Photographer Research - Christopher Boffoli

Biography

Christopher Boffoli is a fine art photographer, commercial and editorial photographer. He began making visual art at an early age but only began exploring the medium of photography in his teens after receiving a camera as a birthday gift. Largely self-taught, Christopher worked as a student journalist in high school and college, eventually founding his own commercial photography company while he was still an undergraduate. His diverse body of work for his Big Appetites work which features tiny figures posed against real food landscapes. In addition to his commercial and advertising work for  brands large and small, his fine art photography may be found in galleries and private collections in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. He currently lives and works in Seattle. 

Why I've chosen him

The reason as to why I have decided to study Christopher Boffoli in more depth is because his work is different to anyone else's that I've seen. He uses miniature characters to create bizarre scenes amongst food photography. He can use the simplest of food items and food setups yet still make them entertaining through the use of adding people. I'd use real people when adding humans to real life set ups and get them to pose in appropriate positions to fit the image. Surreal photography is something that I have found extremely enjoyable throughout the process of my project and after finding Christopher's work I am extremely inspired to do some photographs containing food and miniature people.

This bowl is filled with American cereal. The multicoloured hoops are a lot more attractive to use in a photograph like this than any other cereal because the formal element colour is eye catching. Using normal cheerios that are all beige shades would be boring but simple. Sometimes simplicity is a good thing, however in this photograph it is evident that the character is sunbathing on the spoon, so multicoloured cereal is perfect when representing the season of summer. The beige cheerios would represent the seasons of autumn. Christopher's idea here was clearly well thought about and this photograph of his was well composed and also very successful.

I like in this image that the doughnut is placed in the bottom right hand side of the frame because it allows more of the blue background to be exposed in the photograph. There are four female characters waling around on top of the hundred and thousands. They nearly slightly blend in with this coating of the doughnut but again, seem to be dressed  in summer attire. Therefore, the brightly coloured sprinkles also represent a more positive summery weather again because this whole photograph is filled with colour. It's a positive image and is another entertaining piece from Christopher.

This is my favourite one by Christopher Boffoli. Macaroons are an extremely fun piece of confectionary to photograph either as them just on their own or even with added characters. The characters in this photograph seem to be chefs, as they are wearing large white hats and white overalls. It makes this piece comes across as though these little chefs have cooked these massive macaroons which further exaggerates their miniature size. 

This last photograph of Christopher's is very interesting. The characters are wearing scuba diving costume to make it come across as though they are about to dive into this cup of tea. The teacup hasn't just been placed there in the photograph. It has a teabag soaking in it whilst sitting on a saucer with a spoon delicately placed beside it. This photograph has clearly been thought about which is what I want my pieces to look like when I interpret my own photographs in a similar style to Christopher's. The little characters also have shadows beneath them to convey how they re actually sitting there. If I do a piece like this with humans, I will have to include shadows below them so that it doesn't look like they have just been placed there. 

How he has influenced me

Christopher has managed to influence me immensely when it comes to using miniature people in photographs. I originally began with altering the size of humans with books, but during this shoot (shoot 10) I found that I liked the idea of sweets exploding, which then encouraged me to do some surreal photograph based on sweets and food. I then was influenced by Christopher's work to do some photographs based on food along with adding people to this also. Shrinking people was fun for me in shoot 10, which is why I have decided to develop this idea of mine, and Christopher has encouraged me to do so. Below are my two photographs where I shrunk people to be surrounded by a tea set.

Summary

Overall, I think that Christopher Boffoli is my favourite surreal photographer. He does lots of the above photographs for his project "Big Appetites" that I haven't seen done successfully or fully in anyone else's work that I have studied. He is a very successful photographer because he is unique, and this talent is key to making it in the large photography world.