Visual Analysis Iain Mckell

So this week at uni, we have all been given a photograph from a few different famous fashion photographers.  I was given an image by Iain Mckell from his ‘The New Gypsies’ shoot.  The task we were given was to write a 750 word visual analysis on the photo we were given.  I thought that for this blog post, I would share with you by best parts of the visual analysis that i wrote.

This image is part of Iain Mckell’s book called ‘The New Gypsies’. Mckell spent the last 10 years living with and documenting these travellers and began to take photos of them in a documentary style.  The New Gypsies are British horse-drawn travellers. They are a group of people seeking an alternative to Western capitalist society by living in simplicity, at close contact with nature and moving from place to place on horse-drawn caravans.

The whole mood of this image is quite dismal and secluded due to most of the colours being dull and unsaturated.  The bare trees in the background and the grey sky sets a spooky and sad mood as it looks cold and not very homely.  The wagon also looks like it is on its own, abandoned in the middle of nowhere and seems very isolated from the outside world.  It looks like the girl has been left on her own to fend for herself, as there is no sign of life anywhere else in the photo.  The whole colour palette in this photo is very muted and dull, apart from the little girls jumper.  This is done so that we notice her and the eyes are drawn to her.  It doesn’t look like Mckell has edited it much either, as the colour balance and saturation looks quite normal.