CAMERA Portfolio Review: Tony Lionni

A gentleman by the name of Tony Leone got in touch with me through camera and asked me to review his photographs. So he sent me this link and it's a Flickr link and I'm going to have a little look through his work. This is Tony and there's an interview with him with Dazed Magazine, Dazed Digital, a free range house. Tony's a British producer, I think he's a DJ and he does, as Dazed have said, a refreshing breed of clever electronic music and joyous house anthems. Brilliant. um I'd like to see more so that's his interview in in Dazed this is his Flickr site so what I love looking at people's work and I'm going to give an honest account I'm going to tell you how I feel I'm not really familiar with Flickr I have to admit I've never really taken to it um I've never really understood the point of it to be honest um but let's have a look at it and let's see um I can see there's a nice interest there's some lovely portrait so I guess in first instance let's have look there's 192 photographs here so in first instance I can see that Tony likes black and white he likes street photography and he's quite he focuses on interesting faces and characters and some music stuff I can see a sort of Robert Frank style picture there so this is second page let's have a look through the second page it's nice I think you know Tony likes black and white he likes abstract he's trying to capture something with movement there's some interesting images here If I was going to select a sort of portfolio of them, wow, there's some really things, there's some interesting stuff going through my head at the minute. I'd love to edit his portfolio for him. Okay, so I'm going to work backwards here. Look at that. It's really interesting. I think the problem with Tony's work is it's on Flickr, and it needs a website. It needs to be put on a Wix site, a Verb site, a PixelWrite site, something which you can do quite cheaply um and wicks and a few of this for nothing but actually have an edit of your work and it'll sort of show us more of your refined vision and how you see stuff because i can see with tony's work he's got a really good eye and i it's all so jumbled i couldn't sort of put stuff together because i haven't got that editing facility um i'm going to go through a few of them and i think especially on page one i saw links with pictures with each other and i could see almost diptychs together this looks like um this looks like paris or somewhere maybe it is italy or something let's have a look is there any walker russia must be maybe germany or something like that so i i think there's a really interesting set of images here which need editing say this if you look at this these you look at oops if you look at this these three images here i'm not sure what that advert is I see it almost a sort of triptych in a sense of how it's presented so there's a running first shot second shot third shot actually displayed with that frame a white frame around as one shot and I think there's a few of these images which I think lend itself to that there's a little bit of sort of feels like New York 1960s Gary Winogrand or something like that it's really interesting but you know like if you get them three images there I'd like to see them maybe with that because it's just sort of standalone shots with shots which are together with the triptychs and like that look at that there's definitely a need for this to be edited to sort of you know if you if you get that shot there and then three shots and take away other shots and put these other shots in another portfolio another sort of gallery of vision in a sense then it'd be it might be quite an interesting um an interesting um set up and I like this look at that that's beautiful and there's another shot I know I've just noticed as well um there's that shot there and this shot so let's have a look at this that's really interesting I like so I see there's definitely a sort of link between that shot there and this shot that's such a great portrait but you can remember this shot because i i'm new to this um type of screen recording but i'm going to go back onto the first album if i can and yeah i'll go this way and there's an absolutely fantastic portrait you see look at that this is absolutely stunning and i think i keep saying it they need an edit you know look at that you know i'd like to see maybe that linked with that not as a sort of diptych of two two pieces of um photography pictures together but just as an edit you know if you're this abstract you could put something like this shot this shot there and then that together a sort of dada 1939 or something like that let's go back i want to show you a portrait which i noticed before which i absolutely love look at that that's fantastic i wonder if i said to tony give me your best 20 shots i would be interested to see what he come up with if you think of these three here that isn't that is a triptych they're just the the relationship with each one in the hat and the movement and the you can see the sort of motion and that triptych there's a lot of connection between these shots i'm trying to find the portrait i spotted before because i absolutely loved it that's fantastic what a beautiful portrait um and some music stuff definitely Robert Frank type shot I think ah look at that that as well that as well and that and that that could almost be like a diptych together couldn't it you could almost um run all even three of them could almost run all them together is a is a piece of artwork so i see a lot of connection with the pictures i see a lot connection with images to have with each other images within this i think like look at that i think the way it's presented is wrong i think to really appreciate the skill tony is illustrating here it needs to be in an edited format because for me presentation is the key you can shoot and you can put all the work into getting these images but if you can't present it in a way which is going to make some sense to the viewer or let the viewer work around the narrative easy you're wasting your time and i i just think you know these are fantastic portraits i love them absolutely love them i think if you start taking them apart and start thinking about and edit and seeing them together i think in another you take them into put them into another entity and another format I think you've got something really interesting here. So, Tony, I think my advice to you is go away, print each photograph out about A5, every single photograph, A5, put them all on the floor and start looking at them and start looking at how each picture links together and forms a story. Then you can start putting them into sort of galleries, into different stories. you'll always you'll also see what you're missing you'll also see new ideas you'll find new ways to create images it gives you a purpose you'll look at some a group of pictures or something which you've shot and go wow i never really saw this as a it's a little narrative i'm going to keep shooting that and i think this is what printing it out and putting it all on the floor i get a cup of tea and just start looking at it and i think we forget that we don't we sort of forget how much the internet takes away the intimacy of having photographs whereas you know i'm used to my i'm old school having um prints and and things like that in my hands and even for my latest projects i print everything out i look at them i put them on the floor and i observe it and i see how images work together and then i start the editing process then i edit and then i put a B pile and the pile which are working together and i keep the B pile handy because once i start developing that i'll find stuff in the B pile i could put back but also something in the B pile might give you another idea and i think presenting that at a website is the next step in a in a in a proper formatted website which you can do really cheaply or you can actually do for free and yeah i i i love it it's i hope it made some sense i love these portraits let's just have a quick look at these look at them look at that yeah some nice stuff Tony um i hope you found something i said of relevance and interest and understood what i was trying to say if you want to follow Tony if flick aside Tony Leone um and um yeah i'll let's see if you get your website together i'll have a look at that Tony thank you