Denny Renshaw
There was remarkably little information for Denny Renshaw considering how many famous people he has photographed. Nothing could be found via wikipedia on him, although he does have his own website and linkedin profile. Unfortunately these two sites said about as much as wikipedia does about him artistically, as his website only has pictures for the most part and the linkedin profile only has contact information. Apparently he feels that his work must speak for itself.
What I could gather just from a cursory glance at all of his work is that he is akin to a young Arnold Newman. All of his photographs I could find were portraits, some were more standard while others were just an extreme close up of the head, straight on looking into the face. A few were done of celebrities in a style to make them look like interesting real human beings and less of the glamorized ideal of celebrities most people have in their heads (ie shooting them on the freeway or in a dirty stairwell like he did for Amy Winehouse). The photos I found particularly appealing though were those done in the style of Environmental Portraiture. The vast majority of his pictures I could find were done in this style and were clearly staged to represent the subject’s personalities, similar to what I plan to do for my own project. I feel inspired by them in the way that the quirks of the subjects are portrayed in the objects in the photos and their facial expressions, which I have a lot of trouble accurately capturing.
