in this piece of work, due to the fact that he is unafraid to get up close to the problems society faces, such as smoking/addiction, homelessness/poor people and the mistreatment of elderly people. I hope to create work like Jeffries in the studio at some point during the 'evidence' project, perhaps thinking of more ways to portray evidence but keeping Jeffries' style of work in mind. His work also allows me to understand that 'texture' is important to feature in photographs such as these, for they indicate that the photographer has gotten up close to the subject of the photograph, in order to allow the viewer to see what the main focus of it is.