By Jason Fulford & Tamara Shopsin

As research for inspiration for the design and layout of my own photobook I have looked at and analysed the book “This equals that” by Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin, the book consists of a series of page spreads each with two images next to each-other which relate to each-other through various things such as shapes, colours or composition. The purpose of the book is for people to find conceptual associations between the images and to discover how one image leads to another. Through a simple narrative and rhythmic sequence of photographs, the book raises multiple meanings, making the experience of reading the book interactive. Each spread presents a new relationship that changes and shifts as the book unfolds, with the last picture relating again to the first, forming a circle. This is something that I have taken in mind when considering the layout of my own book, when creating my design I kept in mind the relationship between each photo through shapes colour and composition, whether it be the photo on the other side of the page or on the next set of pages.

After researching different photographers, the photographer who most caught my attention was Mahtab Hussain. This photographer looks at his cultural background and how people live nowadays. I have chosen to follow this photographer for this project because the life that Portuguese people live, really interests me. I decided to do this and plan to take photos of my day to day life, to show how youngsters live in a different country. I thought this would be the ideal project to look into because there are so many immigrants in Jersey which originate from Portuguese speaking countries, mainly Madeira.

In my images I aim to show how gender affects different lifestyles in the Portuguese community. I also believe that these ideas affects the younger generation due to the respect insisted by older family. I find this very interesting as I believe that males tend to live a free life, whereas females tend to stay home with their mothers. Portuguese men traditionally go for heavy duty jobs, mainly in construction and women work more in domestics. I aim to focus on family, relationships, home life and religion/tradition.

Living within a Portuguese family allows me to explore these details with more depth and explore the variations and similarities within different cultures. I will be doing this by shooting specific hours and days in my day to day life that I believe strongly represent other Portuguese families and immigration from Portuguese to English speaking countries. Stereotyping plays a huge role in this project, not all migrant Portuguese families live the same way however, I believe that there is a stronger relationship to this with Madeiran families rather than main land Portugal. I think this is the case as Portugal tends to be more advanced and people tend to be more accepting of the new ways of thinking, on the other hand, Madeiran families can be narrow minded and insist a lot of respect with the older ways of thinking. With this project, I want to show how important religion is to most Portuguese families, along with family traditions and the difference in lifestyles from males and females, both old and young.

When doing my research I decided that my main subject in all photographs was going to be people. I have always had an interest in portraits and exploring different types through my camera. A lot of my personal work also includes facial features, from humans and animals too. Silence says more than a speech and actions speak louder than words and I enjoy the fact that photographs are silent moments, and silent moments are usually used to appreciate situations.

My love for silence has sprung from my experiences in photography where I have been able to understand people from a deeper perspective and after living difficult situations in life I always explore peoples facial expressions, and focus on the eyes. Whilst also exploring the life of an immigrant through portraiture, I also plan to capture images of objects, possibly handmade/traditional. I rarely photograph objects but I think it could be really strong used as a pause between the images.

I have started thinking about and end result for this project and want to develop the idea of making a magazine which opposes the stereotypical conventions of fashion and beauty magazines. Mainstream beauty magazines sold in most shops follow similar conventions, in the sense that they are traditional in their representation of perfect women. Most covers feature one full bleed photo of a model or famous personality such as an actress or internet star. They are generally smothered in cover lines about the contents of the magazine, tips, stories, and statements such as “Miracle product! Don’t take another selfie without it” This particular issue features a famous model who has been styled and posed in a fashion shoot specifically for the cover, this suggests that the image is a constructed reality, a lot of work has gone into making her look effortlessly ‘beautiful’. The colour scheme along with the casual language (#NOFILTER) has been chosen to specifically appeal to a young female audience.

I want to base by magazine on a more modern contemporary style of publication similar to i-D or Dazed which push the boundaries of magazine and beauty conventions whilst still appealing to a youthful audience. I want to incorporate some elements from the clastic magazine style in an ironic way for example advertisements and sponsors. I want to keep a minimal colour pallet and and house style with pastels and neutral colours. I have collected images of magazine covers which have inspired me, I think their minimal styles are modern and clean which I will work well for my magazine which will predominantly include photographs with small amounts of copy. By not having any cover lines it will allow the photos to stand out more. Similarly to these examples I want to play around with different fonts which could be used for the masthead, it should be a style which looks good in any colour so it could be adapted depending on the cover image. Boarders is another feature that some of these magazine covers have, rather than having a full bleed image it is framed with a chosen colour which could be complimentary to the photo.

Because my magazine will predominantly include photos I want to experiment with different layouts to make the pages more interesting rather than traditional portrait placing. I am looking to incorporate text in a more creative way rather than having articles in columns . These examples I have found show a variety of ways I could frame images and use text within them. I like the way multiple images have been placed on the page in these examples by layering and different arrangements on a white background. Various texts have been used for example the hand written style which give a more personal feel and the more abstract warped texts used to frame the images.

Title Ideas

Looking at existing magazine titles such as Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Bazar and Elle they have statement titles which say something about their style. For my magazine I want the title to make a clear statement about the images it will display and the idea of beauty ideals and perfection within the mass media. I have considered having the title as ‘beautiful’ or ‘perfect’ in an ironic way to contrast and question with the stereotypical beliefs. I also thought of naming it ‘Ugly’ as a comment on the labels people are given if they don’t conform or appear to be perfect.