Category Archives: A2 Personal Investigation

Filters

Author:
Category:

First Shoot in St. Helier

Contact Sheets

My Shortlist of Photographs
Experimentation

I will be cropping, applying filters and adjusting the properties of the shortlist of my photographs in order to create the images that I desire to.

For example, below shows the editing process; I start off by altering the white balance and then I focus on choosing the correct filter and then editing features such as the brightness and contrast. I then finish off the editing by cropping.

Edits of the Shortlist
Evaluation of Shoot

In this shoot I have successfully looked at multiple subjects whilst exploring the title of “Future of St. Helier”.  I have looked at neglected buildings left to rot, new buildings being constructed, man taking over nature, nature taking over man, history of St. Helier and importantly the people of St. Helier.  One thing that I believe that I have done well in this shoot is capturing the different aspects and areas of St. Helier to document the ongoings of the renovations and also to document the destruction.  One thing that I think I could have improved on is my focus on portraiture and the people of St. Helier. I plan on developing this in my second shoot as I will revisit my given area and focus primarily on portrait photographs in order to widen the variety of photographs taken from this project.

My Area Analysis

For my shoot within St Helier I will be assigned to a designated area to photograph, by doing this it will allow me to come to a greater understanding of the buildings and overall structure that defines the section of town whilst broadening my knowledge of the design the parish set-up in. To do this I will be exploring the grey zone (seen below), which covers the south-east area of town, consisting of the tunnel and royal square:My plans for the area are to photograph the variety of buildings and designs which each one seems to uniquely take up. This consists of old unique buildings such as the ones surrounding the royal square, to the more financial area which completely contrasts, by doing this it allows me to bring up the subjects of how (in my opinion) the structure of town is completely mixed with no real idea of where it is trying to go, and presented through the range of coloured buildings and glass office blocks shows the almost abstract and odd design of it all. To add onto this I plan to visit the graveyard behind the car park next to the new police station, I intend to show the randomness of St Helier and how some parts just seem to be utterly unrelated to the future that area should be heading towards.Helping me with this project are Jersey Archives who preserve historical photographs over the years to keep record of the events that have unraveled throughout Jersey’s history. Examples of this consist of the German occupation to the queens visit and even delving into modern-day events, I can use this to help me show the development of the grey area I have been given such as the old car park which has now been converted to a police station and the process which covered it. Areas that this could include is the old bus station which has now be changed into a square where various games and events occur such as the portuguese and french fairs, this would be great to capture how the use of an area overtime has been changed from a business to a place of social interest.

A photographer that I will be using to inspire this is Ernst Haas, Haas focuses on abstract details and situations that occur in-built up busy areas, however takes on a more unique style choosing to photograph how abstract imagery can define the area of a certain place through vivid colour and pattern. Haas usually focuses on the place rather than the person, and so avoids the use of portraiture to define the people and culture of the given place, and instead uses the colour, simplicity and even bustle of an area to try to define what its like to be there. I would like to link this to my project and how the abstract areas much the time in a town or city can define and even emphasize features that you wish to explore, such as the architecture and green areas.As seen above most of Haas’s images use lighting as a primary source for creating abstract and vivid imagery. I found in this case that by using this technique it would allow me to experiment with how I portrayed certain areas in certain lighting, for example I could use high exposures to create white blinding structures out of buildings, and a low exposure to emphasize the illuminating effect lamps and other sources of light had on the area.

Plan for shoot of St Helier

Future of St Helier,as previously said my shoot is around the red section, from the old police station to around St Thomas church area.I have Previously shown and experimented within ideas and concepts I too want to capture within my work,but additional my inspiration I have had from the jersey archives and Tom pope and to not its four on my themes of old and new and modernization in buildings but also taking images of the poeple and how their lives have changed and expanded due to futuristic development.My main title for the whole of this project is : Modernization reunite with past,futistic revamp of St Helier.i also wnat to photgrphy old builings that have so much potential to build and become morden and create a new st helier.Old route,archive :The areas in which I am going to all used to be hotels,I could show comparisons of the finace areas and the old main attrcation of tourism and the contratsing digffference through justaposition of architecture and the new different audience of who come to jersey beacuse of these new main attrcations.

buildings and people: I originally expressed my main interest within concentrating on architecture of old and modern nuilindg to stress the change and further futuristic advances we need in St Helier in order to benefit everyone. However know i also want to cpature poeple living within the area,and try and tell stories through portrite images and the areas in which theyare aurrounded. although when it does comes to foucousing upin the builings i want to urban esc photography within this area,ads modern builings are not current wihtin this section of town.One of my artists is Tom Pope,he is an artists I have previously spoken about and tucks the jersey archive.i was inspired by his work because he had so many interesting conceptual ideas of presenting a location through the people living within it, and also the movement and light and overall composition of how you bring an environment o life.Additionally I am going back to focusing on modernization,this comes under the comparison and juxtaposition of fiance sector of st Helier and then my given red section and how i can edit and compare these areas and stress the need for a change.

Photoshoot Plan

For my first photoshoot I want to focus on urban structures and infrastructure around the Green area I’ve been assigned to explore.  Focusing on this will allow me to show how new buildings and constructions are becoming central theme of St Helier’s future and it becoming less and less about the history and atmosphere of Jersey itself.

Whilst on my shoot I will also focus on photographing smaller details that may not be noticed by people passing to represent how people in St Helier are forgetting Jersey’s heritage. This is taking inspiration from the photographer Luke Fowler where he uses two-frame juxtapositions of two images.  I also want to incorporate the idea of juxtaposing two extremes next to each other e.g. the chaotic urban structures compared to the more natural and calm. I think this will be effective as it will show people how the heritage of Jersey is juxtaposed with the future of St Helier and how they are opposites.

The first place i want to visit on my shoot is Fort Regent.

Fort Regent is a 19th-century fortification, and leisure centre, on Mont de la Ville (Town Hill), in St. Helier.

  • The construction of the fortress we see today on Town Hill began on 7 November 1806, during the Napoleonic Wars The fort was built using local workers and men from the Royal Engineers, with an average of 800 men working at any given time.
  • This enabled the substantial amount of work to be completed 8 years later, in 1814.
  • It was given the name Fort Regent in honour of Prince Regent, who was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland at this time.
  • During the German occupation of the Channel Islands, the German forces made some additions to the fort, including flak cannons. Some of these concrete structures remain today.
  •  In December 1967, the States of Jersey made a decision to adapt the site into a leisure centre. The swimming pool located on the glacis field, which opened in 1971 and closed in 2009,was the first modern addition to the fort.

The second place I want to visit is the old harbor as their is a lot of history and jersey heritage associated it.

  • The harbour development which was completed by 1850. A few years earler the South and North pier had been built by the States, creating a harbour significantly bigger than the previous English and French Harbours. But all of this dried out for several hours around low tide, and thoughts were already turning towards further expansion.
  • Work on a new pier to the south of the existing harbour was already under way in 1843 when the eminent English engineers James Walker and Alfred Burges were commissioned to produce plans for a further enlarged harbour, and they proposed removing the outer arm of the old South Pier, and widening and extending the narrow North Pier towards it to create a new harbourmouth.

The development of St Helier Harbour

More areas to focus on:

Themes to consider:

  • Old vs New vs Development
  • Make use of your senses : see , hear ,taste, smell, touch
  • Typography and graphics
  • Art and culture
  • Two-Frame Film | Juxtapostions

Jersey achieve history of red section and Tom Pope

The red section I have been given, to me, this divides into two main areas;This being the old police station and the Savoy jersey and then up towards St Thomas church.The area throughout is focused upon old buildings and more urban and deteriorating areas typically ignored by governmental property developers as they do not hold a public interest within the main section of town or the finance sector.As previously spoken about all these areas have jersey ‘masterplans’ since 2011 That have not been accomplished,I will use comparisons between these images and try to enhance the need for mordenisation. Although i do believe there are many small communities within these areas to which I could take images of the people as a representative of the area itself. My main three intentions wihtin this shoot will be, old vs new,abstract urban visions and finally gentification and derelication.

This is a map of the area that I will concentrate my work around. Most of the developments architecturally around this area are old and not fitting with a style, most of the buildings were built in the 80’2-90’s and do not hold a historical value or price.Although this would be good to conceptualise my ideas of capturing urban landscapes.

Jersey Archieve:The jersey archive is an area in which historical photos over decades have been kept and tracked in order to preserve our history the lives of the people. Many of the images track specific days in time such as liberation day,however many are purely to tell stories of the people and places at the time. The area  in which I am looking into has also been a pivotal area of jersey as this is where many large hotels and churches were begun to be made and allowed citizens to come together as a society and grow as a community.The Savoy hotel is the centre of my area and one of the largest buildings of jersey history being around for many decades through jerseys history. Tom Pope is a photographer for Société Jersiaise, Jersey.His aim through his work is to show the world and people around him and he does not see himself as the artists but everything surrounding himself as the art and inspiration. Although his word is not concentrated so much on a location but the people living there, this has inspired me to be less concentrate whtin the buildings and growth of architecture but the way in which the minds of people have expanded due to the futuristic advances.The Archive is the Island’s national repository holding archival material from public institutions as well as private businesses and individuals.I think a main focus for jersey archive is to track jerseys progression of architecture and the way we can keep and expand on jerseys history.

Tom Pope

Tom Pope,has an interesting conceptual view of when presenting a location he does so through the people living their in interesting conceptual methods. I think he will help me develop from just architecture to a feeling of an area itself, showing off urban landscapes in more creative methods.

Luke Fowler

Luke Fowler is an artist, filmmaker and musician based in Glasgow.  Luke Fowler’s work explores the limits and conventions of biographical and documentary film-making. This has resulted in comparisons with British Free Cinema of the 1950s, which represented a new attitude to film-making that embraced the reality of everyday, contemporary British society. Working with archival footage, photography and sound, Fowler’s filmic montages create portraits of intriguing, counter cultural figures, including Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing and English composer Cornelius Cardew.

It is said that there is a fine line between film and photography. In 2006, filmmaker Luke Fowler(1978, Glasgow) borrowed an Olympus Pen F to document his artist residency in Bamburg, Germany. Fowler created the double images by using a half-camera frame, exposing two images in one 35mm frame.

  • After developing the first roll, he was struck by the role that chance had played in the resulting diptychs. This signalled the start of a new project, resulting in his book Two-Frame Films: 2006-2012.
  • The book addresses the fine line between photography and film, as the photographs, which are reminiscent of film-stills, question the limits of photography as a medium of representation.

  • In the introduction Fowler discusses how the idea of ‘in the blink of an eye’ has a different meaning for us as human beings than it does with the camera.
  • When we blink and close our eyes, we are blind to the world in that instant.
  • By printing two different images alongside one another, he aims to emphasise the momentary nature of a photograph.

The images that are paired together were taken moments apart in some cases, while they were taken at entirely different times in others.

  • The way in which he combines the images in Two-Frame Films shows that Fowler is first and foremost a filmmaker, creating a narrative of, and an interaction between, multiple images.
  • These new narratives created by the diptychs, question photography’s reliability as a way of documenting ‘real’ life in a single, still frame.
  • He shows us how we can create a story, or tell our own story, through combining the chance fragments as exposed by photographs.

What drew me to Luke Fowler was his attention to detail in his photographs and the way he focuses on what others may not notice. In particular his juxtaposition two frame images caught my attention as the two images

Fowler experimented with different film stocks, subjects and framing, and the images are inextricably linked to his filmmaking as evidenced by the elements of montage, colour and reflectivity that permeate the series. In both still and moving image, Fowler considers how an event might be abstracted by the camera apparatus in a subjective ordering of reality that is emphasised by the dialectic between paired images. The photographs are a means of personally testing the ability of the camera to authentically bear witness to an event, and its fallibility as a medium of representation.

‘Two-Frame Films’:

https://www.themoderninstitute.com/artists/luke-fowler/works/photo-archive-group-1-2006-2009/36/

The link below links to a film, shot on 16mm in Glasgow, shows images of Luke Fowler’s home, studio and neighbourhood along with a commentary in which the Turner Prize nominee describes his working practice.

https://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/turner-prize-2012-luke-fowler

Original ideas and artist 1:Tanja Deman Fernweh

Shoot inspiration:

First idea:This is the conceptual idea of architecture within new and old buildings.This symbolises movement and clutter,and how the secrets within St Helier and the hidden past lives,this is a basement of a building and you cannot tell weather it is older or modern,I’m concentrated  to find movement and areas to which creates an interesting composition in an area we generally would not view or something we would not typically want to see within a building.

Idea 2:forming old and new buildings collaged into one image,for this I will connect my second photoshoot of modern buildings not in my given section and combine with older more historically  significant architecture. This old and new vs development can present the beauty on both sides but also the inner most need for a revamp and mordenistaion on the insides of buildings. I can use collage,reflection or editing techniques in order to successfully accomplish this.

Idea three: capturing modern or iconic buildings in a futuristic light.These alternative abstract visions could be perceived as wrong and dynamic,It shows a movement and a light of the people living wihtin that area that is important for the buildings themselves. To me this is like cpaturing a texture of a place by the radiance it gives.

urban landscapes;Although so far I have been focused on showing how St helier’s need to be more modern,in the area I have been given it is very desolet and does not have any futuristic aims surrounding it,because of this is will highlight this decay as an urge for change and also present the theme urban as a type of gentrification and derelication,and how there is a strong juxtapostion and contrast between different areas of st helier itself. I will also try and cpature living situations and poeple and their personalities  and persona they have from living wihtin that area.

Artist:Tanja Deman Fernweh

Fernweh has said that “anja Deman’s art is inspired by her interest in the perception of space and her relationship to nature.
Tanja’s works, incorporating photography, collage, video and public art, are evocative meditations on urban space and landscape. Observing recently built legacy or natural sites her work investigates the sociology of space and reflects dynamics hidden under the surface of both the built and natural environment.’
I have a keen interest within her physical and emotional perspectives of a specific location and her own personal perceptions applied to an area,And her views of ,spaces, architectures, geological formations and sites. she also incorporates photography with collage which is an idea that as said previsouly I am highly interested within. Deman’s works spends not just from the camera but also sociological research and human observations wihtin a specific location. Her images are said to ‘reflect upon the dynamics hidden beneath the surface of built and natural environments

Analysis of one of her images:

I was inspired by this image due to the way she captured the atmosphere of the location and also the emotion and persona of the people living among the area itself. The colours of the piece are very dark and concentrated on tonal shades, it presents a juxtaposition of dereliction and how the pool is a form of modernisation but does not accomplish a sense of community and the large architectural conceptual states still hold all the attention from the people itself. The more urban nature concentrated area is too unique as this is conceptually done to prensts the human influence people have and ability to change an area that once had nothing there.I want to use all her different themes and aims within my work, of collage, tonal work and the presentations of different circumstances of nature and humans all in one photo.

Shooting Plan for the 19th June

On the 19th of June I will be going into town to photograph the orange area of the above map of St. Helier.  This area contains sites such as Victoria College and the Mayfair hotel. I will be taking inspiration from Michelle Sank and Albert Smith in my shoot in the sense that I will be asking residents and workers of this area to pose in their natural environment. I will also be looking at capturing photographs of architecture of places similar to Victoria College as this is something that Albert Smith did. I hope to catch people in their natural environment whilst creating an old-fashioned feel to the photographs through editing and subjects within the photographs. I plan to go into different shops and businesses to photograph subjects as they are without any preparation and hopefully the inspiration from Smith and Sank will come through in my final outcomes.

Points of Interest

Influences on My Shoot

GoreyPierAlbertSmith.jpg

CarriageSmith2.jpg

RJAOfficersSmith2.jpg

Image result for michelle sank

Image result for michelle sank

My Views And Feelings on the Future of St Helier

St Helier consists of 33,500 people, roughly 34.2% of the total population of Jersey whilst being the capital of the island, with a reclaimed area from the sea being 494 acres. The mostly urban area includes much of the activities available for people, with a quickly growing finance sector taking up a 44% growth in 2017, thousands of jobs are becoming accessible to more and more people, making it a vital part of Jersey’s future development.At the moment St Helier is the center of Jersey’s activities regarding tourism, finance and leisure which is evident through cinemas, operas, beaches, finance buildings etc. However I think that we need to see a greater development in the progress of the style of buildings, for example an increase in higher rising, more modern looking buildings would allow for more space for other areas to really develop such as cafes and shops due to a greater space, whilst at the same time creating an impression of a town borderline city feel. However I do feel like there is a lack of community within St Helier that can be seen in areas like Cheap Side, as I don’t think there is enough events and areas that would support this and bring the community closer as a whole, to do this cultural festivities could be introduced that would allow for this support whilst being an introduction for many people into a small insight to other ethnicity’s  culture. I found that St Helier had a rather weird contrast between buildings, with many portraying an old style of architecture whilst others inhabited a more modern approach. This in my opinion is stopping the town from becoming attractive to those who live in it, as there seems to be no real structure or design to the area, rather just different designs dotting up around the place.For my shoot I would like to focus on the modernization of areas within Jersey, and the forms that they take up in comparison to the maybe more derelict areas. I think this stark comparison would allow for more abstract photography which would emphasize the differences between the modern and the old.

Societe Jersiaise Photographic Archive

The Photographic Archive of the Société Jersiaise contains over 80,000 images dating from the mid-1840s to the present day and is the principal Jersey collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century photography. The archive holds examples of work by important nineteenth century photographers such as William Collie, Charles Hugo, Thomas Sutton and Henry Mullins.  The collection incorporates late nineteenth century studio collections of negatives by Jersey based photographers such as Ernest Baudoux, Albert Smith and Clarence Ouless. The archive contains over 15,000 portraits of identified people and views of every bay. Together the collection offers detailed visual record of Jersey and Channel Islands history and an excellent representation of technical and aesthetic developments throughout the photographic era.

Photography arrived in Jersey on 9th May 1840 just nine months after it had been first publicized in the urban centres of England and France.   Following technical developments in the 1850s, by the boom period for Victorian photography in the 1860s the number of photographic studios in St Helier peaked at twenty-one. The Société Jersiaise was formed in 1873 but only realised its aim of opening a museum in 1877. In 1992 the Photographic Archive Department was established to implement appropriate collections management policies, to improve storage conditions and to catalogue the collection to increase access so that the public would be able to see their work.