All images are of course constructed in some way or another either by the means of technical constraints,circumstances and what the photographer and to a lesser sense what the viewer decides to include either by cropping or adding.
Below are 3 simple examples from my commercial practice Illustrating the use of construct to convey the message from left to right the first one is quite obviously a chocolatier shot for a magazine with no doubt as to what it is she does for a living, in this instance it was quite simply my job to do show this in very basic terms using a construct of her wares and friendly smile.The middle one is of a well known author with whom I wanted to capture ,ore about his personality, I could have put him in front of a book shelf full of books but that could be construed as rather lazy and not a true portrait. I was under time pressure and had only the choice of the bookshelf or this tight alcove and chose this. I knew I could create tension, he is a writer of thrillers and whilst is perfectly pleasant as a sharp reputation, I wanted to get this across in the image and use this simple tool to do it.
On this note I have often heard amongst more technical photographers how the work of David Bailey and Avedon is simple, well I would say yes technically it is but strip away any clues,construct or context such as in image number 1 and it really is not quite as simple to create a strong portrait.
The image on the right is pure construct and make believe from the simple set to the clothes and attitude of the actor/model, all constructed to create the final image of pure make believe in reality it’s a small set within a studio with artificial lighting and a child who in real life is a joy to be around …
DEAN BELCHER CRITICAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 