Tim Flach

Pig Face.Tim Flach. 2012

Springer and Pheasants. Tim Flach. 2012

This week, my university was fortunate enough to organize a talk from one of the most inspiring photographers; Tim Flach. Before the talk, I wasn't fully aware of who he was or what he done; however, it wasn't long into his talk that I became captivated by his images.

Specializing in animals, Flachs' shots show every single detail of a range of various animals; one of the biggest being elephants; and the smallest being such things as head lice.

When explaining his collections, Tim Flach described the concept behind each of his images. Instead of just taking images for the sake of taking them, it seems that he is always trying to prove something, which is where my interest increased.

The very first image he displayed onscreen was a close up. It was difficult to tell exactly what the image was of and we were asked as an audience to give our interpretations of it. However, no one could discover that the supposed elephants eyes and trunk we all could see were in-fact the back of a pigs ears as seen in the images above. This was described by Flach that we saw such things as we as humans are trained to pick out the eyes of an image. Each time we see an image we look around for something to relate to such as eyes of an animal. He reiterated this point later on in his talk when he showed us an image based around composition. The image, when first seen by anyone, shows a dog jumping alongside two pheasants. However, when searching around further, another pheasant can be found in the bottom right hand corner.

Despite not knowing of him before the talk, Tim Flach has inspired me a lot in the work he does and I'm very grateful that I got the chance to meet him!

References.

Flach, T (2012), Pig, Available at: http://blog.photoshelter.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/mt-old/flach_pig.jpg [Accessed 23 April 14]

Flach, T (2012), Springer and Pheasants, Available at: http://www.profoto.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Springer-and-Pheasants-e1318330284532.jpg [Accessed 23 April 14]
Flach, T, Talk on The Life Of a Photographer, University of East London, [20 April 14]