Gamers

 

General Photography

ShaunaFrischkorn.jpg
Over at i heart photograph, Laurel links to Adriaan van der Ploeg’s series of gamers (“LMIRL”), which, of course, isn’t the only such series. I had earlier linked to Shauna Frischkorn (see a sample above), Todd Deutsch, and Philip Toledano.

I think it’s quite instructive to compare these different portraits of people immersed in video games (or whatever else it is they do on the computer). First of, I think that claims that person A did this first and all the others are just ripping him/her off are pointless. I am also not convinced of the theory that now that we got at least four series of gamers (I’m sure there are more) the whole idea loses its appeal - quite on the contrary. If you subscribe to the notion, advanced ubiquitously (especially by advertizers), that everything always has to be new and unique, you are limiting your own experiences quite massively.

I don’t want to advance which of the series I personally prefer and why (even though my choice of sample image might reveal something), because I think the actual fun of looking at four very similar sets of photos is to see what the individual photographers have done with the project and to discover what the differences (and similarities) are and how they affect the results. For example have a look at what angles the individual portraits were shot from and how the choices change the results. Interesting, isn’t it?