Marilyn Silverstone

Silverstone was an English photographer born in London, 1929 and died in Napal 1999. She started to photograph professionally at the age of 26 as a freelance photographer; before this she worked as a designer, editor and producer for a series of films about painters. Silverstone spent many of her years living in New Delhi and Nepal where she practised her photography and religious beliefs of Buddhism.



This is the Hassidic Jewish District of Jerusalem in 1956. Similarly to other practitioners I have researched she has used a small aperture to capture the full detail of the scene. The natural light is from in front and to the left of the camera; causing the shadows to cast diagonally down and right of the image. The light leaking on the left shows that the light is very intense which is proven by the intensity of the contrast of the tones. Lines are made by several aspects of the image; all connecting to each other. The clothes lines are connected to the balconies and the fabric hanging from these lines lead down to ther aspects like the little girl, the path, the boxes and other people. The upper left of the centre is a frame within itself, incasing the very defined model. Not only is he so defined but the black of his turban stands out massively because the surrounding area is very pale. A large number of the models in this image are hidden. Only two of the models faces are visable. this could have been planned; maybe those models are important to Silverstone. However this may be a result of the randomness that is street photography.



This image is called Mine Workers Near the Blast Furnaces. This image is very striking because of the contrast in the tones and the density of the black. The three workers are very light in tone and appear even more so infront of the black. This may have been done on purpose to show the small innocent workers against the large industrial companies with a lot of power. The smoke being expelled adds to a very eerie feeling; which indicates that Silverstone is trying to make the blast furnace into part of an evil company/power. The workers are centralised and you can see all of them; however the blast furnace continues out of the frame meaning that there is more to it than what we can see. Shadows across the ground show an intense light from the left, meaning that the furnace is slightly diagonal to the sun but the amount of smoke would suggest that it is blocking out the sun onto the furnace.