Tom Kershaw

Tom Kershaw is an award winning digital design director and photographer who, for over a decade has lead projects for huge named brands such as Nikon, Adidas, Panasonic, Microsoft, Stella McCartney, Nokia, Virgin and others. Born in London, Tom now takes up residency in Boston in the United States where he combines his love of technology and paying an obsessive amount of detail to the finer things into a company called IDEO. Prior to working at IDEO he worked at various other companies in the same trade. Tom has been nationally recognised and awarded by The Webbys, Red Dot, One Show, The Hatch Awards and others. The talented designer and photographer that he is he has been recognised by many elite photography and design publications. 

I chose to study Tom Kershaw when I stumbled across his collection of Black Lips, the collection stayed true to his name and the mandatory section for this collection was that the models pose in black lipstick, this theme held throughout the collection and was able to tell a story about each of the models. 

This photograph is part of the Black Lips collection, I love this portrait because Tom Kershaw uses harsh white base make-up and hair colourant in order to show the stark nature of the Black Lips against the background, all other colours on the portrait tie in with either black or white making this image severely extreme.

This photograph from the collection of Black Lips by Tom Kershaw is yet another element of this collection, the previous photograph shows a strong independent, dominating woman who isnt worried or scared and can fend for herself whereas this portrait shows a playful young minx who looks like she could cause a lot of trouble. This is an example of how Tom Kershaw uses one mandatory component (black lips) in his photography in order to explain multiple emotions or feelings.

This photograph from the collection of Black Lips by Tom Kershaw is much less posed than the first image I chose, the first image came across as strong and powerful and dominant, as if the girl in the photograph held full control however here the girl looks dazed, confused and tormented.

This photograph by Tom Kershaw is called "In Magenta" and he uses a colour overlay to paint his model in pink, by doing this he emphasizes the severity in the different amounts of tones there is within this one image.

How I was Influenced...

Tom Kershaw was one of my influences for this topic due to the fact his work maintains my theme of beauty and identity. In his work he uses colour, editing and makeup to change the identities of the people he shoots. Especially within the Black Lips collection, Tom Kershaw used the idea of makeup to transform the aesthetic nature of the women and men in the shoot. Despite the fact each photograph is more or less of a different woman it shows how even if one feature of makeup is kept e.g. Black Lips the rest of the photograph can change however this is still the focal point due to the pressure of society in this day and age. I enjoy focusing on Tom Kershaws photography due to the way the dark nature of the Black Lips looks like it has infected the women and transferred the attitude from the black gothic colouring into the womens brains and filled them with sass. 

Since studying Tom Kershaw I have been inspired to experiment with severe colour changes to my photographs and maintaining specific makeup looks, Tom Kershaw is one of the influences that I have for my final exam.