I want my book to be finished with a hard cover to show a professional finish and ensure quality throughout it. I believe that an standard sized landscape photo-book will be the most appropriate size as the photographs will be large enough to be seen in detail and there will be enough space to mess around with the formatting of the photographs. For the paper I will choose the option of premium lustre paper to offer a hint of gloss as well as greater tonal range and contrast. Throughout the book I will be using a mixture of landscape and portrait orientated photographs including a mixture of family environmental portraits and documentary-style photographs of my house as well as archival photographs as this will create a sense of documentary as well as including a personal touch. I will be using a mixture of design layouts throughout the photo-book such as full-bleeds, off-centre photographs and centered photographs to create a variety of styles and to keep the viewer interested in the narrative. I am planning on creating a narrative that shows the development of the house from beginning to the current state whilst including personal portrait photographs throughout as well as a couple photographs which do not seem to fit the narrative – the result of this will be a couple of narratives running throughout the book creating a more interesting and experimental book. I think that I will be using primarily images in the book with minimal text as I would prefer the photographs to show development rather than explaining through added context. I will be using a mix of black and white and colour photographs – the documentary photographs of the development of my house will be in black and white whereas photographs depicting family memories will be in colour in order to bring some life into the photographs. I will be taking inspiration for the layout of my book from some of the layouts in “Retracing Our Steps” by Bression and Ayesta.
Daily Archives: January 19, 2019
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Khadija Saye
Kajia Saye born in London in 1992 was a British – Gambian artist and photographer, who tragically lost her life in the Grenfell tower Disaster in 2017.
At aged 16 she won a full scholarship to the prestigious Rugby school where her passion of photography first began to grow she went on to take a BA in Photography at UCA Farnham, where she first began to experiment with her Gambian identity in relation to photography. In early 2017 Saye, completed nine tintype photographers from she project she entitled ‘Dwelling: in this space we breathe’ these self portraits where on Gambian spiritual practises.This project was set to be exhibited at the Venice Biennale, which is a prestigious international art exhibition held every two years in Italy. Her works was meant to be included in a project entitled ‘ Disopra Pavilion’, in which a group of contemporary artist from racially diverse backgrounds presented work on the theme of migration and displacement. Each image was a self -portrait, in which State performs a different, time- honoured, Gambain spiritual ritual. For the project she drew on her own self interest and explored the emotions, feeling and consequences of her journey and heritage.
These images were created to look a certain way, inspired by the Victorian era of tintype photography, in which the image in created by using a wet metal plate and collodion solution. Tintype photography is affected by the environment that they are developed in such as the constancy of light and the temperature the the area. I personally think that she decided to present her work in this format because there are very few portraits of black woman in the 19th century, when this type of technology was being used. It gives the images a sense of incongruous to them which then makes the viewer think about the the historic documentation of black people throughout photography. When I look at the image the first things that I connect it to is images to slaves from the 19th century as black people where only send document in this type of photography, when then where being documented as a part of their plantations owners property. Making the images became impactful for Saye, ‘whilst exploring the notions of spirituality and rituals, the process of image-making became a ritual in itself’. In the images Saye in wearing a traditional Gambian headwrap, and is holding an incense burner which is an item considered to be sacred in The Gambia. The image looks as if it was taken in a studio, it is unclear if Saye took this image using a clicker so she would have been pressing the shutter, as her hand is out of the frame, or whether there was somebody on set with her. Saye’s eyeliner looks as if she is looking up to the burning inses, this may be a symbolic sign, because the inse is used is spiritual practices, that maybe she is trying to seek approval from a higher power. The fact that she is facing away from the camera in his image, may be representing the fact that she like many other black woman face prejudice, and are see as the stereotypes set around they are seen to be connected to.