Invisible Hands – Exhibition

Invisible Hands is an art exhibition which is a collaborative project between artist Alicja Rogalska and The Morning Boat in order to showcase life as a migrant worker. The exhibition is located at Jersey Art Centre in the Berni Gallery, and aims to inform viewers of the poor conditions these migrant workers are put through and how little they gain back, in terms of pay, housing and food. This topic is highly relevant as it has been a massive part of the Island’s agriculture for over 150 years, but still is an area which has not been explored or documented.

The Agri-Care Prize was created while interviewing the migrant about their working conditions and lives. The interviews were informal as they created clay potatoes to act as a symbolic representation for all migrant workers, whilst creating this they talked about what made a star worker and made a list of criteria as to how to decide who gets the prize of the potato. This is a highly important aspect of this exhibition as it reinforces how the migrant workers are forgotten about and not talked about much, reinforcing the theme of neglect. This set of rules and background is shown below, alongside the prize potato.

As mentioned before the migrant workers were interviewed, and this was put into a video, and was projected onto the wall. Within this video we watch these migrant workers told and create their potato out of clay with the audio of the migrant workers explaining the working conditions being played on top of this. One key element of the video is that no faces are shown, allowing the migrant workers to remain anonymous allowing them to express the issues and their personal opinion, reinforcing the title of ‘Invisible Hands’

The imagery of the exhibition was all captured by the migrant workers themselves in order to accurately represent their lifestyle and working conditions. This is showcased as many images are poor quality and show poor framing techniques which makes the images authentic and allows us to truly understand the conditions that they are in. All images were enlarged and framed and displayed on the wall. After looking at some imagery one key thing that stood out was that all imagery with the subject being people, the people all seemed happy and got on with their job and life as they don’t know any better emphasising this pejorative issue within the Channel Islands.

Personally, I believe this exhibition really illustrates how bad these migrant workers get it, allowing me as a viewer truly understand their working and living conditions. The work hold strong conceptual and contextual representations which makes the imagery and overall exhibition powerful in illustrating political and social issues, suggesting our government is corrupt. The authentic and naturalistic/documentary photographs produced really emphasised how real this issue is, exposing me to the issue and feeling a sense of sympathy and makes me want to help these migrant workers. The use of imagery and media has allowed me to gain further understanding of the concept and context, which has allowed me to consider using these techniques to showcase my concept and context within my personal study.

Personal investigation- STATEMENT of intent

For my Personal investigation I will be focusing on my grandparents and the relationship that they had and how it developed and bloomed through and during the occupation of the island. They knew each other for years and they made their relationship official on liberation day.

I will be using a mixture of images, some being ones that I will get from archives both family and public, some images within the book will be ones that I have made and set up from stories that are in the book, they will be tableaux images that i have set up with two people in them representing both of my grandparents. They will be set up in places that they met.

Jeff Wall

Known as both an artist and art historian Jeff Wall is a Canadian photographer and writer whose work simultaneously showcases and challenges some of the most dominant assumptions about art and art-making. Wall’s early photograph shares qualities and themes with Conceptual art as well as aspects of appropriation art of the 1970s and 1980s, by investigating the assumed, required elements of fine art and borrowing narrative and visual details from outside the established art world genres.

Wall stages the scenes he photographs, intricately designing every detail to achieve his desired visual effects. Ironically, the final images often appear to be mid-action, spontaneous and candid moments. In Wall’s earliest photographs of the late 1970s and 1980s clear references are made to some of the most famous paintings in the history of art since the Renaissance. Wall admits nodding toward the titans of early modern painting such as Delacroix and Manet.

I have chosen to look at Jeff Wall as one of my artists for the way in which he stages his photographs but also for the way in which his photographs also focus on the surroundings as well as the people inside. The landscape and parts of the island relating to the legends is something I want to try to focus on slightly so have take Jeff Wall as a photographer to see how he takes and stages photographs without any people in to still make an impact and mean, show and hint at something without the use of people. I am going on to do a photoshoot of landscapes in the places that I want to centre the stories around, unlike Jeff Wall who stages the photographs to create his photographs I am going to be taking the photographs of the landscapes as they are however I have similar intentions.

Jeff Wall’s Work:

The Destroyed Room (1978)

The Destroyed Room from 1978 is one of Wall’s first and most iconic photographs. The work consists of a large photograph printed as a cibachrome transparency within a fluorescent Lightbox. Around 5 by 8 feet in size the work is both vivid and imposing. Offering a stark and intrusive view of a seemingly ravaged space the image forces the viewer to confront the destruction of items found within the typically intimate space of a bedroom. Visually we can see clothes are spilling out of the drawers of the wooden dresser, a bed is turned on its side with its pale green mattress slashed, possessions such as clothing and accessories are strewn about the floor and large pieces of the red wall are missing, exposing the pink insulation underneath.

With this photograph Wall first began making overt references to some of the most famous examples of classical painting from the 19th century. In The Destroyed Room, the large scale oil painting titled The Death of Sardanapalus, painted by Eugene Delacroix in 1827 is the source of inspiration. The Death of Sardanapalus depicts an act of violence that occurs, Wall shows an aftermath. Wall has purposely left remnants of the staging process of the scene in the final image, making the fabrication of the room obvious.

Essay questions

Key ideas:

  • Sense of safety – what people and places I consider make me feel a sense of safety. Will look more into my own family, the areas I grew up in London and where I live in Jersey now.
  • Movement – Looking at my move from London to Jersey and how my connections to my family and friends have changed since then.
  • Family and friends – how my family helped me settle down in Jersey and how my relationship with my family and friends in London has changed since I left.
  • Immigration – Looking at how immigrants handle life in new countries.

Possible questions:

  • How does family help when dealing with difficult situations?
  • How does Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange portray the importance of family?
  • How does Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange portray the lack of safety in their work?

Essay Questions

Occupation – Mind – isolation

How can the concept of mental health be explored and represented within photography?

In what way can different emotions be shown through photography?

How can something that doesn’t physically exist be represented through photography?

How can mental illness be linked with ideas of WWII occupation/liberation of Jersey?

How can photography show the different emotions that people are feeling?

Visit to the Jersey migrant workers display

The visit to the migrant workers photography exhibition was very unique. It incorporated a lot of different ideas into a very minimalistic designed display which gave a clear presentation of the work captured and what the main features of the project were and why.

The main interpretation I took away from this project was the focus into striving for people in the island to voice themselves about things that they find or think are inadequate or unfair and that need rectifying in order to help make the island we live on a better place.

In this case, this over-arching theme was shown through presenting the workers’ living conditions and showing the tough and below standard daily routine that many of these immigrant workers are used to. With the hopes of it reaching a large variety of public attention and interest which in the long run, would help for this matter to be picked up on by the farmers who hire them, the local people who may help out to give them better living conditions and then ultimately the states who could put more money into helping those who aid the production of one of jerseys largest exports after finance and milk.

Examples of some of the photos that stood out to me:

A MIGRANT FARM WORKER DRESSED IN HIS WORKING ATTIRE.
THE LIVING CONDITIONS OF SOME OF THE WORKERS.
ALTHOUGH COVERED IN MUD ON A COLD GLOOMY DAY THE WORKERS REMAIN CONTENT.
ANOTER EXAMPLE OF SOME OF THE WORKERS’ ACCOMMODATION.
A GROUP OF MALE WORKERS ON A FIELD NEAR THE COAST.

Below are images describing the in-depth detail to which concerns the Jersey migrant workers push for better treatment and the activities and planning carried out to help raise awareness to alleviate the problem at hand.

Below the “Perfect Potato” can be seen. Originally created by one of the workers from clay to give to the winner of the agri-care prize, it later ended up being a symbol to show that all of the workers had shown great dedication and motivation towards their jobs which meant the prize was given to all of them, rather than just one.

Art Movements & Isms

PICTORIALISM

Time period: 1880s – 1920s


Key characteristics/ conventions: From the 1880s and onwards photographers strived for photography to be art by trying to make pictures that resembled paintings. A lot of nude photography and nature was present.


Artists associated: Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936), The Vienna Camera Club (Austria), The Brotherhood of the Linked Ring (London), Photo-Secession (New York) founded by Alfred Stieglitz.

Key works: H P ROBINSON – HE NEVER TOLD HIS LOVE (1884), ALFRED HORLSEY HINTON – FLEETING AND FAR (1903), GEORGE DAVISON – REFLECTIONS (1899). Alfred Stieglitz:  Equivalent (cloud studies).


Methods/ techniques/ processes: Using Vaseline to blur the lens. Scratch the images/ use chemicals to alter the colors etc. Manipulating images in the darkroom, scratching and marking their prints to imitate the texture of canvas, using soft focus are among other techniques.

REALISM / STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

Time period:


Key characteristics/ conventions:

  • REALISM – Photography grew up with claims of having a special relationship to reality, and its premise, that the camera’s ability to record objectively the actual world as it appears in front of the lens was unquestioned. This supposed veracity of the photographic image has been challenged by critics as the photographer’s subjectivity (how he or she sees the world and chooses to photograph it) and the implosion of digital technology challenges this notion opening up many new possibilities for both interpretation and manipulation. A belief in the trustworthiness of the photograph is also fostered by the news media who rely on photographs to show the truth of what took place.
  • STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY – Were photographers who believed in the intrinsic qualities of the photographic medium and its ability to provide accurate and descriptive records of the visual world. These photographers strove to make pictures that were ‘photographic’ rather than ‘painterly’, they did not want to treat photography as a kind of monochrome painting.
  • SOCIAL REFORM PHOTOGRAPHY – The rural poor or the urban environment were not subjects for Pictorial photographers. But when A Danish immigrant , Jacob Riis published his book, How the Other Half Lives’ about the slums of Manhattan a new kind of realism was born with a socialist dimension. A number of photographer’s such as Lewis W Hine and Dorothea Lange began to document the effects of industrialization and urbanization on working-class Americans. Their work brought the need for housing and labour reform to the attention of legislators and the public and became the origins of what we now call photojournalism.


Artists associated:

Walker Evans (1903-75). Often considered to the leading American documentary photographer of the 20th century. He rejected Pictorialism and wanted to establish a new photographic art based on a detached and disinterested look. He most celebrated work is his pictures of three Sharecropper families in the American South during the 1930s Depression.


Key works: Walker Evans, Hale Country (1936),


Methods/ techniques/ processes:

Cubism and Fauvism, Abstract geometric forms and structure of subjects.

MODERNISM:

First Photo Shoot

For my first photo shoot I will photographing myself and my boyfriend lounging around in his house as I want to capture pure moments of love, vulnerability and intimacy. I will be using natural lighting as I think its the best way to capture the moment naturally.

Final Photos (Unedited):

Final Photos:

How I edited these images:

First I went on the basic setting in light room and pressed the auto button to put the auto editing on.

I then scrolled down and adjusted the settings to get the image to what I wanted it to look like.

After, I scrolled down and went to the lens correction option and clicked on the ‘enable profile corrections’, then clicked ‘make’ and selected Canon.

I then went on the transform section and clicked the auto option.

Next, I went onto the grain setting and selected medium and high settings depending on what look I wanted.

Lastly, I went onto the creative setting and clicked the vintage instant setting to get the desired look for my images.

Conclusion:

To conclude, I am really happy with how this photo shot came out as I was able to capture the ideas that I had. I wish I took a few more photos to capture more raw emotions, but overall I am satisfied with the outcome of this photo shoot. I am really happy with how I edited these photos and will use this technique in future photo shoot.