On the 4th of July, Jonny came into Hautlieu School in order to promote his personally studies and also his obscure and radical thoughts of family and environment within photography. Based on Jonny’s work, we engaged a workshop that allowed us to explore the theme failure and how it co-insides with creativity.

Jonny first asked; is fear a bad thing, or can something good come from it? This spiraled my thoughts into thinking of my personal achievements and how they all blossomed through fear. Having my personally experiences to direct my answer, I responded to Jonny and disagreed with the idea of fear being a bad thing, I believe that all good things can come from fear, although fear may be perceived as something we all must avoid, beneath its hardship we can all gain a valuable experience from it. It allows us to challenge the skills we already have, but it can also spark abilities that we never knew we had, and traits that could develop a better self. However, fear also has the concept of weakening our intentions and also our work, depending whether the subject you’re working on is limited and will not allow that creative aspect to occur.

The workshop consisted of two activities; to draw an imaginary individual with our eyes closed and then to draw someone in the same room as us with our eyes closed.

This task promoted the idea of not knowing, or having control over our ideas since we could not observe and develop an efficient response to our thoughts. In relation to Jonny’s question, this task engaged the idea of fearing our results, which later resulted in something creative.

TRACKING-SHEET-SUMMER TERM_2017

Is fear is a good thing? / What are your opinions on fear? / Have you ever experienced fear during your photography?

On the 2nd of July we had an hour long workshop with Jonny Briggs. During this session the main topic was based around fear and fear of making mistakes and how it can impact our work. The questions above are a few of the initial questions that Jonny faced with us, he went around the group asking everyone what there personal opinions on whether fear is a good thing or not. Listening to everyone’s ideas was really interesting and definitely stretched my thoughts on it and made me consider that fear can be a good thing and especially fear of mistakes because it means you care about something and don’t want to wreck the work you may be creating. Other concepts which came up in discussion which i found interesting was that mistakes can often improve our work and make it more individual and different because mistakes can lead to work differing from the social norms.

Jonny then got us to do a task about making mistakes and getting us to try new things which we may have felt fearful off. We all had a pen and piece of paper and had to close our eyes and draw a face with as much detail as possible. The outcomes were discussed and many people agreed that the outcomes were more interesting than normal faces because they were more distorted and every image was different and people seemed to have a style to their drawings when we compared the first drawing we did to the second drawing.

At the beginning of the workshop Jonny asked multiple people in the class is fear good or bad in photography and if we have fear what of. Many people said they have a fear of people not be able to understand their work or fear the work is not enough. Personally I have a fear that my work will not be good enough in my standards. For me I think a good piece of work/ photography is when you can look at the photo and get multiple meanings or even one prominent one. Basically something that makes the viewer think and find themselves drawn to it. My fear is that I will take a photo or a complete a project that has no thought behind it and is just there for marks as I do not want it to be the reason for my work.

After this Jonny got us to close our eyes and draw a random face. This was my attempt.

As you can see it shows some resemblance to a face such as eyes, nose and a mouth. However, it is quite clearly not a face. Jonny then asked us to close our eyes again and draw a persons face of someone in the room. My attempt is below. I found this exercise a lot harder than the first as there was something to compare my drawing too. We were then asked, if we were asked to draw a face with our eyes open which ones would be more interesting and the majority of the class said the ones we had done with our eyes closed would be.  He then went onto talk about how mistakes can make a photo or a piece of art look better.

With this in mind we were then asked to make something out of the objects we were asked to bring but trying to make as many mistakes as possible. The objects I brought were as old mouse toy, a Pirates of the Caribbean necklace and a old PUSH wrist band as well as a photo of my brother. Here’s what I came up with.

When creating something in the mindset that if you make a mistake its ok really allowed me to be free with my creativity. I found this exercise very helpful and therapeutic as I could find meanings in the thing I had created with no thought process initially apart from making mistakes.

I edited a series of photos to create a desaturated, minimalist look, with a sort of desert feeling. The sky is an off-white, and all the images have a high brightness and low saturation, to give off an old-looking vibe.

WIP

The awareness of historical accumulations over photographic archives has widened dramatically since the invention of digital photography and the internet. An archive is usually known to be a collection of historical documents or records that provide information about a place, institution or group of people. However there is variation between the meanings of archives because I think that there can be both public and private archives. Public archives are usually in the form of museums, photographic archives, or digital online websites which anyone can access allowing them to research their own future or different places. I also think that archives can be private and an individual store of memories. Many people keep photo albums storing old images but in the new age where technology is constantly developing the awareness of different methods of private archives is ever growing. For example people may store personal images on their phone in their albums or they may have them transferred onto the computer for later use. However in my opinion the most modern form of archival is social media. Snapchat now has a feature called memories where you can save only photographs or 10 second video clips which have been created on snapchat. This creates a very specific and individual type of archive which you are able to access easily on your mobile phone and always have with you.

However one question which is commonly asked and usually found as a challenge to answer by people is ‘why do we have private archives?’. Public archives generally have to purpose of historical content and giving information of places and people from the past, whereas people are less certain on why they keep personal and private archives and an even more difficult question is why they prefer either a physical photo album or a digital archive on either a phone or laptop. I asked a group of people including family, friends and teachers on why they keep a private archive. One response from a yr. 12 student was “I look to look back through the memories I’ve had and be reminded of the fun and exciting things I have endured over the last year”. This was a widely acknowledged response given by many that questioned the topic on. For the vast majority of our generation phones can be seen as historical archives which provides with our own personal resource which allows us to answer the question “what happened?”.

Although we have this easy access to our own person archives, public archives are still extremely necessary to give us understanding of our background and past events.  Societe Jersiaise is Jerseys local photographic archive where there is up to 80,000 which date all the way back from the mid 1840’s to the present day. Jersey has rich history of photographic practice as it is located in a geographical position between Britain and France which are two nations which were essential in the development of photography. The archive holds examples of work by important nineteenth century photographers such as William Collie, Charles Hugo, Thomas Sutton and Henry Mullins. The collection incorporates late nineteenth century studio collections of negatives by Jersey based photographers such as Ernest Baudoux, Albert Smith and Clarence Ouless. All these photographers are key to understanding jerseys historical context and allow members of the public as well as historians to investigate further into the history of jersey.

Archives can be seen as inherited items and photographs and when you think about the heritage of archives they are historical information which is passed through family members over decades. These inherited artefacts can be seen as story tellers as they tell us a lot history and defiantly in terms of inherited archives they tell us stories of our past family members and give us an insight into the lives that they lived. The well-known quote “a picture tells a thousand words” is relevant to inherited archives as they really are visual storytelling, from archival images of family members from the 1950’s that we may never have known with one photo we have a detailed description of maybe what they looked like and where they lived and what they used to do for a living. When you put together a selection of these inherited images and make maybe an album the visual story grows to create a story which gives great detail about your family or jerseys past and I think that’s what makes archives so special, they can be very personal to you and in this context the archives belong to us. The archives belong to who is in position of the artefacts.

Archival photographs can have many purposes such as for advertising, news, documentary, fine art, identity and anthropology.  In this text called ‘Archives, Networks and Narratives’ and discusses photographs in terms of its purpose within museums and how photographs can function as both a collected artefact that might be put on display and as a way to collect museums and artefacts, since the photograph is a form of archive in its own right. However it can also be argued that archives can be seen as ‘the return of meaning’. In ‘Camera Lucida’, Roland bathes last book on photography. He focuses on the meaning of archives and photographs being about its social messages via cultural codes as well as images portraying a highly personal which is private and purely individual which relates back to what i previously said about new technology and photographs now being able to be kept private and completely personal and individual.

This arguments links back to the question of ‘Whose archive is it anyway?’, do the public have a choice of what goes into public archives or is there someone in charge of museums and archives who then become in charge of these historical and meaningful artefacts which may in fact be very personal and not wanted to be shared. There is also the question to be asked of is everything piece of photographic evidence shown in the archives is some rejected, could we be missing important piece of history which 50 years ago weren’t considered important by the owners of the archive and were ignored and thrown away. Therefore are they really everyone’s archives if specific content is shown or do the archives really belong to the owners.

In conclusion I think that archives have many different purposes such as to look back on historical artefacts and to gather information from the past which is more a public and educational purpose but then they also have more personal purposes like memories. In the age of ever enhancing technology we are becoming more reliant on our digital dives as personal and public archives but I think it is important to remember the photographic archives and museums as they contain rich information on our history and should be considered as highly valuable resources. I am going to use the jersey archives to enrich my personal study as I am interested in looking into the coast line of jersey and looking at how it has change over the past decade. I am also inspired by the archives to investigate during my personal study my family history and personal background linking photos I might found with private archives such as family albums.

Research at least two photographers from the list below in the photo-archive and choose a few photographs that illustrates the themes of Family or Environment from each

Ernest Baudoux

Ernest Baudoux (1828-1897), born in France, was a prominent and prolific photographer in Jersey from 1869 to 1887. He made his living as a portraitist, and taking pictures of islanders’ houses. He also took a large number of pictures documenting outdoor Jersey in the 1870-80s.

 In 1885 he was joined in business by his son, but two years later they sold out to John Stroud, a young photographer from London, who in turn sold his business, including many of Baudoux’s glass-plate negatives, to Albert Smith.

(John Stroud) J R G Stroud bought the photography business of Baudoux and Sons, of 59 New Street, in 1888, but was only in business there for four years before he, in turn, sold out to Albert Smith, which is why such a large number of Baudoux’s photographs became part of Smith’s collection.

The Photographic Archive of La Société Jersiaise have a project under way to attempt to correctly identify who took each of the 3000-plus images in their collection attributed to Smith.

There are 1385 photographs by Baudoux available from the Société’s archive. They are mainly portraits, which was the Baudoux’s specialty. One of his portraits was retouched to hide facial blemishes and wrinkles. Baudoux also undertook photographic commissions of clients’ houses and, working with his sons, he photographed views of the island.

Baudoux was highly skilled with the wet collodion negative and carbon print processes, both of which were difficult to master but offered rewards of great quality.

The collodion process requires the photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes. The use of the dry form was therefore mostly confined to landscape photography and other special applications where minutes-long exposure times were tolerable.

Baudoux’s images are very collectable, and frequently appear for sale on auction sites. In addition to the Societe Collection, there are two large collections of Jersey photographs and postcards in South Africa and the United States.

Baudoux’s work was of the highest quality, and many of the surviving images are in superb collection. The portraits are supreme examples of the Victorian art of photographic portraiture. They convey the fashions of the time, both in clothing and hairstyles.

Usually the subjects wore their best clothes for the portrait sessions. For the ladies in the 1870s and 80s, this meant long black dresses. The fashion for white dresses, which would be almost universally worn in public later on, did not emerge until much closer to the end of the century.

It was also common for children, and sometimes adults, to be photographed wearing fancy dress. Sailor suits were particulaly popular for boys.

Image Analysis

Image Analysis

This is an image by Ernest Baudoux entitled ‘Vibert Sisters’. It is the typical asset up of a portrait taken at the time – a setting created with a family or group of relatives positioned in front of the setting dressed up in appropriate clothing and looking at the camera. It is all very set-up and structured in comparison to Tom Pope’s very relaxed and informal photographs where you can see him flying in mid-air with blur to the photos and a very candid approach. However, this sort of art is accepted nowadays but if shown in the 18/1900’s it would be frowned upon and seen as very out of the blue – it definitely would not fit in. This sort of portraiture was very accepted in society and it was a comfortable style that everyone felt comfortable engaging in – it was safe, unlike the art today which challenges what people are used to in order for art to progress, however, Baudoux’s work was also still very pioneering at the time for future portraits and it looks as though it essentially kick-started the way studio photography began.

What is actually in the photo?

Within the photo is a group of sisters, evident form the name of the photo – something Baudoux did consistently in his work – where he would inscribe the name of the subjects onto the backs of each photo – something that made his work quite unique and almost professional – perhaps why he was so popular and why he created so many images throughout his career.

Personally, I am not drawn to this photography or this type of photography, or even archival images because I feel like they don’t encourage me to express my emotions of how I feel about them and so it hard for me to talk about this type of work. To put in bluntly, what is in this photo is a group of sisters who have positioned themselves in this way in order for Baudoux to photograph them. However, I do understand there is a message behind these images and why they are taken and how much of an impact they have on life in Jersey now. The photo is very rigid and doesn’t look relaxed whatsoever which I feel makes it rather uncomfortable to actually look – the complete opposite to Pope’s work. The clothes they wear may be worn to show their status within society and wealth because the clothes they are wearing are quite flashy. They have clearly had their hair done up for the shoot – which is what still happens nowadays – that you wish to look acceptable when having your photo taken because there is this myth that you should look at your best when you are getting your photo taken and if you don’t look reasonable, the photo will be put aside and not payed attention to – this till happens now but is a myth that I believe should be scrapped – posing is essentially unnatural and to achieve a successful photo, sometimes you have to take it when the subject is least expecting it. I understand this concept from my wedding photography.

What could it be about?

The photo doesn’t hold much meaning behind it in comparison to Tom Pope’s work because it is serves the purpose to provide a memory for the family and create an archive for them. It is not conceptual art or art that wished to break norms because artists didn’t wish to do this in the 18/1900s due to the worry of seeming disrespectful to traditional photography.

Perhaps why a couple of the women are staring away from the camera is due to the long period of time they had to hold their position for due to the time-consuming process of collodion photo processing – also why they may not be smiling in the image. With the progression of technology, we can capture clear and crisp, high quality images within a second, as well as edit them within a second and produce (print) them in a second.

Judging the photo

In terms of how good the photo is, I don’t think it is good, for how I see it and the style of photography I like to look at. I am aware that it would have been seen as a great photo at the time because of its significance and popularity to photograph in this way. However, I do not see it important to like these images from the 18/1900s because they do not save the same purpose as art in this modern day. They were there to produce a documentation of Jersey life – not to encourage others to question why the artists had photographed it and why he photographed it in a particular way.

Theorising the photo

The photo has much relevance to the history of photography due to when it was taken. Baudoux’s work was the pioneering examples of how photography has developed. He used very difficult methods of processing his images but succeeded in his work and this is why he was so successful.

Tuesday 13th june 2017

We spent all day at Société Jersiaise on tuesday with international photographers Tanya Deman and Jonny Briggs along with The jersey photographic archives worker Karen, the communications assistant. The day was divided up into workshops of 45 minutes were we had talks from all three and also completed small tasks relating to there work.

The first session that i did was with Tanya and she discussed with us about what shes been getting up to in jersey and what she hopes to do and link back to her photography. Tanya is a photographer from croatia who is over in the island for 6 months on a placement with the archives. She also spoke about how she has used the jersey photographic archives and then gone out and visited similar areas. One aspect of what she said about how she was going about taking her photographs was that “through key words she got to certain artists”. this seems to be something she has focused on with her photography. I also took away from the session with Tanya that “looking from above can help develop deeper ideas” and this is something i want to keep in mind throughout this project.

Tanya then got us to look through the photographic archives and began to use it to look for photographs of buildings and St Helier and chose images that inspired us or grabbed out attention. She then set us a task to capture two images of buildings around St Helier that we thought were ugly and then try to think about composition and how it could emphasise the unattractive buildings. Here are my images:

My next session was with Jonny Briggs, a contemporary photographer from London, who had some really interesting ideas about were his ideas come from. He spoke about how most of his images involve a lot of body language which he feels helps the images to tell a story and how his photographs are like “the products of private performances” i found the way Jonny spoke very inspiring the more he spoke about how he “thinks like a mindmap” and that “artwork is like an arena where there are no right or wrong answers”. His talk taking us through different pieces of his work also discussing the idea of how his images are meant to be confusing he likes that his images make people have to think deeper about what is going on and that he uses photography as “the opportunity to confuse and bruise” as he doesn’t know where the ideas come from most of the time.

Jonny then also set us a task to take one of the ARchisle photographs of a soldier and do something with the photograph which is a bit weird and abnormal and then rephotograph the image and get us to talk about the meaning of the images and how objects and manipulating the images with tears can change the message behind the photographs. Her are my images:

The final session was with Karen Biddlecombe, the communications assistant working for Archisle which was founded in 1914 and contains over 80,000 images. She spoke us through the archives and what has been done over the years to create its extensive selection of resources as well talking us through some of the images from one of the most famous photographers they have at Archisle, Henry Mullins. We also completed a task where there was 18 photographs all from different decades back until the 1840’s and we had to look at them and analyse them and put them into order from which we thought was the most recent to the oldest portrait image they had in the archive.

Overall i thought the it was a really interesting day which opened up my eyes to some really interesting new photographers but i also got a good insight into the jersey photographic archives and how i could use the archives in my future photography to create narrative and a deeper background picture to my images.