Jose Gomez, Migrants (PORTRAIT 2022)

Migration is always a heated topic, with supporters and opponents from every side of the political spectrum as well as from people from all walks of life. Supporters of migration advocate the increased economic productivity brought about by migrants, whilst opponents point out that migrants are bad for social cohesion based on ill-founded fears, that migrants want to take over and destroy the Australian way of life and culture. It is my opinion that the rhetoric from both sides is one-dimensional, and both sides fail to see migrants simply as human beings, with feelings, desires, goals, hobbies, just like any other Australian. From my own experience, since I arrived in Australia 17 years ago as a skilled migrant, I have not experienced any overt racism, and have been accepted in all of my places of work. However, I still feel that making friendships with locals is almost an impossible task, whereas with other migrants it all just seems to flow and happen organically. In this project I want to create portraits of migrants and their families, to present them as the humans they are, with passions, hobbies, and jobs, just like everyone else from anywhere in the world. These migrants are people from my work, local community, or family members. Using a combination of natural light, light from a battery-powered strobe, and a v-flat, the light will be crafted to produce dramatic contrast. The images are processed in high contrast B&W to isolate the subjects more effectively, and eliminate any distractions, the framing of the subjects will be tight, with emphasis on the subject rather than the environment. The equipment used for the creation of the portraits will be a Nikon DSLR, an 85mm f1.4 lens, a variety of umbrellas, a 15cm reflector dish, an Elinchrom ELB500 strobe kit, and a V-flat white reflector.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.