After having researched and explored a variety of artists I have come to the decision to focus on the strong contrast between the sublime environment and the dereliction/wastefulness that is present. I have already looked at these two issues and by combining them i believe it will have a strong impact in raising awareness of the political issue of environmental destruction. I want to try and influence a larger appreciation for our earth by showing off the sublime but also ensuring people are aware of the dereliction that we are creating. Thus having negative impacts on the sublime environment such as a loss of habitat. In relation to my photo book, I intend to create the narrative that focuses on the changing mind set of people through the way in which they view the environment and in particular the environment within Jersey. I want to try and show that people can make a difference to the environment and help to be eco-friendly and simply view the environment in a positive way which will naturally stem positive behaviour towards nature.

Within Jersey there is a clear issue in the way society take our rural and costal areas for granted. By showing off the sublime in a positive way i believe i can allow for these people to come to the realisation that we live in a wonderful place here in Jersey. By photographing the urbanised areas in a negative manner by mainly focusing on dereliction and boring subject matters i hope to show the uneccessary need for these buildings. I also intend on doing a minimalistic shoot in the urban area to try and reflect the structured and organised society that we live in. This correlates to the negative mindset towards the beauty of our island that the community cannot see.

The two main themes within my project are the sublime/natural environment and the urbanized/man made features of our earth. The conflict between keeping things natural and building upon land is a huge political debate which causes uproar across many communities. Many people believe in building high rises everywhere to accommodate businesses and people to benefit the economy. where as others believe that it is important to keep the environment natural to protect the wildlife.

Urban areas attract many people towards them due to the promise of jobs and easy commute to work, among other factors such as the energetic vibe, entertainment, social opportunities and dining options there are many features that make a city attractive. But in cities two of the most pressing problems facing the world today also come together: poverty and environmental degradation. Poor air and water quality, insufficient water availability, waste-disposal problems, and high energy consumption are exacerbated by the increasing population density and demands of urban environments. For not just these reasons alone but many others too I am in influenced by the movement of being Eco-friendly and appreciating/respecting the natural environment.

So, through my project my main aims are to try and influence people about the beauty of our natural environment and hopefully change their mindsets about cities due to the problems they create and how they impact the nature. I intend to approach this in a variety of ways by looking at the negative aspects to urban areas such as the dereliction and poor waste removal to make people have a bad view on urbanized areas. In contrast I will portray the natural environment in a positive light by creating aesthetically pleasing images that make people want to visit these sublime areas.

To conclude my photo book/project, I intend to produce a photo shoot with manipulated images that shows the transfer of a person through a portal which is in reference to the change of mindset that the images in my project will create. The portals will be within a sublime environment to highlight the importance to me and how i want people to focus on this and respect it. Portals are often used to transport a person to a hyper reality and surreal place which shows how i view the natural environment and what i want my audience to think too. I also will incorporate a variety of surreal/futuristic images towards the end of my project to exaggerate the importance of our environment and show how significant it is.

Bullet Pointed Plan

• Exploration of the sublime/natural environment
• Photograph the natural environment inspired by my artist without people involved and then with people too.
• Further experimenting with the sublime and photograph long exposure pictures on the coast to give the sublime a tranquil atmosphere.
• Exploration of the urban environment – photoshoot in abandoned place.
• Further photoshoot incorporating objects wrapped in cellophane to show the environmental issues within an urban area such as air pollution,
• Minimalistic shoot to reflect society as structured and organised. Shows the structured mindset of people in jersey and how they take our natural features for granted.
• NEW YORK photoshoot to contrast the natural environment with the urbanised and use a photo manipulation approach to combine the New York sky line into environment pictures.
• Collect litter found in urban area and natural area too and photograph it levitating above a persons hand within the natural environment.
• Photo shoot involving technology being used in a natural environment to show peoples reluctant attitude towards appreciating the natural environment.
• Levitation within natural environment to show freedom and emotional connection within the sublime.
• Edit futuristic looking photos to show the fast developing world and bring a realisation to how the world is being over developed/incorporate environmental issues into these edits.
• Final shoot will involve people going through a portal which shows their journey through my project and their new understanding of treating the environment with respect and appreciating it.

 In what way can the work of Lewis Bush and Clare Rae both be considered political?

In this essay i will be investigating the ways in which the work of the photographers Lewis Bush and Clare Rae can both be considered political. I will be evaluating the work of these artists and looking into their background too to help answer the question of how their work can be considered political. Lewis bush is a photographer whos work explores forms of contemporary power and Clare Rae whos work considers the physical and cultural landscapes of jersey while imagining her body in relation to the place. Both of the photographers have been artists in the residence of jersey therefore i am going to analyse their approaches to photographing the island whilst conveying their political messages. So, through this essay i am trying to prove that through Lewis Bush’s financial industry project ‘trading zones’ and Clare Rae’s exploration of gender representation and sexuality are considered as being political matters.

Lewis Bush is a British photographer, writer, curator and educator. He recently created a project in Jersey called “Trading Zones”. The idea of the project was to show the state of the financial industry in Jersey and draw attention to forms of invisible power that operate in the world. Through this project he shows the development of the finance center in jersey and shows how finance depicts the capital of St Helier. “Trading Zones is the result of six months spent as the 2018 Archisle photographer in residence at the Société Jersiaise. There are various differing sectors to the project and the main section that stood out to me was the portrait section in which Bush photographed what appears to be hundreds of corporate financial workers and blending them all together to result in what the average finance worker may look like. By combining many of the workers faces it brings the financial working community together as one and shows their dominance as a community however shows how powerless they are as an individual. The blending of the portraits shows that as an individual each worker means nothing and too when blended together to make the ‘average’ financial worker this discredits them as an individual and depicts them as only being ‘average’. This shows the dominating power of finance as a large corporate business and how all of their workers have no significance and are all looked at as ‘just the average finance worker. This section of his project also shows the changes in style and appearance of a financial worker over time and this is exploring the political landscape of change over time

The final product of “Trading Zones” was presented by Lewis creatively in Jersey’s old police station which was once the center for financial crime investigations. In my opinion this sets the tone of Lewis’s opinion of the finical sector in Jersey.  His personal view of finance in jersey is that is it “the accidental product of events going back almost a thousand yeats, but is also the result of every international choices made over the last half century”. Furthermore, after reading comments left by people who had viewed the expedition it is clear that the majority share that negative view. Lewis Bush’s work is very clearly political by the way it causes debate and makes people question what they really think about who is operating the financial sector and who’s best interests they have at heart.

Clare Rae’s work is most definitely considered political through the exploration of feminism and the representation of gender which is in huge discussion of people in the community. The topics of gender fluidity, identity and gender are all aspects of Clare Rae’s work and are major topics of controversy in which has caused a division between people, not only in Jersey but across the world. The project that she worked on in Jersey was titled ‘Entre Nous’ and brought together her representations of gender by exploiting her body in relation the the jersey landscape. She was influenced by a queer surrelaist artist named Claude Cahun who lived in Paris in the 1920’s. “In 2017 I undertook an artist’s residency with Archisle: the Jersey Contemporary Photography Programme to research the archive of Claude Cahun works held by Jersey Heritage. During my time there I began capturing a series of photographs alongside my research, starting with the sites inhabited and imaged by Cahun on the island, from the 1910s until her death in 1954”  – “My series, Never standing on two feet, considers Cahun’s engagement with the physical and cultural landscapes of Jersey, an aspect of her work that has received little analysis to date”Claude Cahun came to Jersey after the Germans declared war on France as she was Jewish and wanted to escape the threat of being taken to a concentration camp. While Cahun was in Jersey she liked to cause trouble: she would write rude notes in German and sneak them into the German soldiers pockets but she was once caught and sentenced to death. Jersey was liberated before she was killed but she would have rather died for her cause. Clair Ray came to Jersey to use its unique landscape to recreate Cahun’s work with her own style to it too. Jersey also holds the largest collection of Cahun’s original work which further inspired the project of Claire Rae. Cahun’s self portrait photographs and texts have become highly influential for artists dealing with questions of gender identity and representations of the female body and Claire Rae takes inspiration from this with the clear intentions to “unsettle traditional representations of the female figure”. This clearly shows that Claire Rae’s work can be considered political in the sense that she is tackling the controversial thoughts about gender and identity and portraying what she believes in through her photographs which people may disagree with.

I think that it is important for artists like Claire Rae to provide artwork like this to deal with political issues and creatively get their message out. I like her work and her approach to this political issue by exploiting her body in relation to the jersey landscape to which challenges the idea of male dominance and female empowerment. The idea of the project has these clear challenging ideas about women being adventurous and exploring the outdoors which challenge the traditional stereotypes of only men being accepted to do this. The project could have been included to perhaps include the challenging stereotypes of men too. Although this doesn’t directly relate to the artists story of herself being gay it would improve the project to give a more diverse approach to the project.

There are a variety of similarities and differences between Bush’s work on ‘Trading zones’ and Rae’s project ‘ Entre Nous’. For example they were both based in Jersey for the duration of their project however approached the island in a very different way. Bush chose to come to Jersey out of freedom because he wanted to focus on the financial sector. On the other hand Claire Rae was somewhat influenced to come over by Claude Cahun. Lewis Bush’s work is made within the genre of documentary photography in the sense he captures the political problems in a truthful way without staging his photographs and bending the truth. Where as Rae’s work uses a tableaux approach as she uses a staged approach to structure her political messages in the photo. A definite similarity between both of the photographers are that they are both exploring through their work the changes that are occuring within society and the response of these changes that society have. Although the fundamental concept of their work is somewhat similar with the theme of ‘change’ bush photographs the changing financial sector in jersey whilst RAe photographs the changing views on gender and idenity which are very different subjects. In conclusion, the work that i have focused on of Lewis Bush’s and Claire Rae’s are considered political due to the fact they are dealing with issues that are in conversation within society and they both aim to stem a debate about an issue or raise awareness about it.

Bibliography: 

http://www.lewisbush.com/trading-zones/

http://www.clarerae.com/work/never-standing-on-two-feet

In what way can the work of Lewis Bush and Clare Rae both be considered political?

In this essay I am going to explore the work of two completely different photographers and discuss how both of their works can be considered political. Clare Rae is an artist who explores performance and gesture with the use of gender, feminist theories and the female body. Lewis bush on the other hand is a photographer who works with facts, research and historic archives. By looking into how they incorporate their political perspectives into their art I want to compare and contrast how this can be done in so many different ways, through documentary or conceptual, I will also explore how their images can be perceived and viewed through different political opinions and perspectives to create completely new meaning.

Lewis Bush created a body of work named “Trading Zones” in 2018 whist staying in Jersey as the Archisle photographer in residence. As well as being a small, beautiful, scenic island, Jersey is also a huge finance centre where thousands of offshore jurisdictions locate. This method is used by many big companies to avoid tax and stamp duty which would otherwise be extreme and could effect the success of their businesses. In 2014 jersey held an estimated £92 billion for Uk property making it one of the biggest tax havens. But it not only recently that jersey has been used as a safe place to store money, a hoard dating back to the iron age was found in 2012 containing 70,000 coins and ancient jewellery. ‘Trading zones’ comments on various areas of Jersey’s relationship to finance, Lewis Bush has used information from campaign groups, mainstream sources and his own primary research to create his detailed library of work.

As we can see in the above photo, Lewis has used archival accounts such as bank notes to show the development of finance in the island. I think an interesting part of Lewis’ work is his landscapes, at first they just look like simple images showing a contrast between the built up finance buildings and the natural beauty of the island. But after reading the accompanying description I learnt that they were in fact the views out to see in the direction of significant onshore companies that relate and use the islands finance facilities. Jersey has been in the limelight in the last year due to a leak of paradise papers, documents relating to offshore investments. This has stirred up an active debate on whether it is ethical for the companies to legally avoid tax on such a large scale and avoid paying money to the government which is used for things such as health care and education. Lewis has also centred some of his work around the people including islanders that have contact with the finance industry. From protesters fighting against the development of the new finance centre to to people who work in the buildings

Clare Rea’s work from Entre Nous heavily influenced and inspired by the work of Claude Cahun, a French photographer in the early 20th century who’s work become popular due to the controversial subject of gender and sexuality explored in her work. Claude settled in jersey In 1937 and stayed in the island during the occupation where she continued to create activist artwork. She used her work to undermine authority which was not approved by the German forces occupying the island, who finally arrested Claude and sentenced her to death however the island was liberated before this happened. Clare has taken inspiration from Claude’s work in her own series of images ‘Like Cahun’s, my photographs depict my body in relation to place’ ‘They explore an idea of self within the immediate environment and were produced in collaboration with her lover, Marcel Moore.’ (Clare Rae, 2018, 1) In the gallery space she displayed her work n a very thought out format which reflects the political meaning behind the images. She got the rights to used copies of Claude’s work as an asset to her own work to show the similarities and and connections between them. The work was separated into two rooms with connecting doors allowing us to move freely from one to the other but also see the work standing alone. It was interesting to see how the work linked, for example Clare’s images taken near dolmens on the island, these are ancient burial grounds which have been preserved and are now on protected land. In the photos Clare is performing for the camera in this natural setting, the one bellow shows her wrapping her arms around the stone, this makes us question the way female bodies are represented through the use of the physical environment. This could link and contrast with modern culture and the media where woman’s bodies are often over sexualised and vied as a objects rather than people. politically women are making progress and receiving more equality everyday from gaining the vote in 1918 to justice for sexual assault victims in the me too movement which started in 2017.

To conclude I think that the work of both lewis bush and Clare Rae can be considered political due to the modern and relevant issues they relate to. The economy and finance are in a way a taboo subjects which is often glossed over by artist because it can be perceived as boring however lewis bushes work shows us an alternative angle where politics and photography collide. Clare’s work can be seen as political due to the focus on gender and the feminism both of which are hot topics in politics and modern culture.

Bibliography:

http://www.lewisbush.com/trading-zones/

interview with Lewis Bush in online photography magazine ASX

http://www.clarerae.com/work/never-standing-on-two-feet