For my first full photo shoot for my personal study I want to explore themes which I started uncovering when on the Paris trip. These themes mainly include using street photography to further delve into the idea of being lonely in a crowd, but also to contrast this, using angular buildings and shadows in an abstract manner to show an almost prison like demeanor. I decided to do this to show how people become trapped in their own heads a lot of the time. I also wanted to try out a few more ideas around people on public transport, as well as concepts involving more bold colour.
Monthly Archives: December 2019
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Personal investigation : mindmap and moodboard
Personal study moodboard
This is a moodboard I have made of my inspirations and similar ideas to photo shoots in my personal study.
Essay Questions
Key Ideas:
Family: Looking at the theme occupation in terms of my family, exploring the history of my family as well as exploring the way we are now and how the past has influenced us. My main focus will be on my grandparents as they will have the most stories to tell, allowing a clear narrative to be created.
Lifestyle: Still on the ideology of capturing my grandparents, I want to see how the time period they grew up in 1940, has influenced the lifestyle they live through key themes of religion, family structure and gender stereotypes.
Liberation of Family History: The main focus will be trying to showcase my grandparents lives. I intend to capture their stories about their past, telling the narratives of their lives. This can be done through tableaux and staged imagery as well as capturing landscape and showcasing the incorporation of image and text.
Possible Questions:
How does Walker Evans and Alicja Rogalska showcase the lifestyle of their subjects within their imagery?
Explore the relationship between documentary and photography with reference to Walker Evans.
Explore how the photographers Sam Harris and Walker Evans capture the theme of lifestyle within their work.
To what extent does family photographer Sam Harris present the theme of lifestyle?
To what extent is the theme of lifestyle presented through documentary portraits, with reference too Sam Harris and Walker Evans?
To what extent does straight photography accurately portray events in time?
How is the theme of lifestyle presented within documentary photography, with reference too Sam Harris and Walker Evans?
Academic Sources
Harvard System of Referencing
Bibliography:
Barthes, R.(1993).Camera Lucida.
London:20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
Quote inside text:
Critic Roland Barthes says; ‘Hence it was necessary to take a look for myself.'(Barthes 1993:18)
BRAINSTORM – Occupation & Liberation
Landscape – Bunkers (Fortified Landscapes)
Objects – Controlled still life in studio
Great-grandfather – Forced Laborer in Poland WWII
Jersey Sea Wall – Built by forced labor
Research: – History of forced labor in Jersey; Contact Tony Pike, knowledge of concrete (Aggregates used, which quarry) – Know about who Built sea wall in Bel Royal area – Research story of Great-grandfather.
Book: Forced laborer diary WWII
Plan: Photograph sea wall (limit 3D forms); Experiment with distance and lighting (time of day) – Establishing shots of beach and sea surrounding the wall.
Artist Studies: Darren Harvey-Regan (The Erratics) – Bernd and Hilla Becher.
Invisible hands exhibition
This project shows the the work in jersey, potato picking in particular from the perspective of the migrant workers. They are usually seasonal workers and on minimum or a low wage. Their side of the story is never really displayed, making them almost invisible within the society of Jersey. The workers have been working in Jersey for around 150 years and have been a crucial part of Jersey's economy and this project wants to show that although they are in Jersey to work, they too are humans with emotions and lives and that the people of Jersey need to treat them as humans rather than immigrants or workers.
Review and Reflect – Post 4 (Specification)
Occupation vs. Liberation:
The words occupation and liberation carry a lot of different meanings and connotations. This title could be taken literally as the occupation and liberation of an island such as Jersey during WWII as we have studied and explored in detail this year. However, occupation and liberation can mean a lot more. The occupation or line of work someone is in, the occupation and liberation of their minds on a much deeper and more personal level or simply the things people do to keep themselves occupied throughout their day.
My response:
For my personal investigation I will explore the relationships between friends. I will show how as people we rely on each other for our own well being. I will attempt to explore how my friends and I use our free time to have a break from the outside world and explore the deeply personal aspects of our relationship. And the emotional connection and unconditional understanding that comes with friendships. This investigation will showcase our common interests and what brings us together as individuals, and explore the relationship between our outside lives and lives behind closed doors as the less visible impacts we have on one another.
In a more literal context my personal investigation will follow the concept that our ‘occupation’ is the our state of mind towards life, ourselves and each other, and that our ‘liberation’ stems from our downtime with people we care about and what we choose to do with them, as our individual ‘therapies’. I will attempt to capture images from a range of photo shoots and real life situations showing versatile locations and activities to capture candid shots of the people I surround myself with, and gain a better understanding of how we spend our time together as well as what it means to be ‘liberated’ by those around us.
This is something I have briefly explored earlier on in the course and would like to focus on in more detail and on a deeper level than before.
Examples of earlier work as reference points:
MOOD BOARD AND IDEAS
MAIN THEMES/IDEAS:
- HOUSING CRISIS: A topic which I am highly interested in and am willing to explore is the housing crisis which affects a large population of Jersey. Not only the immigrants but young people and the elderly all face institutional discrimination which makes it extremely difficult to get on the property ladder or be able to find housing in Jersey. There is an extreme lack of affordable housing for low income families and young people alike, who start out on the bottom earning minimum wage at the start of their careers.
- NOSTALGIA: with the use of film, an older method of photography, I am hoping to capture images that capture a nostalgic and reminiscing feel. The fuzziness and grain which can be captured using this flash provokes ideas of the old and outdated, much like the housing in Jersey, lacking houses and slats which are safe and regulated for people to live in.
- CONTROL: the lack of control within the Jersey housing market means that landlords are able to set prices ad regulate the market as they please, often providing overpriced and unsuitable living conditions for the families which will be moving there. A large part of this study is to highlight an area of Jersey life which impacts the lower and working class which suffer as a consequence of politicians and the rich.
MOOD BOARD:
MOOD-BOARD – Occupation & Liberation
