For my project looking at fashion among youth culture in Jersey, I am aiming to produce a magazine for my final product. I have briefly mentioned this intention in previous blog posts but I will now begin to publish blog posts that show my research on different magazines I will be taking inspiration from in terms of design, style, layout, graphics, text content and actual photography.

I have chosen to present all work produced for this project in the format of a magazine because the actual content I will be producing will fit most appropriately into this style of display. The magazines I will be researching are all magazines that highlight music, fashion and youth culture – the latter is what I will be covering in my project. As well, magazines are becoming much more popular now and there are many more magazines for many more reasons in this current day which cover lots of different things such as fashion, music, TV, home, lifestyle and photography/art. 

PUSH

PUSH magazine is a very small, independent company that produces regular issues of their free magazine focusing on music and fashion.

Their issues are free of cost and all the customer has to pay is the postage and packaging cost and they can also choose to donate £5 to charity on their checkout.

PUSH magazine have so far published three issues of their magazine. The first issue’s cover star was the British grime MC and producer, Novelist. The second issues cover star was Guernsey born electronic music producer, Mura Masa. Their third and latest issue, published at the end of last year, which I recently purchased had two cover stars to celebrate music in 2017 and these were J Hus, the UK-born rapper and IAMDDB, the Manchester based rap artist. This issue also featured interviews and editorials on Ty Dolla $ign, Mahalia, Rich The Kid and 808ink. The magazine’s priority is promote the music of artists whose name may not get exposed otherwise.

In their magazine, at the front of each issue, they credit all contributors to the issue and these include the editors, writers and photographers. From this, I was able to search all the names of the photographers who photograph for the magazine and these consist of about 10 different photographers; all young and upcoming and specialist in their field.

PUSH magazine is a very current and trendy magazine that is at the forefront of fashion and music. It is a great magazine form myself to take inspiration form when producing my own and other magazines I will be researching include i-D and Dazed & Confused.

In the most recent issue of PUSH magazine that I own, one of the pages includes their own brief manifesto which outlines their intentions as an organisation and what their ethos and culture is as a company. The page reads:

“THEY ALWAYS TALK ABOUT PUSHING THE CULTURE,

BUT IT TAKES MORE THAN ONE TO MAKE A MOVEMENT.

EVERYONE EXERTING THEIR OWN FORCE, MAKING WHAT CONTRIBUTION THEY CAN.

TOGETHER WE CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS,

IF WE ALL PUSH.”

During this week I plan to organise and carry out a shoot or a few shoots to capture the spiritual aspects of the human body. I aim to fragment the body and form to capture it in unique ways. I want the shoot to be simple and something that enables me create bright pure images. I don’t want to have images of just one person, I want to explore the differences between people. I plan to capture images of females and males, old people and young people and also people of different ethnics. I aim to explore the spirituality  within the human form.

The word Wabi-Sabi is also about the natural cycle of growth and decay. I want to explore this process in people and how the body changes over time. This would be represented by capturing images of old and young people. Since I am capturing spiritual elements and the imperfect beauty, I want to try and focus on the smaller insignificant details such as wrinkles and folds. I also want to capture images of the body doing things such as holding objects or talking. I aim to capture the movement as well. 

The first shoot I plan to do is a shoot using myself. I wanted to start with me because I wanted to capture simple images fragmenting the body. I want a simple background because the main focus is the body itself. The background will be blurred anyway. I want to be capturing important aspects of the body such as the eyes and the mouth. I also want to capture images of the fingers and toes because they symbolize the beginning and end of the body which links to my concept of growth and decay.

After the first photoshoot, I want to start looking more at expressions and the finer details of the body, such as the creases by the mouth and the wrinkles by the eye. I want to start looking at these through different ages and different types of people. I want to try get a wide representation of people.

What is a Manifesto?

a public declaration of policy and aims, especially one issued before an election by a political party or candidate.

A manifesto is a published verbal declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party, government or an artistic movement. In etymology (the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history), the word manifesto  is derived from the Italian word manifesto, itself derived from the Latin manifestum, meaning clear or conspicuous.

Some of the  most well known manifestos to people in the United Kingdom are political manifestos, the three main parties; Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were the parties in the last election in 2017.

Jersey also has a Manifesto, which is called ‘Reform Jersey Manifesto’. Below is a link to the Manifesto that the Deputy in the states assembly presented in 2016 as the ‘MANIFESTO – 2016’ Senatorial By-election

Reform Jersey Manifesto

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Examples of other manifesto’s:

• 1 The Bible and the Ten Commandments.
• 2 The US Declaration of Independence.
• 3 Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech.
• 4 The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
• 5 Apple Ad: Here’s to the Crazy Ones.
• 6 Andre Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto.

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• FEMINISM MANIFESTO’S:

The manifesto has been an important genre for feminist writers because the form enables women’s voices to be heard at their most provocative, independent, irreverent, and demanding. Feminist manifestos are often short and pointed declarations of identity and politics that use radical rhetoric to upend the status quo of gender and sex. Whether they take the form of letters, brochures, pamphlets, or even full-length books, feminist manifestos try to change reality by using the power of words to resist male domination and to envision women’s liberation. There were many feminist manifesto’s that occurred during my focused time period of second wave feminism, such as: ‘The Women identified Women’ written by a radical lesbian formation as well as Valerie Solanas’s 1967 SCUM Manifesto. The 1960s and ‘70s witnessed the creation of some the most iconic feminist manifestos, thanks to renewed global and local women’s liberation movements.

However, during research i came across a feminist manifest from 1991 which caught my eye and highlighted how radical manifestos can be. I watched the short clip which was created around the riot grrrl manifesto and thought this would be an interested example of how radical feminist were and the protests that they were making to continue their fight for rights throughout the waves of feminism.

  “Grrrl Love and Revolution:  Riot Grrrl NYC”  (Women Make Movies, 2012)

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The Riot Grrrl Manifesto:

BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways.

BECAUSE we wanna make it easier for girls to see/hear each other’s work so that we can share strategies and criticize-applaud each other.

BECAUSE we must take over the means of production in order to create our own moanings.

BECAUSE viewing our work as being connected to our girlfriends-politics-real lives is essential if we are gonna figure out how we are doing impacts, reflects, perpetuates, or DISRUPTS the status quo.

BECAUSE we recognize fantasies of Instant Macho Gun Revolution as impractical lies meant to keep us simply dreaming instead of becoming our dreams AND THUS seek to create revolution in our own lives every single day by envisioning and creating alternatives to the bullshit christian capitalist way of doing things.

BECAUSE we want and need to encourage and be encouraged in the face of all our own insecurities, in the face of beergutboyrock that tells us we can’t play our instruments, in the face of “authorities” who say our bands/zines/etc are the worst in the US and

BECAUSE we don’t wanna assimilate to someone else’s (boy) standards of what is or isn’t.

BECAUSE we are unwilling to falter under claims that we are reactionary “reverse sexists” AND NOT THE TRUEPUNKROCKSOULCRUSADERS THAT WE KNOW we really are.

BECAUSE we know that life is much more than physical survival and are patently aware that the punk rock “you can do anything” idea is crucial to the coming angry grrrl rock revolution which seeks to save the psychic and cultural lives of girls and women everywhere, according to their own terms, not ours.

BECAUSE we are interested in creating non-heirarchical ways of being AND making music, friends, and scenes based on communication + understanding, instead of competition + good/bad categorizations.

BECAUSE doing/reading/seeing/hearing cool things that validate and challenge us can help us gain the strength and sense of community that we need in order to figure out how bullshit like racism, able-bodieism, ageism, speciesism, classism, thinism, sexism, anti-semitism and heterosexism figures in our own lives.

BECAUSE we see fostering and supporting girl scenes and girl artists of all kinds as integral to this process.

BECAUSE we hate capitalism in all its forms and see our main goal as sharing information and staying alive, instead of making profits of being cool according to traditional standards.

BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak.

BECAUSE we are unwilling to let our real and valid anger be diffused and/or turned against us via the internalization of sexism as witnessed in girl/girl jealousism and self defeating girltype behaviors.

BECAUSE I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will change the world for real.

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MY MANIFESTO:

Make photo’s of:

1. A Feminist
2. Adolescents exploring their sexuality
3. Women expressing their Femininity
4. Women being exploited – similar to actresses in the 1970’s
5. Women where the rule of technicality is broken (grainy/blurred)
6. Portraits with strong facial expression and stance

 

For my project, as much as models and the actual concept is important, now these two important factors are more or less decided upon and finalised, it is vital that I chose the specific locations where I will be shooting wisely.

After looking at several artists who have inspired me and observing their work, I have realised the importance of setting and where the shoot will be carried out. Most of the artists I have looked at this far have been streetwear photographers who photograph their subjects, most of the, on the street and in urban areas of where the may live. I have come across a few times, examples of where photographers have shot in a studio set up where the background is an infinity screen and this would have been done in a typical studio. Doing this achieves much different results then when shooting on location in town or on the streets where photographs become more informal and more characterised as a result.

Using a location for a shoot adds much more character to the subject and brings out their personality more than if you’re shooting in a studio, in my own personal opinion, and this is what I what to achieve in my onw photographs as I will be focusing heavily on individual people who will essentially make up the body of my project. It is important that I show them as best I can and to do this, I feel the use of urban areas to heighten and emphasise the focal point of fashion and clothing brands such as The North Face, Tommy Hilfiger, Carhartt, Supreme and Stussy in every shot. These are the types of brands I expect my models to wear.

For my shoots, I do not intend to tell my models what to wear and instead leave this up to them because if I ell them what to wear and or the style they should attempt to achieve in their look on that day, this will take sway from the realness and rawness of what my shoots should be where I am photographing the way teenage boys in this modern day express themselves and how they do this through what they wear where it is so easy to be judged, fell judged or judge someone based on their looks and what they may wear. I will, as a means of heightening the emphasis on freedom, leave the choice of outfit up to the models. I know that whatever hey may wear, whether it connotes vibes of a vintage feel or street feel, it will fit into what I want to achieve. And so to coincide with this emphasis on fashion, I want the locations to also be fun, fitting, vibrant and I want them to hold an element of exclusivity – that when I am photographing my subjects in these locations, it feels exclusive and important to focus on the location as much as the subject.

Furthermore, a concept I want to explore is the effect that photographing the location on its onw as well as the subjects within this location may have. I believe this idea could work well because I could pair an image of the bare location with another image of my models in that exact location but from a different perspective – because the model will be the focus. It would be interesting to see the effect of focusing on the features of the location and then talking an element of this away by pairing it with an image that could be seen as worse – that I am ruining what may be a location of beauty by placing some teenagers in the centre of it. I retrieved this idea from Tiane Doan Na Champassak’s work and in particular, the book I looked at called ‘Sunless’. This project saw Champassak visit prostitutes in Thailand through booking appointments with them, and instead of visiting them for the reason everyone would think – to engage in sexual activity with them, instead Champassak went along to these prostitutes place of business, whether it be a hotel room or their apartment and photographed the location – the area in which he found himself as well as images of these men and women naked on the bed. He produced a book which confronting questions regarding gender and sexuality and it was same up of alternating images between harsh, very heavily contrasted and shadowed black and white images of the location and much more delicate and elegant close-ups of the prostitutes naked body which were much more vibrant tin colour and the curvatures of some of the women’s body’s imitated that of the walls and decorations that Champassak found in their apartments. This concept of dividing a body of work up through alternating images between location shots and subject shots is very effective and is something I could experiment with.

It is important that I begin to plan where I want to shoot and that I have an idea of different locations and setting on the island that I feel may work best. I have not gathered many ideas of locations to shoot in yet but intend to in the next few days so that I am not lost for ides when it comes to the day of shooting. In Jersey, there are many areas of urban scenery that would be perfect but it is about finding these areas because I am yet to discover them. Looking at the work of Grout and Arrowsmith as well as pioneers in street photography such as Bailey and Klein, they have used the mundane settings of streets but with the addition of lively subjects who are performing for the camera, the locations can come alive and I feel this is what I can achieve in my work.

Examples of locations where I have thought of to shoot thus far include areas like town, however, not on Kings Street because this is often too busy and crowded with people shopping and therefore, I would focus more on smaller and quitter alleyways and side streets in between shops in town. Furthermore, it would be great if I could find some areas in Jersey where there is a long stretch of wall with some graffiti on. However, it is likely that I may be out on location and coincidentally come across a perfect little spot of wall that has some colour on and would be great as a backdrop for a couple of shots.

My mate was telling me about an area near Fort Regent where there is brick wall and on this, someone has spray painted the words ‘Welcome To Jersey’ and if I could find this spot, this may be very effective.

Other areas like skate parks would work well where I can also get some shots of some of my models actually skating if they are of this group of people who skate regularly. There are quite a few skate parks in Jersey and give off the perfect urban look and feel.

I have also thought to photograph at Les Quennevais estate for example as I know this area well where there are garages upon garages in rows that would look great as a backdrop because the are not too busy with textures, patterns or colours and would quite subtle but effective as a setting.

Furthermore, one location that I am set on using and will probably be the basis for one of my first shoots is Minden Place Car Park in town and in particular, the top level of this car park as it is open air and overlooks St Helier and its vast array of building tops.

some ideas for locations

• Minden Place Car Park, top story
• town – back streets and side streets where it is less busy (maybe Kings Street)
• graffitied walls 
• plain brick walls
• Les Quennevais Estate, the garages 
• any other estates 
• skate parks 
• casual streets or pavements 
• outside any apartments/flats 

 

To aid my understanding of my own project to help me produce responses to artist research and other research in the planning stages, I have chosen to produce a manifesto which outlines my intentions for my project looking at male fashion and it’s link to how males can express themselves as they develop in adolescence. 

In my manifesto, I will outline my aims for the project as a mini statement to help both myself understand where I want to go with it and to help my audience understand where I started and if I have carried out my rules/intentions as stated at the beginning. 

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what is a manifesto?

>> a public declaration of policy and aims, especially one issued before an election by a political party or candidate.

Manifesto’s have become vital to art and conceptual art/photography to provide a way of thinking that may not have been considered before. Manifestos can change peoples views and opinions on things and completely alter the way a person may view art. This is shown in the manifesto below where in artist, Grayson Perry in his Red Alan Manifesto states that popular art work will be displayed above head sol we can see it. This is an very interesting thought and words ‘popular’ and ‘see’ have been emphasised through underlining and capital letters. Manifestos and the rules set in manifestos can be quite controversial but it is the controversial nature of manifestos that can make them so impactful.

An example of a industry-changing art manifesto that had huge impact on the way people changed their view of art from what was originally believed art was a few decades ago is the manifesto produced by Grayson Perry of the Red Alan Manifesto in 2014.

The image below shows the document produced by Perry entitled the Red Alan Manifesto. In Red Alan’s Manifesto, created for the Royal Academy, Perry provides a witty response to some of art’s biggest issues, such as: Can anything be art? Who decides whether art is good or bad? The manifesto is written under the authorship of Red Alan, a ceramic sculpture of his childhood teddy bear, Alan Measles.

For my manifesto, I will be creating a set of 5 rules that I intend to follow for all my shoots that I aim to carry out in this project. These 5 rules will be the basis of my thought processes and I will attempt to obey these rules at all times because they will be the foundation for creating exciting, new and different work that challenges my comfort zone and own skills as a photographer. From these rules, I hope that it will encourage me to no longer create any more boring art as first pioneered by John Bald.

I will use the screenshot of my note on my iPhone where in which I wrote a paragraph/statement advertising my need for any models for this project I am carrying out. I uploaded this advertisement for people to help on my Instagram and I will use what I wrote to inform my rules to create this manifesto that will provide a basis for the way I approach the construction of imagery that will in-turn give the body for my fashion photography project.

The image below shows that screenshot of my notes app on my phone in which I wrote a couple paragraphs stating what I was after and then I uploaded this to my Instagram story.

The rules of for my manifesto come from this advertisement based on what I was first after at the beginning of this project.

My manifesto is shown below.

'hmu' (hit me up) manifesto


_ make it fun
_ speak to people you haven't before or haven't spoken to in forever
_ ignore the factor of awkwardness and get on with it
_ be cooperative 
_ just take the photos