ARTIST RESEARCH: LISA LARSEN

Lisa Larsen was a German photojournalist, she was known as one of Life’s pioneering female photojournalists. Her photographic career started with Larsen working for Black star, also known as Black Star Publishing agency, a New York based photography agencies established by German refugees in the 1930’s. Larsen worked as a picture file clerk but become a freelance photographer working for prestigious names such as Vogue, The New York Times, Parade, Glamour, Charm, Holiday and Life.

After 1948 the majority of Larsen’s work was contracted for Life Magazine, the bulk of her assignments were entertainment and fashion pieces of work, this includes photographing the Vanderbilts, Kennedys, Bing Crosby, and the Duke of Windsor.

Larsen moved away from fashion and lifestyle to political pieces of photojournalism, a piece of her work during this period was the post election portrait of First Lady Bess Trueman, but Larsen’s most notable domestic political work was the wedding of John f. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouiver in 1953.

Larsen spent 4 months in Moscow, Russia in 1956, gaining admiration from Nikita Khrushchev who was the first secretary of the communist party of the Soviet Union at the time. Due to Larsen’s work ethic and general demeanour she gained favour not only with Khrushchev but Marshall Josip Tito a Yugoslavian leader during the time, Larsen was the only photojournalist permitted to photograph Tito in Russia.

LARSEN’S CROWD PHOTOGRAPHY

Larsens approach to crowd photography set a standard for photojournalists. Time magazine described Larsen’s work as “finding a way to make pictures of crowds that both captured the energy of multitudes (and smaller gatherings) while making sure that individual faces weren’t lost in the mix” The first exampled photograph was taken in Russia, 1956. This large crowd was welcoming Yugoslavian leader Tito.

Lisa Larsen inspires me by the way she captures people in the moment, and how she conveys different crowds emotions in comparison to having a one sided photograph. I will be using Larsen’s process in trying to capture the details of subjects faces in crowds when I am going to do my next shoot.