‘Chance, Change and challenge’ is the title of our 6 week project, this title is closely linked with the work we will be doing with the archive at the Societe Jersiaise and the photographer in residence Tom Pope. Chance is the possibility of something happening. Change is to make or become something different and challenge is to dispute the truth or validity of something. I think that this title will allow us to explore, think deeper into the subject and learn about the history as well as engage with the community that we live in. The photographs and videos that we will be taking will have a deeper meaning and context behind them rather than just taking a photograph because it’s appealing to the eye. I think that this project will be interesting because it’s almost as if we are ‘discovering’ new things and changing the way at which we look at photography.

On Tuesday we had a workshop with a photographer called Tom Pope. He was accepted at the Swansea Metropolitan University where he got a 1st Class Ba(Hons) for Photography of the Arts in 2008, and then got a Ma at The Royal College of Arts in 2011.

He has his own website where you can view all his work. We had had a look at a few of his videos and photos in class on Monday but I personally didn’t quite understand all of his work. He showed us a fair amount of his work within his presentation and it was then, when he was explaining the process and reasoning behind his work that I started to understand what he was trying to achieve through his work.

One of these photo shoots which I now really like is titled Weak Anarchy. His intentions behind this set was looking at social norms and unofficial ‘rules’ society has seemingly put in place, and seeing how far you can push them, going from simply wearing socks on the wrong feet, to making a fountain in a public space with a lemonade bottle and mentos. Pushing societies rules is a fairly common theme among his work.

He mentioned a lot of things which he tries to incorporate in his work, like Time, Play, Situationism, Humour, Repetition, Psycho-geography, differences between public and private, Failure, collaboration and more.

German troops march through the streets of St Helier during the Nazi occupation of Jersey 1940-1945

9.30 am – 10.45 am:  We arrived the Jersey Archives Building, and made our way to a large conference room.  When we arrived we were greeted by Gareth Syvret, the event organizer and a researcher for the Archives. As an introduction to the day, Gareth tackled the question of what an archive actually is and spoke of the great importance that photographic archives play as both a cultural and historical research tool, as Gareth says himself, “we must understand the past in order to understand the future” Gareth then spoke of the role that the Jersey Archives as the official Archive Center in the Island.. He showed as a series of early studio portraits from the mid-late 19th Century. Gareth explained the historical role of photographs and how the Archive can be used as a research tool to show the cultural trends and behaviors of people throughout the different decades, as well as a means of highlighting the dramatic change in photography over the last 170 Years. Gareth spoke also about his own influences which include Kessel Kramer, a creative digital communications company, and William T Collin’s, a 19th Century photographer from the Channel Islands, who made an extensive collection of portrait of different Channel Islanders during the Victorian Period.

11.00 am – 11.30 am – The focus of the talk began to concentrate more on the role of the archives in contemporary photography. Gareth explained how the Arshilse Photographers in Residence Michelle Sank (2013) and Yury Toropstov (2014) used to archives to inspire their own work, showing us Yury’s video documenting his journey with the archives to. I found Yury’s video documenting his journey during his 6 Month Residency to be very fascinating, as this work was very much as progressive journey he undertook to greatly explore to Island despite his ‘outsider’ perspective with little knowledge of the Island. As well as this, we also undertook a mini challenge which involved us having to guess the dates of 17 different photographs, ranging from 1840 – 2010. I found it challenging and difficult but also fun. I got most of them wrong but it was interesting to see what I was lacking when it came to evaluating the photos. Also some of the photographs were quite deceptive, which does show the extent of overlap of photographic techniques in the 20th Century.

Here are 7 interesting facts that have I learned from Gareth’s talk.

1. The Archive stores over 80,000 Photographs, dating back to 1840
2. Archives are split into categories of specific topics
3. Archives have shown us exactly how important photography has been as a source of evidence in the last 150 Years.
4. The earliest cameras were known as plate camera, it took up to 15-60 minutes to record an image
5. An archive relates to anything which can store information
6. Archives are an important as a social documentation.
7. Photographs can be used to reflect the photographers relationship with the community

Here are the links to Michelle’s and Yury’s blogs and the Archilse Project

www.archilse.org.je
Yury – www.archilse.org.je/catergory/yury-toropstov-blog/
Michelle – www.archilsse.org.je/michelle-sank-insula/

As an introduction to the project, ‘Chance, Challenge and Change’, we went on a day long school trip to the Jersey Archive Research Center (The Societe Jersiaise). The Societe belongs to part of the organisation Jersey Archive, who are collectively under the historical preservation group Jersey Heritage. The Jersey Archive hold all the official documents of archives relating to all aspects of Jersey’s historical and cultural past. Subsequently, Jersey Archive hold a considerable quantitiy of photographic archives, with up to 80,000 of them dating right back to 1840.

The day was hosted by ‘The Archilse Project’, a local organisation who aim to promote contemporary photography within Jersey, and who use the Archives themselves as a key research tool. The event was split up into three sections, the first part being a introduction to the archives and what they do led by, Graham Syvret who works alongside the Arshilse Project on behalf of Jersey Archive. The second part of the day was led by Tom Pope, an extremely talented young photogrpher who specialises in the experimental performance photography and is the Archisle Project’s Photographer in Residence 2015. Then in the latter part of the day, Tom put into practise on the style of photography he was informing us of, and worked outsidde with us for just under an hour, getting us to play a variety of games involving capturing perofrmacne with our camera. This was very fun, especially the orange throwing game which required you to catch a ball thrown at you after taking a picture of a fast approaching orange.

Chance, Challenge and Change – What exactly does this mean?

The theme of our first A2 photography module is entitled ‘Chance, Challenge and Change’.

After being told about this title, I decided to take some time to really consider the meaning behind this. The exact meaning of this title is a vague, open-ended question and therefore very difficult to define. However I am drawn to it as a concept relating to how as a photographer, it is important to ‘push the boundaries’ in order to develop an deeper and more meaningful understanding of the the purpose of photography

In response, I have come up with the idea that  the three sections of this theme serve as a guidance to this developing process.

Chance – Relating to idea that a successful photographic outcome relies partly on luck, capturing to right moment at the right time.

Challenge – Meaning that you must be willing to take risks, push out of your ‘comfort zone’ and be willing to tackle difficult and unfamiliar tasks in order to become a better photographer in the process.

Change – Meaning that as a photographer and an artist in general, it is important to try to be as unique and original as possible. You must always question that definition of photography and search for your own original responses.