Gosha Rubchinskiy

I chose to focus on the photographer because he focuses on youth culture and fashion, therefore I thought this would be an appropriate photographer to research. Rubchinskiy is Russian and seems to focus on smoking in a lot of his shots, this was something that drew me to his photography as smoking is a big youth sub-culture.

In this image the photographer has shot two youths, one is smoking and one is looking into the distance. They seem to be at home and comfortable in the environment that they're shot in, the streets could form some of their identity as Rubchinskiy purposefully did this to show that they're skaters. This image is shot from a series of photos of kids form Crimea, smoking, skating and doing graffiti. The image seems to capture the freedom of skating. The rule of thirds is used in this image because our eyes are drawn to the whole picture because the two subjects down't just take up the centre of the image.

In this image,  a womans hand is holding a cigarette in a boys mouth, on her harm she has a tattoo saying nothing, the boy looks straight into the camera with a disengaged, emotionless stare. This is a very symbolic photo about youth, the message of the image could be about the expectations and bewilderment of youth as the hand could portray that he doesn't want to smoke but he is forced by the pressures of age. I love the tone of the image as his dark and heavy eyes match the backdrop of the photo, these are the two darkest toned parts of the image and the skin is very light in tone this contrasts well.

In this image, the two young men look as thought they are friends, they look chilled and comfortable in their environment and smoking and one of them with an arm round the others shoulder. They are both dressed in a specific way as it represents their interests for example skating, they have sport branded clothing etc. Rubchinskiy shoots mostly in black and white  this is very effective for the sort of styled  shoots he does as all his images are very raw and gritty and honest, When shooting youth culture I would like to consider a similar style.

This image is of two skinheads, one smoking this links to british culture as the skinhead movement started in Britain. The image could represent friendship, brotherhood and individuality. The picture of youth can represent rebellion as they both look and dress very anti-establishment. The fact that they are smoking represents romanticism and disregard for health, and the youthful spirit of carelessness. When I shot smoking as one of my shots I tried to incorporate the link between the way one dresses and smoking, as these two things form and make a subculture of their own.