Book Review: “Rough Beauty” Dave Anderson

This is a book of photographs made in the small Texas town of Vidor. While I’m not particularly drawn to the subject matter or emotionally affected by the content, I do like Anderson’s photographic style. He shot these on film with a Hasselblad on Plus-X 220 and traditional silver process enlargements.

Technically, I noted two things about the images that I’m using in my own work. First, Anderson takes a cinematic approach to the images, creating a dramatic hyper-real portrayal of the scene that is far from reality. In an interview in the book, he actually contrasts his “cinematic” approach with the straighter vision of someone like Dorothea Lange.

Second, using traditional black and white, Anderson is limited to burning and dodging. The page from the book that I’ve linked to above shows obvious traces of the dogding of the main subject. Interestingly, the messy border of the lightening of the subject creates a dramatic glow that works well as long as you don’t look so closely that you see it as manipulation. The glow from the baby’s head clearly bleeds over into the background. I too have seen in my Photoshop light painting that sharp borders often work at cross purposes to the effect. It’s better to soften the layer by decreasing opacity so that it fades to being unobvious and hence more believable.

Author: James Vornov

I'm an MD, PhD Neurologist who left a successful academic career on the Faculty of The Johns Hopkins Medical School to develop new treatments in Biotech and Pharma. I became fascinated with how people actually make decisions based on the science of decision theory and emerging understanding of how the brain works to make decisions. My passion now is this deep explanation of what has been the realm of philosophy, psychology and self help but is now understood as brain function. By understanding our brains, I believe we can become happier, more successful people. View all posts by James Vornov