Realism, sometimes called naturalism, in the arts is generally the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, or implausible, exotic, and supernatural elements. Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, and can be in large part a matter of technique and training, and the avoidance of stylisation. In the visual arts, illusionistic realism is the accurate depiction of lifeforms, perspective, and the details of light and colour.
The development of increasingly accurate representation of the visual appearances of things has a long history in art. It includes elements such as the accurate depiction of the anatomy of humans and animals.
What I learnt most from the occupation vs liberation project is that occupation doesn’t have to be physical, such as the occupation of Jersey in WWII. There are many other forms, be that mental, subconscious or many others. This opens up a wide possibility of subjects; ranging from far-fetched government conspiracy theories, to technology and how we use it more everyday.
I was inspired most by high contrast techniques in this project. I really enjoyed the visual aspect of making the subject of each photo ‘pop’ and stand out from the background.
The first photo shoot I carried out didn’t have a specific purpose, it was mainly trying out using different backgrounds and angles when photographing occupation/war items. This photo is of old war bandages, I decided to go for an all-yellow background instead of using a different colour for the bottom or back sheet. This helps create a much smoother effect than using different colours. It also helps create more contrast between the foreground and background as there is a constant amount between the mostly red foreground and entirely yellow background than if background was half yellow and half purple, as the background would be contrasting with itself, which also makes it less pleasing to look at.
In the photo shoot that this image is part of I started to explore the theme of Occupation vs Liberation more, specifically occupation. The image is composed of three elements, a modern phone, a retro CD, and a vintage cassette tape. They are all arranged in order of when they were produced, from newest (left) to oldest (right). The CD and cassette tape all contain war/occupation related content, the CD documenting a re-creation of a day in the life in occupied Jersey, and the cassette tape being a recording of islanders recalling the occupation. What connects all of these is a way of enslaving people, the CD and cassette tape are both recordings of people being physically enslaved during the occupation as well as enslaving people in the digital era, and slowly getting them addicted to consuming the content. The modern phone carries this theme forward of enslaving people, this is no longer physically but now purely digitally, being addicted to social media and other features of it.
This image is from the save photo shoot as the previous image, it takes the message further by showing more generations of digital devices. The floppy disc on the right shows and even older generation of this, predecessing all of the others. And to the left is an ipod, which was mainly present between the time of the iphone and CD. I didn’t have these two objects on hand, or in possession so I decided to draw them in on Photoshop, which also gives the image a pleasing photo montage effect.
This image has less meaning behind it compared to the others, although it carries on the theme of digital occupation. It is a simple image of two CD’s which i have manipulated in many different ways. I couldn’t pick a single favourite to use so I put all six into a montage and used them all instead.
Mind-map + mood board on how I interpret occupation vs liberation now.
From my personal study based on the occupation in Jersey entitled OCCUPATION VS LIBERATION I developed a large amount of skills and furthered my knowledge and understanding of taking images, reflecting and responding to other inspirational artists.
Originally we started this overall project by exploring different types of landscapes using wider lenses which allowed more details of the picture. To help increase our skills we went on a trip to visit the Jersey bunkers in St Ouen’s to look out across to see where the Germans would have viewed France, as well as the stunning views of across the island. This gave us the opportunity to fine tune and grasp the proper understanding of how to take landscapes images to our best abilities. Furthermore when we visited the bunkers we were able to explore inside them, this helped to improve our camera skills in darker areas, for example adjusting the IOS to a lower level allowing as much light that can be produced in such a dark room leading to much better quality images, and would ensure that the images wouldn’t be underexposed. This skill also was practiced when we visited the war tunnels later on in the year which closely linked with our OBJECTS title project. By photographing in the war tunnels it helped us focus on different types to lighting as throughout the tunnel there are inconsistent lighting in each room and we had to adjust our camera to enable us to produce and focus on interesting objects that would help us develop our project. As well as this factor for photographing objects we also developed our ideas in the studio, this taught us about the different types of lights and backgrounds used. For example an infinity wall which means a continuous background behind an object which I believe to create more dramatic experience. In addition we we concentrated on the lights used- continuous lights, camera settings; manual mode, aperture of F/16 and a shutter speed of 0.5 seconds to 0.8 seconds depending on the reflection on each object. To continue this led us to learn about developing initial ideas, by using white backgrounds to start with and developing on to colour ideas, to me this was a beneficial task as it taught be the ideas of exploring and developing initial thoughts into something more interesting. This meant as well as the actual photography it taught me how to develop my thoughts and ideas properly on to the blog by portraying them through mood boards and descriptions.
After visiting the bunkers, we were taught to use the computer software called Indesign which enabled us to produce and develop our own zines. For this particular production it meant using the following techniques which later proved beneficial. It taught me how to refine hundreds of images to just a select few, which meant I had to grasp the idea of quality not quantity, additionally I taught me an essential lesson of story telling through photographs, this was something that initially I found extremely had as at first i was just placing random images in a random order without careful consideration. eventually i learnt to refine my images ad begin to really tell a story. Although this particular zine was not my strongest in enabled be to dramatically improve my understanding, and skill when making my next zine at the end of this particular area. I found that when making my second zine I had much more fun and I had a much better understanding of how to tel a story through the photograph I had previously captured.
Next we look at PORTRAITS and photographing individuals, family and friends. For this part of the project we were lucky enough to have some of the people who were children in the war come and talk to us about their own experience’s, taking part in this task provided me with the skills of note taking and portraying someone’s history and experiences through their own portraits. After talking to Joan and talking about her history we went down to the studio to take some portraits of her. When I was photographing her, it was important that I was able to get the best quality images, i did this making ensuring i had an appropriate lens with the correct setting that wouldn’t lead to any defaults in the final photographs. This ability encouraged me later on when developing my own portraits of my family at home, the idea of different facial expressions, angle and lighting which would convey a certain meaning. Lastly for the portraits section we were given a task entitled ‘home sweet home’ which gave me the opportunity to help practice certain skills at home in my own environment, and gave me control over my own ideas and how I wanted to convey each image with each individual. This skill will defiantly be consistently essential through the rest of my photography project.
Finally, computer software, as its clear we had a lot of photo shoot throughout the project we learnt how to use LightRoom Classic which presented all our images from each shoot and enabled us to discover our best images compared to our worst images, going through different stages to allow us to select our final images from each shoot that I wanted to display and develop on to the blog. In addition, we learnt specific, quick and easy skills on LightRoom that helped us fine tune our images for example the Spot Removal tool which helped removed any marks that may have been produced on the image giving it a better final picture.
Of the areas of photography that were explored thus far in the occupation and liberation module, I have found most inspiration within the landscape and object photography. I found that these allowed for the most creative freedom as well as opening more opportunities to explore different editing techniques. I liked to use strong geometric structure within my shoots, often using squares within the image to better frame the rest of the image. The use of the still life setup also allowed for the most creativity in manipulating the compositions and experimenting with various visual and thematic themes within the shoots. the landscape photography forced me to explore texture and form in order to create visually interesting compositions, they allowed me to better explore black and white photography to help bring out the textures within the images. such as the image shown below in which the contrast was manipulated in order to bring out texture within the background of the image.
Attached below is an image demonstrating the studio, still life setup in which I was able to explore various compositions to try and achieve an aesthetically pleasing shot. from there I was able to easily manipulate/remove any blemishes due to the simplicity of the background.
From the Occupation Vs Liberation study, there are various aspects of photography that I have learned throughout different investigations. For instance, using a still life table to photograph objects, as well as effectively using Adobe InDesign to create zines and create more interesting layouts than possible in other applications. I also developed more skills in Lightroom for faster image selection editing.
I was especially inspired by using landscapes to show different emotions, which was interesting on its own, but I feel has most impact when compared and contrasted with portraits and close ups on faces. I also found the use of the still life table especially interesting as it gave me the chance to explore more ideas about constructed scenes using smaller objects, which in a lot of ways is a direct contrast of landscapes, which use larger, immovable objects and settings to convey story and emotion.
For my own personal study project I wanted to focus on a subject very close to me personally which is mental illness, and more specifically, depression. I find that this fits really well into the idea of occupation/liberation, as it is something that takes a hold of someone, controlling them and cutting them off from the outside, similarly to that of occupation of Jersey in WWII. As the idea of mental illness is something that is difficult to see physically, it means that it is much harder to show images which will represent it in the way that I want, as unlike the occupation of jersey which left bunkers on the island, there are very few ways to tell that anything has happened/is happening. However I not only want to create a made up story, but something more personal to me, which is about my own experience, and try to make it almost autobiographical in a slightly abstract way. The first ideas that come to mind when showing this subject would be something to do with emptiness and Isolation. For instance, I was thinking of using nature to show many of my key points I want to come across for my personal study, using lone trees or out of place flowers to show isolation or abandoned buildings to show the concept of being empty.
I have decided that my personal study, based around the overall theme of Occupation and Liberation, will be based on the liberation and suppression (occupation) of gender expression, and the negative influences that stereotypes and suppressing ones true identity (likes and dislikes) can have on an individual. I will focus my work around the theme of breaking gender stereotypes, and the backlash that people often face from doing so, as well as the liberation they can feel when supported and understood. Here, I have interpreted the theme of Liberation and Occupation in my own personal way, as I along with a number of people that I know and live around, regardless of gender, face discrimination and retaliation from breaking the classic masculine-male, feminine-female stereotypes. I want to be able to interpret this theme in order to show the progress of how atypical expression has become more accepted as history has progressed, while at the same time showing the problems that still occur today, such as bullying and the mental health issues that can result from oppression and having to disguise and hide ones real identity.
Above is a Mind map that I produced showing how I interpret the theme of Occupation and Liberation now, incorporating my own concept into the meaning.
I created a mind map in order to arrange my ideas, and in doing so developed some ideas for a photoshoot that I could use to begin the process of creating images around the concept of the historical context of gender roles, and the way they have changed and developed over time. I want to be able to show a contrast between “now” and “then”, incorporating aspects of different periods in time such as clothing styles and typical gendered-jobs into each image.
During my personal investigation based on Occupation and Liberation, I was able to learn a range of invaluable skills that I can transfer onto further projects and my own Personal Study. During the course of this investigation, I was able to develop my understanding of how the concepts and historical background behind images can help to develop a narrative/sequence, and how the process of editing can help to build bridges between the historical context of an image, and how it is relevant and applicable to modern ideas and concepts.
As my Personal Investigation was mainly based on the Occupation and Liberation of Jersey during WWII, I have decided to extend the theme of Occupation and Liberation to a concept that I can more personally relate to (as I have no family left who can recount the war, nor do I have any historical tie to the island itself). I have decided to extend the theme of Occupation and Liberation, and develop it into an investigation into the influence that gender norms and stigma can have/have had on different generations, and the concept of how “liberating” individuals (allowing them to express themselves freely without the weight of gender norms) is, although making progress, still a taboo topic that carries its own stereotypes.
This gallery of images represents examples of each of the themes I have attempted in the Occupation and Liberation project; people, places, objects (and photo-montages)
During my investigation into the Occupation and Liberation of Jersey, I was inspired by a range of themes, photographic skills and artists that helped to better shape my understanding of developing a project around a certain theme, and keeping in mind a narrative that can be applied to the final layout of images. During this project, I had the opportunity to photograph archival objects from the Occupation, individuals who lived through the occupation, and a range of settings from bunkers and Jersey’s War Museum. Studying a range of artists such as Rafal Milach and Klaus Pichler gave me a broad understanding of the different methods of developing images, and the different subjects that can be used. Milach allowed me to develop my photo-montage skills (an expression of art that I really enjoy), and Pichler allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which concepts and the historical context of an image can be shown clearly through the use of photography. I feel that the portrait approach towards our project (in which I was able to photograph Joan and Henley (survivors of the occupation)) inspired me the most, as I feel that being able to learn and understand their stories, before having the chance to photograph them in a very personal, up close manner, allowed me to develop a deeper link between myself, the subject and the photograph.
I also enjoyed object photography, in which I had full control over the objects in the image and was able to create images using layouts of objects that I felt best reflected a certain concept/showed the best shapes, angles and contrasts. I feel like the portrait aspect of my Personal Investigation, along with the camera skills I gained (using a tripod, using different lighting and taking images effectively inside and outside of studio settings) will help me to begin a successful Personal Study, in which I wish to focus on people and objects to fully highlight the concept of gender within the theme of occupation and liberation.
Below are some examples whereby I have developed skills and used them to take and edit images:
Above are examples where I have created photo-montages, allowing me to develop my editing skills and narrative skills, as I had to find ways to lace images and concepts together to create a narrative for the image itself.
In the above images, I have developed my portrait taking skills (a skill that I will use in my Personal Study) – I have been able to develop my understanding of how a studio setting (lighting, angles etc) effects the final outcome of an image, and I was able to gain confidence in my ability to make decisions about the poses and positions of subjects within the frame of the image to better draw attention to certain features.
In a practical aspect, I developed my understanding of different software such as Photoshop, and was introduced to and developed my skills in Light-room. I also developed my ability to form narrative and sequencing after developing my second zine, in which I more carefully selected the sequence of images and narrative.
Over the course of 3 months I have learnt a variant of skills regarding editing and creating my final zine. Firstly, I became familiar with using InDesign and creating a narrative zine by editing and selecting relevant images that related to the Occupation Vs. Liberation title. The part I enjoyed the most about creating my zine was physically constructing it into a more visual narrative that was easily ledge able. The most enjoyable section which contributed to my zine was images from an assignment called ‘Home Sweet Home’, because it let me experiment with my personal ideas of occupation and liberation. It aided me in also exposing myself to different ways I could perceive a topic, abstract it and make it my own.
Home Sweet Home – Best Images
Throughout the People/Portraits section of this topic I learnt the importance of focus along with foreground and background. I learnt that in order to focus on a face you actually have to focus on something else in order for the depth to capture the details. An example of this in my work is when I was taking candid images for ‘Home Sweet Home’, I focused the camera on my grandpa’s hands instead of his face.
Home Sweet Home – Malcolm
Another Technique I learnt was using flash in the studio on the infinity screen with coloured backdrops and historical objects as the centre focus. Using the technique of flash photography to create an even lighting set-up that responds to my shutter press. I also re purposed my knowledge of the colour wheel to benefit my colour schemes of my background. This benefited my work because it added a new spruce of colour to my work.
Next Steps
In continuing under the title of ‘Occupation Vs. Liberation’ I’m starting a new personal topic on how I interpret it. My new inspiration for this title is the liberation of my mind.
My next project will be covering the idea of finding my sense of purpose and belonging and physicalise what I see day to day. It is not a mental health awareness topic at all, that is not my aim. It’s visualizing how the un-explainable feelings can be explained through images and compositions. My intention is to not portray sadness or pain, i’m just wanting to liberate the stigma behind these feelings.
First Photo shoot
For my first photo shoot, I plan to take self-portraits and disfigure them by scratching my face out of them.
I have learnt a lot of skills whilst looking at the topic of occupation and liberation. It has been a good topic to study and work on as its allowed me to do more research on an event which changed the lives of so many islanders during that time.
My favorite part of this has been the studio photo shoots, as each photo shoot has been different, with capturing images and the presence of Joan to setting up objects to try and capture their age and value. I really enjoyed the color backdrop as it added a sense of obscurity and mismatch to the ancient objects.
To carry on this investigation further I will explore the idea of occupation and liberation, and the subject of bring separated from the outside world. I liked the personal study as it allowed me to study and explore WWII which I have never done so intricately and i enjoyed studying this topic.
I was really happy with most of the outcomes that I produced from the topic of , I really enjoyed the photo shoots from going to Noirmont to photographing Joan.
Personally I liked the final products more from my Noirmont photo shoots more than the rest of my other photo shoots as I was able to really over edit them which created a weird atmosphere, where as in the other photo shoots I kept them as close to the original image as possible which really showed off their shape, dimensions and general feeling as you could see different textures of the objects.
During my Personal investigation based on the theme of Occupation VS Liberation, I learnt many new techniques from utilizing archival material to camera skills related to shooting in low light environments. During my Project, I used a lot of archival material such as Occupation registration cards and extracts from newspapers. I learnt how to appropriately set up an overhead camera tripod station in order to capture and record these documents and adjust the lighting to enhance the quality of the image. I also learnt how to use archival databases to find appropriate resources, making use of the Jersey archives online catalogue to select images and correspond with the appropriate staff members of the archive and relay serial numbers to them of documents I required. In terms of camera skills, On many photo shoots in environments such as bunkers and the Jersey war tunnels, I had to adjust my camera settings to be able to capture subjects in low light and ensure I had the best quality images possible. This involved adjusting the shutter speed to allow for a slow shutter speed yet one that wouldnt result in heavy motion blurring due to me holding my camera. The aperture would also have to be set relatively wide to allow for more light to enter the camera and create a much brighter exposure. My ISO levels would have to be around 1600 to allow for more light to enter the camera. A higher ISO than this, as I found out however, Results in a large amount of digital noise.
I hope to take these experiences and points and apply them to my personal study to further enhance my work. I Personally enjoyed the landscape approach to photography as I was able to really experiment with scenery as well as texture within an image, Photographing signs of decay within the bunkers I visited is a good example of this. I also enjoy the limitless creativity in terms of the use of landscape images. for example, My photo montage project where I overlaid cutouts of archival images and documents over the top of images from my visit to Batterie Moltke. I also enjoyed the portraiture element of the Project, Especially photographing Occupation Veteran Joan Tapley as I came to find that portrait photography is a great way to tell a story of a person and learn much more about their history. The portrait project also helped me realise that every person has a story to tell and that portraiture is a great medium to get this story across and told
The decayed ceiling of the German Radio Communications tower at Batterie Moltke on Les Landes Headland
A photo montage of the German Radio Communications Tower laid over a copy of the original front page of the Jersey Evening post, declaring the start of the occuaption to the islanders and outlining the proclamations and proposals from the German Occupying forces
Occupation veteran Joan Tapley, Who kindly shared her stories of the Occupation with us and allowed us to photograph her
MIND MAP AND MOOD BOARD: OCCUPATION VS LIBERATION
Personally, I find that my whole perspective upon occupation and liberation has changed massively since the start of the project. I used to be well aware of the impact the occupation and liberation had upon not only the island but my family itself as both of my grandparents lived in the Island through the occupation. Liberation was always celebrated annually by my grandparents as well as the rest of my family, but occupation was always reflected upon and many can say that if it werent for the occupation, The island and its inhabitants may not be the same way they are today. I have also begun to think of other meanings of Occupation VS Liberation, as they are both polar opposites. Occupation is defined as the state or period of being controlled or occupied by a force. Liberation is defined as the act of freeing a person or place from oppression or imprisonment. The term imprisonment can be meant both physically in the case of the occupation or metaphorically, Potentially maybe talking about how someone could be imprisoned by a job they do not enjoy or even imprisoned in their own mind and being unable to be themselves. Liberation can also be seen in this same sense, As someone could be going through the oppression of a boring week job and then feel a sense of liberation when the weekend comes around and they are free to live the life they wish to, Whether this be partying or simply relaxing. This could also be seen in the sense of someone being imprisoned in their mind, if they are able to find themselves an opportunity to let go of the feeling of imprisonment by partaking in an activity they like such as sport or arts. For my Personal study I would like to explore themes of Occupation VS liberation in more of a metaphorical sense.
IDEAS FOR FIRST PHOTO SHOOT
I would like to explore Occupation Vs Liberation in a contemporary, metaphorical sense. This would be based around the idea of being occupied by either a job or a persons own mind and I would like to use the medium of photographs to exhibit more intrinsic feelings and attitudes to portray a sense of occupation and liberty within a persons mind in terms of their attitude and feelings towards either work and play or a visual representation of their thoughts and feelings. I would therefore pick subjects and photograph them in an environment that they find occupies their lives such as a workplace or school, and then photograph them in their free time, enjoying their liberty from the oppression of their workplace/ school environment. This could be them either partaking in a hobby or past time or them out partying and socializing. I have also considered this same approach however focusing much more on the subject of mental occupation Vs Liberty, For example somebody who may be struggling with their emotions and whom is able to let go of the struggle when they are socializing.
