Lawrence Ripsher

I am a British photographer currently residing in Singapore. I shoot a diverse range of subjects from portraiture, street, ballet to storytelling / narrative photography. My work is well known in online communities - in addition to being published in several online and print publications, my galleries on Pbase have received over 1.8M hits in the past 18 months and am regularly ranked amongst the site’s most popular (although these days that doesn't mean quite what it used to). I consider myself to be an 'experimental' photographer.

So I just found Lawrence and to tell you the truth, I have no idea how his images came up on my screen...probably from google. But the more and more I looked into his narrative photography, the more I was overwhelmed with his imagery, because I found it so amazing... His images are on the same level as Bill henson (for me at least). I am mostly focusing on his "scared of the dark" series, which blew me away. The way the figures intereacted with the environment they were in really spoke to me and told me a story...which I am trying to achieve this semester with my images. Narrative photography is something I have never really looked in to and has never really existed to me in that sense. The more and mroe I am reseraching it, the more appealing it is to me and the more I want to make strong images like the ones that have been influencing me.

Bill Henson- ambiguous spaces

"Australian artist Bill Henson is a passionate and visionary explorer of twilight zones, of the ambiguous spaces that exist between day and night, nature and civilization, youth and adulthood, male and female. His photographs of landscapes at dusk, of the industrial 'no-man's land' that lies on the outskirts of our cities, and of androgynous girls and boys adrift in the nocturnal turmoil of adolescence are painterly tableaux that continue the tradition of romantic literature and painting in our post-industrial age. Were it not for Henson's primary, almost devotional need to elicit empathy for his troubled human subjects, there's a feeling that nothing would prevent the black in his photographs from completely absorbing his attention and extinguishing his work."

I recently discovered Bill Henson when I was in the book store. His images caught my attention immidiately because of the feeling they gave me. I want his inspiration to show in my images because of the way he uses the body to interact with the spaces they are in. The dark nature of his photographs also intrigued me because of the ambiguity revealed with the lighting and the atmosphere. Even though his main focus is adolescents and youth, I feel like I can relate to his work because of the way he uses the body within the frame, expecially when there are two figures in the frame. But most of all, the emotions his photographs give is what has really drawn me in to research his furthur.