Historical context

Still life is the depiction of inanimate objects for the qualities of their form, texture, colour, and composition. The genre began in the form of painting as cameras (or any form of photography) hadn’t yet been invented. The earliest known still life paintings date back to the 15th century in Egypt, these were mainly of food, fish, meat etc. Although these paintings appeared sporadically since then, it wasn’t until the Renaissance that it became and independent genre of painting.

Early paintings from the Netherlands included Skulls, candle and hourglasses as allegories to death and its immanence, and sometimes combined with fruit or flowers to symbolise the cycle of nature. These are now known as Venitas. From the 18th century until the rise of Nonobjective painting after World War 2, France became the centre of still-life painting. Most major artists who at some time resided there during this 250-year period painted still life portraits.

This is the image I have chosen to analyse, it is by Jacopo de’ Barbari, who is widely considered to be the first still life painter.

I have chosen it as it is full of symbolism and hidden meanings. Firstly, it is in the style of a Venita as shown by the center-piece of the whole painting being a skull. It is also quite a powerful one as there is a crown propped up against the skull. This could suggest many things, such as that power doesn’t last forever, or the fact that being a powerful ruler doesn’t grant you eternal life. Or it could be much simpler and be a sign of dislike towards the ruler at the time.

The strong diagonal lines which make up the painting are very aggressive and intimidating. This is as the painter has placed weapons and sharp objects all pointing in one direction, they also create other strong shapes such as triangles which help give the painting structure. This could be a symbol of the violence and war at the time, or be carrying on with the theme presented by the crown of a possible greediness.

The words above the skull are the biggest sign of the theme of the painting an it’s message. ‘Mors Vincit Omnia’ translated from latin reads ‘Death Conquers All’ or ‘Death Always Wins’. The first translation of ‘Death Conquers All’ fits the painting perfectly and explains the aesthetic of it. The crown next to the skull, the aggressive objects around it, and the throne-like object they are all sat on. They all symbolise the conquering of death which the artiswt is trying to depict. They do this rather well, as the painting does a good job at making the viewer feeling threatened, and looking intimidating.

Still life images typically consist of fruits, flowers or household objects. The image captures a staged assortment of objects, placed to simply show them off or to have a hidden meaning. During the 17th century, still life painting were an emerging genre in Dutch culture. These paintings were known for their realism and ability to show off the objects in them. Since painting was still an art for the wealthy, many still life images from this time were commissioned by the rich to show off their wealth and economic success.

Still life images is a work of art that where the subject of the image is either natural (food, flowers, animals, plants, etc) or man-made (glasses, books, jewelry, etc). Still life allows artists to have a lost of freedom and to experiment and rearrange objects of the image. Many of the first and original idea of still life paintings are found in the ancient Egyptian tombs and monuments. These paintings give an insight to the life and events happening during these times. But also images drawn in the tombs of those who had died, had objects drawn so they could take them to the afterlife and have. The drawings weren’t a piece of artwork for the Egyptians they had a functioning purpose in their beliefs. The images on the walls are known as relief’s which is a drawing/painting carved into the walls, normally in the colors; blue, black, red, green and gold.

For the remaining 4 weeks before half-term we will be photographing everyday objects from the years of Occupation in Jersey in 1940-45 held in the Jersey Heritage collection. This practical task will help you develop lighting and camera skills in the studio.

Here is a PLANNER for a full overview of what you are required to do in the next 4 weeks. You are required to self-monitor your progress and will be asked to upload Tracking-Sheet with an update on a weekly basis to your blog.

Here you can listen to the stories behind some of the objects presented by Ashlea Tracey from BBC Radio Jersey

However, before we begin this task we need to learn about how still-life emerged as an independent genre, in particularly during the early 1600s Dutch and Northern European paintings. Many of the objects depicted in these early works are symbolic of religion and morality reflecting on the increasing urbanization of Dutch and Flemish society, which brought with it an emphasis on the home and personal possessions, commerce and trade.
Paintings depicting burnt candles, human skulls, dying flowers, fruits and vegetables, broken chalices, jewelry, crowns, watches, mirrors, bottles, glasses, vases etc are symbolic of the transience and brevity of human life, power, beauty and wealth, as well as of the insignificance of all material things and achievements.

Read here for more details about the different categories within still-life paintings such as Fruits, Flowers, Breakfast pieces, Trompe L’Oeil and Vanitas.

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Week 5: 30 Sept – 6 Oct
Still-Life: Contextual Studies

Complete the following blog posts

RESEARCH > ANALYSIS
1. Historical context: Describe origin and definition of still life as a genre in history of pictorial practice.

Read texts above and below to gain an overview of how still-life emerged.

https://mymodernmet.com/what-is-still-life-painting-definition/

2. Analysis: Select a key painting and comment on the religious, political and allegorical symbolism of food and objects in terms of wealth, status and power, or the lack of.

Lets take a closer look at the painting, Cookmaid with Still Life of Vegetables and Fruit by British painter Sir Nathaniel Bacon

Listen to curator Tim Batchelor discussing the painting

For further insights into the symbolic meaning of food and objects in still-life paintings, read this text Secret Symbols in Still-Life

3. Emile F. Guiton: Autochromes:The founding father of the Societe Jersiaise Photographic Archive was also a very accomplished photographer who experimented with early colour photography in the beginning of the 20th century. Read this essay by Archivist Patrick Cahill on Guiton’s still-life images of flowers in a vase and other domestic scenes using Autochrome – the first commercially available colour process. Produce a blog post that demonstrates your understanding autochrome and its colour process using Guiton’s images as illustrations.

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National Science and Media Museum: History of the Autochrome: the Dawn of Colour Photography

4. Contemporary practice: Complete at least one artist reference on how contemporary photographers explore still life and objects in their work. What meaning can we attribute to images of food and everyday objects – consider social, economical and cultural references.

Read and study this article with examples of contemporary interpretations of still life photography

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Klaus Pichler: One Third
According to a UN study, one third of the world’s food goes to waste – the largest part thereof in the industrialized nations of the global north. Equally, 925 million people around the world are threatened by starvation. The series ‚One Third‘ describes the connection between individual wastage of food and globalized food production. Rotting food, arranged into elaborate still lives, portrays an abstract picture of the wastage of food whilst the accompanying texts take a more in depth look at the roots of this issue. ‚One Third‘ goes past the sell by date in order to document the full dimensions of the global food waste.

Week 6: 7 – 13 Oct
Occupation Objects: Studio-shoots

Complete the following blog posts

1. LIGHTING: Experiment with different lighting set-ups, both continuous lighting (tungsten) and flash lights. Be creative and use special still-life table and its translucent backdrop.

2. RECORDING: Explore different angles, both from above, side and front.

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3. EDITING: Upload and process images from photo-shoot using Lightroom and make a rough edit of 8–10 images 

4. EXPERIMENTING: Show experimentation with different adjustments/ techniques/ processes in Lightroom/ Photoshop appropriate to intentions. Produce at least 3 different variations of the same still-life with 3 different images.

Extension – Montage experiment: Create a set of 3 montages using your images of objects and combine with cut out figures from the Occupation archives.

For inspiration Look at the images and photobook; The First March of Gentlemen by Polish photographer, Rafal Milach. This body of work is a fictitious narration composed of authentic stories. Historical events related to the town of Września in Poland came to be the starting point for reflection on the protest and disciplinary mechanisms experienced under Communist rule. In the series of collages, the reality of the 1950s Poland ruled by the communists blends with the memory of the Września children strike from the beginning of the 20th century. This shift in time is not just a coincidence, as the problems which the project touches upon are universal, and may be seen as a metaphor for the contemporary social tensions and politics currently playing out in Poland . The project includes archive photos by Września photographer Ryszard Szczepaniak> Read more here

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https://vimeo.com/231261685

5. EVALUATE: Photo-shoot and experiments. Select at least 2 key images and analyse in depth using this methodology: TECHNICAL > VISUAL > CONTEXTUAL > CONCEPTUAL. Compare with examples of artists references where appropriate.

Week 7: 14 – 20 Oct
Substitutes Assignment: Studio-shoots

Complete the following blog posts

EXTENSION TASK: (you can work in groups – max 3)
As you have learned from visiting Jersey War Tunnels and listening to islanders who experienced it first-hand there was a food shortage and rationing was introduced by the Nazi command during the Occupation. In the Spring of 1943 islanders received a few hundred Red Cross parcels.

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Your task is to select one substitute from the list below and use the ingredients in the studio to make a set of still-life images.

Read more here

Tea	Parsnip, sugar beet, green pea pods, camellia leaves, blackberry leaves, lime blossoms and carrots (shredded and baked)
Coffee	Parsnip, sugar beet, acorns, chicory, barley, wheatm beans, lupin seeds (roasted and ground)
Tobacco	Cherry leaves, sweet chestnut leaves, rose petals, sweet scented butterburr, coltsfoot and clover
Sultanas and currants	Sugar beet, cut small and dried, elderberries dried, and dried grapes
Gelatine	Carrageen moss (seaweed)
Bicycle tyres	Rubber garden hose, with rope inside. Rope. Many cyclists rode on the rims without any tyres
Salt	Sea water
Clothing	Curtains made into garments; blankets and rugs into coats
Boots and shoes	Clogs (manufactured locally) and the ‘Jersey boot’ with leather tops and local beechwood soles
Flour	Potato flour, used for puddings and gruel. Used also for thickening stews, gravies etc
Soap	The ration was increased by boiling ivy leaves till quite soft and adding one half packet of soap powder and one tablet of soap
Cod fish	Macaroni boiled stiff, with half a spoonful of anchovy sauce added, and cut up when cold and fried
Brooms & brushes	Cane or rope to replace bristles. Stable brooms of wire bristles

From Substitutes Assignment complete the following and publish on blog:

1. EDITING: Upload and process images from each photo-shoot using Lightroom. Make a rough edit of 8–10 images and evaluate. 
2. EXPERIMENTING: Show experimentation with different adjustments/ techniques/ processes in Lightroom/ Photoshop appropriate to intentions.
3. EVALUATE: Photo-shoot and experiments. Select at least 2 key images and analyse in depth using this methodology: TECHNICAL > VISUAL > CONTEXTUAL > CONCEPTUAL. Compare with examples of artists references where appropriate.

Week 8: 21 Oct – 4 Nov (incl H-Term)
Zine-lab: Portraits and Objects

Complete the following blog posts

Your second zine must be a combination of portraits and objects that either convey a sense of a story, or absence of a narrative. Your sequencing and juxtaposition of images require careful consideration of the relationship between forms, shapes, colour, meaning (symbolic, political, social, cultural.)

For inspiration see zines/ books by Sam Irwin, Rita Puig-, Lorenzo Vitturi (Dalston Anatomy), Photographic Treatment, Beate Suker,

1. RESEARCH: Zines and newspaper design made by artists and photographer that will provide visual stimulus for your page designs.

• Produce a mood board 

2. DESIGN: Plan how you want your zine to look and feel, in terms of

• Format, size and orientation
• Design and layout
• Rhythm and sequencing
• Narrative and visual concept 
• Title and cover
• Images and text
• Use of other design elements or inserts: archives, montages, graphics, typography

3. EXPERIMENTING: Show variation of designs

• Create 3 examples of alternative layouts for your zine using Adobe InDesign and complete a visual blog post that clearly shows your decision making and design process using print-screens or save each page-spread as a  JPEG.
• Make sure you annotate!

4. PRESENTING: Print, fold and bind final zine and hand in for assessment.

DEADLINE: FRI 25 Oct
All Blogposts by Mon 4 Nov (first day after H-Term)

After I had looked at the images I had taken I used Lightroom and photoshop to edit and select my best images.

This image I actually didn’t edit on photoshop I edited it into Lightroom. After having looked at this picture again a few days later I have decided I am going to change the brightness and contrast of the image as it looks quite grey all the way around. However, I don’t completely dislike the grey as it adds an element of previous times maybe when they didn’t have ranges of tones and different shades. I also think next time I edit this one which will be in the boxes below I am going to crop it and maybe compare it to one of my other images.

I decided to keep one of my final outcomes in colour as its focused quite well on certain features of her face, especially her eyes and the creases between her wrinkles. The picture has focused well on just her face but also kept the background good shade so that it doesn’t blend in with her hair. The darkening of the her dress even thought its not seen has added different shades to the image making it more appealing to look at as its not all the same tone and quite bland. For the image above I have edited the vibrance to make it more lively, the brightness which has added a glow to her skin and the exposure which has made the background divide into 2 colours which for me makes the photo look a lot more structured and makes it look more planned out.

For part of our project we had a visit from survivors that were alive during the Jersey occupation. Our group had the incredible chance to meet 89 year old, Joan Tapley. For the session she sat and spoke to us about her time in Jersey during the occupation. Joan was a child when Jersey became occupied she was 6 years old when this happened, she was a lone child which meant that she was very close with her parents and she even said so herself that they used to tell her everything. She used to live on the North Coast which meant she witnessed lots of bombing around the island which a the time meant that the germans wanted to invade. The British government became weaker by the day which meant that they pactiaclly resulted into giving Jersey away.

She went on to explaining that later on around June 1940 all the houses around the island put up white sheets which meant they had surrendered down to the germans. She watched 30 odd planes fly over the island as they began to mark their territory. Joan also told us that lots of innocent people were killed that day like farmers and other labour workers along the avenue, this was the moment that the islanders knew they were not in good hands.

The germans arrived and began making rules, like introducing curfews, not allowing people near cliffs nor on beaches and giving everyone a ration food book so people knew how much to eat and on what days they’d get more. The curfews for the summer was nobody allowed out past 10 o’clock and in winter it was 9 o’clock in the mornings nobody was allowed out till 6am in summer and and 7am in winter. This is when Joan and her family began to realise the restrictions and how this felt more like an imprisoment than anything else. Islanders were not allowed lights at night, they used dark paper to block out the lights Joan said so herself that the “only advantage was to see the stars” The rules became more stricter as they went on, farmers had to inform authorities about what they were planning on growing and how many off, they didn’t have tea so they had to ‘substitute”, which is what the germans wanted people to say, it with parsnips and ginger.

Later on that year germans changed the currency over here to pfennigs, which wasn’t exactly easy at the time as people began to worry about food shortages and people from town began to struggle. Joan told us a story about how families that began to run out of food they would all go to fields and collect corn without the germans knowing and had to hide it very well as the German officers would often go randomly and check peoples homes. Authorities would also ask people what was in their bags so around this time a lot more woman became ‘pregnant’ due to stuffing corn bags up their dresses. Joan’s family actually ended up having so much corn one time that her grandma made her a mattress filled with it so that when Joan went to sleep she felt some weird things on her mattress to later discover it was filled as it was probably the best hiding space.

As the session came to an end Joan spoke about Liberation day. On the 8th the day before it was announced that the war was over, her father had gone to work like normal and then came home early due to the news. The town was completely emptied and everyone went home and gathered back later. The 9th of May came and everyone got in their trucks, cars and vans and set off to meet in town. Joan said all these cars appeared out of nowhere which she assumed had all been hidden whilst Jersey had been occupied as they were not allowed to have cars either. There was cheer and smiles and happiness in the atmosphere which hadn’t been like that for a while now.

Last but not least Joan told us a story about her dad who encountered a starving German who was very ill. He had come to the house and begged her father for an egg, as food shortages was still happening on the island he refused to give him and egg and due to him being German there was some resraint the German then left. Her father dwelled on the situation as he’d told him that he hadn’t spoken to his family in 3 to 5 months so he chased the German as he was leaving and gave him the egg.

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Our first trip for this term was to the archives and to the war tunnels.

ALL MY IMAGES FROM THE WAR TUNNELS VISIT

Below is a map of the Current Jersey War Tunnels. There is over 1000 meters of artefacts and history in every room its also dug 50 meters underground and more than 5000 slave labours worked on constructing this tunnel. This network of underground tunnels was designed to allow the German occupying infantry to withstand Allied air raids and bombardment in the event of an invasion. In 1943, it was converted into an emergency hospital.

After I uploaded the images I decided to go through the selection process of flagging them and numbering them from 1 to 5 stars and then using 2 colours I condensed them down to 5-10 images using Lightroom .

The Jersey war Tunnels is product of five long years of occupation; they bore witness to the particular cruelty of the Nazi regime.

There are rooms that show us what clothes people wore, what the inside of peoples houses would have looked like, armed authority figures, dates and key facts, weapons, films, a sound effect room which shows us what the bombing would have sounded like from inside the bunkers and lots more. Having been to the war tunnels previously before I wasn’t shocked by what I saw but what still intrigued me is that parts of the war tunnels are still being dug up, tunnels that had previously been built by the Nazis are still undiscovered and will remain that way for quite a while.