Evaluation:

At the beginning of this project I had many ideas on different approaches I could take to showcase Journey’s and Pathway’s, after lots of thoughts and inspiration I decided to set my project to the Journey of Jersey through the Second World War. This title is very broad which allowed me to explore different aspects of Jersey’s war, such as Bunkers, Liberation Day, Sea Wall and Propaganda. It also provided me the opportunity to explore and research different aspects of the second world war and how it impacted Jersey, this was exciting for me as learning about the past is naturally something that interests me. I started off by exploring Gina Socrates work who captured Jersey Sea Wall, which was built not only to stop the tide hitting the island but to keep other armies from invading Jersey. A while back I viewed Socrates work at the CCA gallery where she explained her methodology of using the double exposure and explained why she conducted the photo shoot, her passion for her work and outcomes interested and excited me which allowed a successful first photo shoot. My first photo shoot was inspired by Socrates, where I explored capturing the subject of the sea wall at different viewpoints and with different shutter speeds. The exploration allowed me to showcase my ability of landscape photography and ability to adjust my camera settings and the use of natural lighting. When creating the edits of these images I wanted to replicate Socrates double exposure, which created a successful outcomes which showcased an aspect of Journey’s Jersey through the second world war. Although this shoot and edits where successful, I did not see any opportunity for further exploration. My next aspect of Jersey World War was Jersey’s bunkers and how they where used for the German army to help prevent other armies entering the island. For this shoot I looked at two artists who captured the same subject which was Jonathon Andrew and Paul Virilio, both artists produced high quality imagery of bunkers which helped inspired the way I captured the bunkers. Within this photo shoot I produced many successful outcomes which reinforced my competence of capturing landscape images, with different depth of field. When editing I struggled for inspiration in how to manipulate the images, as I wanted to keep the images socially acceptable and still showcase the same meaning as the artists researched. This is when I found and analysed the work of Idris Khan who distorted his subject by creating multiple layers, turning down the opacity of the layers and then slightly moving them. I liked the effect it had on his imagery and so tried in on my photograph, which lead to one of my strongest outcomes, it also inspired other editing ideas which shows further development towards the project. Due to the high success of this photo shoot and edits I decided to conduct another photo shoot using some of the imagery created, this lead to further exploration and my ability to think creatively. In this photo shoot I printed some of my work on acetate and held up to the camera lens to distort the bunkers in the background. I also printed out my most successful image into 8 A3 fragments which made up the whole picture, the idea behind this was to showcase how big the bunkers actually are and metaphorically how they had a massive impact during Jersey’s Journey through the Second World War. I managed to get some successful outcomes, but the images where not as good as the original photo shoot. The edits showcased my ability to use Photoshop and the different tools within the software to manipulate the images. I felt that I had explored bunkers a lot so I decided to move onto my next idea which was propaganda. I wanted to showcase how war propaganda was used to manipulate men to join into the wars army. I researched Barbara Kruger who created imagery like propaganda but addressed issues in 1945 society, as well as war propaganda and tableaux photography to understand what makes a successful propaganda. In the photo shoot I conducted it in a studio to showcase my ability to use artificial lighting and different types of lighting. It also allowed me to showcase my ability to explore and do tableaux photography. During the editing process I looked at using videography, I looked at using gifs of my model getting into the famous position. I also recreated Kruger’s work, then using war photography and Krugers work I created my own propaganda. Although I created successful outcomes, they where not as strong as my bunkers work but still showcase development and exploration towards the project. Due to a lack of time I was not able to conduct anymore photo shoots, I decided to do two more artists research to produce more edits. I research Knez and Talmor who looked at providing a way of reflecting on the past, but in different tones and ways. Then using successful images from my bunker shoot I decided to create edits in the same style. Doing this I produced many strong outcomes which I am now using as final pieces due to the success and meaning it holds. I believe that this project is successful as I have been able to produce many high quality photographs due to my competence in adjusting camera settings for effect. Moreover, I showed my competence of using Photoshop and hand crafts to manipulate my images. I have been able to explore multiple aspects of Jersey’s war in order to showcase the Islands Journey through the Second World War. If I had the opportunity to expand the project I would look at liberation day, and how the islanders celebrated when the Germans left the island, which would have linked with Martin Parr. To conclude, I believe that this project has been highly successful and I am proud with the final imagery produced.