1. Write a book specification and describe in detail what your book will be about in terms of narrative, concept and design.  Produce a mood-board of design ideas and consider the following:

Narrative: What is your story?
Describe in:

• 3 words

Re-visiting changed environment

• A sentence

Looking at archival imagery, I re-visited La Motte to document the effect of time on the environment.

• A paragraphs

90 years after the archaeological excavations at La Motte of 18 cists dated from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, I re-visited this area comparing the archival imagery with what is there today. I focused on documenting the environment e.g rocks, plants and landscape, as well as gathering objects i found there and photographing them formally. The underlying theme to my photobook is the effect of mankind on the environment over a period of time, taking inspriation from ‘Field Studies’ by Crystel Lebas.

Design: Consider the following

• How you want your book to look and feel
• Paper and ink
  
• Format, size and orientation
• Binding and cover
  
• Title options:

La Motte: Walking through Landscapes and Archives

La Motte: The Changing Environment

The Changing Island

The Island: Walking through Landscapes and Archives

• Structure and architecture
• Design and layout
• Editing and sequencing
• Images and text

I want my photo book to have a scientific appearance to it, linking to the formal imagery at the end of the book of objects I gathered taking inspiration from early botanists . I also want to try and emphasise the comparisons between the archival imagery and my photography by having my images in colour which contrasts with the black and white archival images. Similar to Crystel Lebas I want my photobook to have writing in it giving information and history about the area. Some of the landscape imagery will be across two pages, similar to Lebas panoramic photography. The photo book will be portrait and smaller than A4. Inside the photobook I will stick in additional images after it has been printed to emphasise the appearance of a scientific notebook, giving a more authentic, handmade look. The first half of my book will focus on my landscape photography documenting the area. On some of these pages I will juxtapose them with archival imagery from 1911-1914 to show the history of the area and to show how the environment has changed over 90 years due to climate change. Towards the end of the photobook I will display the edits of the objects alongside the original image formally. This is a contrast to the first part of the book, the last part focusing on a more scientific exploration. In ‘Field Studies’ Le bas calls the second half of her photobook ‘Weeds & Aliens Studies’ taking inpiration from Salsibury’s book. I also want to include some of the natural objects and archival imagery at the start of my book as the reader opens it so they have an idea of what the photobook is about and can understand the underlying story more.

One quote i want to use in my photobook is ‘We can in fact only define a weed, mutatis mutandis, in terms of the well-known definition of dirt as matter out of place.  What we call a weed is in fact merely a plant growing where we do not want it.’  Edward James Salisbury (1935). This is because I think it links to my imagery of objects i gathered in the area (specifically the plants) as they have been taken out of their natural environment.