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My Step-Brother
In 2010, my mother entered a relationship with another man despite my birthday wishes since I can remember consisting of the reunification of my biological parents. The new man in not only my mum’s life but mine also, was David; an accountant who I had previously met due to my mum and dad’s mutual friends. He was a reasonably calm and stable guy which was a factor that was cherished in my household as we were usually quite nomadic due to moving houses on several occasions.
When the introduction of my new father figure had settled, my mother broke the news we would be moving in as a family, which as a ten year old boy upset me as I still had hoped for my parents to come together. Although I detested the idea in theory, the practice of this new family image in the home was beneficial for everybody. However, moving house again and having a new man in the house was not the only surprise which David had brought with him as me, as an only-child had to share all my belongings and frequently my space with two of David’s children from a previous relationship. Noah and Lukah would stay for the weekend every fortnight which cause havoc for my mother and David as having three hyperactive boys was tricky, especially as two of which suffered from A.D.H.D. Another difficulty was the fact we were also separate ages for I was ten/ eleven, Noah was three/four and Lukah was two so finding an activity to occupy us all was an awkward task. I recollect playing Mario Kart numerous times over the 2010 Christmas period as it was difficult to find a suitable activity for all of us, however, keeping me and Noah inside together was catastrophic for the household.
As I started secondary school, my A.D.H.D began to level out somehow. I’m often curious over how it did so with puberty being my only reasonable solution, but either way I was grateful as I was able to focus more without the aid of my medication, I no longer felt different to those who didn’t have to take any pills to alter their behaviour, although A.D.H.D. was never a socially limiting factor for me. With the start of secondary school, I also founded my new sense of independence which combined with my birth of my little sister meant I was rarely home. Reaching twelve years old before I had a sibling came as a bit of surprise as I had always been my mother’s one and only and I liked it that way, however, now I had to share her and although Noah and Lukah were around before, I always knew and felt like the boss. As my social life consumed more of my time along with my increasing independence, I spent less and less time at home until I got a serious girlfriend at sixteen. We often go to each other’s house which would mean half of the time I would have to host, exposing her to the three other children in the household and the busy regime the children have my parents on.
By spending more time at home, I redeveloped and reconciled a relationship with Noah, who despite his disorder, wanted to play more mature games that adults played. So on the weekends he and Lukah were over, Noah would play board and card games with us and we’d often team up as the young guns against the parents, bringing us closer. However, it is important to mention my parents really struggle amusing and catering for Noah in terms of his disorder which frequently means the incorporation of me in order to find solutions to amuse him as I obviously have a first-hand account of what it is like to be in his ten year-old situation. I’ve instructed my parents to enroll Noah into something mentally stimulating and physically tiring, whilst also developing the crucial social skills that helped me overcome my disorder.
In this edit, I wanted to brighten the face of Noah in order to exploit this angelic expression to demonstrate how despite his disorder, he is an innocent and misunderstood boy. The chains which surround Noah is a representation of how his A.D.H.D. is trapping him, which combined with the tall tower implies his identity is overpowered by his disorder.
For my piece within the exhibition, I wish to show my display like so.
Going forward, I look to photograph and capture moments in which Noah is hyperactive as well as our solutions of amusing him. Another factor to consider is how demanding Noah reacts when he doesn’t get what he wants and the other children do so that’ll also be interesting to capture.
Exhibition
We are involved in a gallery exhibition linked with Archisle called ‘ constructive narratives’. i have selected a few of my images which i think relates family and environment the most. The 6 images below that i have picked show a selection of child environmental portraits which i have captured. The images all link together showing the sense of community in third world countries and emphasise the maturity of these young people. Most of the images where taken on the building site we were working on having the meaning that they were all willing to get stuck into the project that was taking place and how they, no matter what there age wanted to be a part of developing their community and learning how to build and cook so they can transfer these skills to supporting there family and community as a whole. i refined my choice of images specifically down to images where and the subjects show strong stances and a straight facial expression and highlighting a way in which they are mature fore their age. In the top image the young girl is wearing shoes which are far too big for her, this is symbolic of how she is having to grow up quickly and step into the shoes of responsibility and look out for herself and possibly her family. In the second image we see a boy of 13 years old, he stands with his arms crossed and the low angle looking up at him implies he has become a grown up and could possibly be the man of the household if the dad is not around. This idea runs throughout all the images linking them all together to be a series of powerful portraits
Experimenting with layout:
I printed out a few different images and experimented with different sizes and different image combinations however none of the photos seemed to fit together to tell a powerful story. I decided that instead of trying to show one photo from all the different shoots i did, id just focus on one shoot and then save and the others for when i make a book which will combine all the series of photograph i have captured together. I therefore looked at my environmental portraiture shoot to experiment with layouts and combinations which worked, my final choices are shown below.
Below is how i am going to have my images layed out in the exhibition. They will all be in colour and in A3 so that you can see the images clearly. The way they have been placed has been thought through as the outer images all contain a subject which is facing slightly inwards, this has the impact that it is grouping the images together emphasising the link between the images and highlighting the community atmosphere. Although they are portraits of them standing alone looking independent the grouping of the images shows that they are not alone and that they are a community and one big family and working together to help each other out.
A State of Contentment – Zoe Pannenborg
A State of Contentment is a series of portraits captured in Burkina Faso. In October I participated in a foreign aid project to Burkina Faso where I was surrounded by the local’s culture, natural beauty and sense of community. After spending 2 weeks photographing the children and that surrounded us on the building site every day, it was noticeable that even though they had so little every single one of them was full of energy and beaming with happiness, as if they were in a state of contentment. Inspired by the works of Gideon Mendel and Steve McCurry I have created my own photojournalistic style of capturing the community spirit the environment offered. This series of conceptual portraits show the maturity that the local children possess and that with so little they can be so content.
Plan for Constructed Realities Exhibition
For the exhibition which takes place at The Jersey Arts Centre on 27.11.17 entitled ‘Constructed Realities’, I have decided to not use images made thus far from my ‘relationships’ project for my coursework, and instead, use the images I produced from my tableaux shooting which I focused on the concept of childhood memories.
The exhibition’s synopsis is on the Arts Centre website and explains the purpose of the exhibition:
“This exhibition brings together work by Hautlieu School A-Level Photography students including their responses to a series of inspirational workshops, masterclasses and lectures delivered by Archisle International Photographers in Residence 2017 Tanja Deman and Jonny Briggs. The classes have been hosted by Hautlieu School in partnership with the Archisle educational programme and represent a range of multi-media creative outcomes inspired by the themes of family and environment.”
The exhibition takes place from Monday 27th November to Saturday 23rd December.
I have been using the last month of my studies to construct my own personal study surrounding the ideas of relationships in my own family. In my previous blog posts, I have given a justification of what my project is about and what it encapsulates, as well as its purpose and I have been busy producing images to eventually come together to provide the main body of my project which wull also be accompanied by text and transcriptions from interviews with my parents. The project is kick-started by my parents divorce when I was 4 years old and this then branches out to a much wider topic of relationships – relationships which I have built with people who I have come to grow up with in my life during the time in which I have matured and become more knowledgeable of the world around me. From a divorce, I have experienced two different relationship with both my parents and this has affected myself as a human and the young man I am now – from which, I have built my own relationships and experienced my own interpretation of love. I now have a half-sister who is currently 4 years old and I also have a girlfriend – my first love and this concept of relationships and love, as well as underpinning topics of loss, lust, attachment and fear is beginning to make for an interesting narrative where I tell the story of my life from a child to a young man – a narrative in which I am the center point.
However, this narrative is not yet constructed enough to tell a cohesive story as I have not been working on it for a long enough period of time to feel as if I can show this as a catalogue of work which the audience can connect with. As well, because the project is based around a range of different divisions made up of the starting point of my mum and dad’s relationship, their divorce, my relationship with both of them and then leading onto my relationship with both my sister and girlfriend, I have so far, only got a mixture of these different aspects – adding to the idea of telling a confused and dislocated narrative, difficult to understand at this point. This is why I have chosen to exhibit my previous work using the relationship between people and objects to show childhood memories as this relates to how I am working now and it also shows my journey to where I am now.
I have again, shown this series of work in a previous blog post so will not explain it here and instead, this will be done more concisely and poetically in my artist statement which will be present at the exhibition for my audience to get an idea of what the work is. However, I feel like the series of work I will be showing is still very strong and does portray a message – a message of nostalgia which my viewers can all relate to and I believe that the use of portraits as well as objects, provides an interesting juxtaposition which is also accompanied by a very powerful image of a note each of my subjects wrote to explain their choice of ‘memory’. As well, the use archives is reliable to what I am doing now as I will be looking further into the idea of old memories which bring back either good or bad thoughts. I feel like delving into your onw personal, family archive can generate so many emotions and the showing the relation between this memory and the person it is related to tells an interesting story.
Therefore, for the exhibition in a couple of weeks, I have created a couple of digital versions of potential layouts I can achieve to show my images on a large scale.
In Photoshop, I created a couple of mock up displays of what I may produce for the real exhibition in which my images will be displayed on. Below is the first display I created, but realised, this may be difficult to achieve due to the lack of space we each have to present our work.
The second mock-up I produced took into account the space I am allowed and this is the display I am most likely to use. As you can see, I have also put in my images to the same set out to see what it would look like.
I intend to have each diptych below one another, creating a stair-like display as ach diptych will not be placed directly underneath and instead, to the side. Next to each diptych will be the note the subject handwrote which I then photographed in their hand. The diptychs will be A3 and the notes, A5. I hope for the outcome to be very contemporary and visually pleasing. As well as telling a story of memories as a whole, each combination of the portrait, object and note tells its own story of the subject.
From the original images I had of the handwritten notes by each of my family members relating to the meaning behind their chosen object, I have altered them to be in black and white as I believe this looks much more effective because of the contrast available to me – I increased these when editing so that there is a clear contrast between illuminated whites and darkened blacks to create shadows against the white paper held in their hand.
Here is my artist statement which will go alongside my series of work at the exhibition:
3 Diptychs Representing a Childhood Memory
The brain is a magical organ of our body; it has the ability to hold limitless information, thoughts, ideas and memories from times forgotten. Taking inspiration from Rita Puig-Serra Costa, these 3 diptychs come from a series encapsulating the notion of childhood nostalgia. For most of us, our memories from childhood are a certain haze which, as we grow older, becomes more and more of a distant recollection of a time which is hard to understand the details of.
In this catalogue of works, I have explored the relationship we have with memories from our past – whether happy or upsetting, they exist and are sometimes consigned to an archive in our brain to be forgotten. Memories generate an emotion which may be difficult to describe but easier to visually portray. Using my Nan, Mum and Girlfriend, I have created a collection of juxtapositions between portraits and still-life object-imagery which represent their own childhood reminiscence.
A photograph is often a fragmentation of the truth and represents a one dimensional perspective but I have attempted to create a decryption of what is often hidden in this series. Each diptych is accompanied by a handwritten note from each subject explaining the context of their choice of memory.
Shoot at Old House
Shoot at Millbrook Park
