3 Words: Stones, Slavery, Sand

1 Sentence: An exploration of the slave labour and resources used in the construction of Jersey’s German defensive architecture.

1 Paragraph: An exploration of abstraction as a medium in response to the question “how does the work of Darren Harvey-Regan explore abstraction as an intention and process?”. An interpretation of the works of both Darren Harvey-Regan and Donald Weber and how they explore abstraction with an underlying theme of the slave labor used in construction of Jersey’s defenses with familial links relating to German forced labor throughout WW2.

Visual :

In this black and white image you can see a family standing on what looks like the front porch of their run-down home. By the tatty clothes they are wearing you can assume that they are a working class family and are struggling with poverty. You can see 5 members of the family standing there, each doing their own thing, with a dog hidden behind the legs of the young boy at the front. The windows of the house seen quite dirty and the wood looks old and damaged – their house doesn’t look well-looked after.

Contextual :

Walker Evans photographed 3 families who were struggling with poverty during his work on capturing the Great Depression in Hale County, Alabama. The people in this image above was one of those families. This family was one of the many who were struggling with living their daily lives due to the Great Depression. At the time of this image, it was the height of it. You can clearly see how the effects of the Great Depression are taking a toll on these families – they wouldn’t have been able to afford clean clothes, enough food or the right equipment to clean their windows or fix their deck.

Visual :

In this image you can see two women placed in the middle of a room which looks like the living room of a home. While they’re very different in appearance – one looks old, with wrinkles and grey hair, while the other looks youthful – they both look like they have a comfortable relationship sitting on the floor together both looking into the camera, as if they are family.

Contextual :

In her series ‘The Notion of Family’, Latoya Ruby looks at her family’s struggle with disease and poverty. She photographs three generations of her family – her grandmother, her own mother and herself – to portray their struggles.

The book is quite large, at around A3 size it is bigger than most photo-books I have seen. In hand the book is heavy and looks as if it is packed full of high quality images on thick paper. It is smooth and glossy on the outside and feels not much different to any other new-ish book. It contains a mixture of mostly black and white images and some coloured ones, accompanied also by notes and writings on each image written by the subject of the photo themselves. The paper texture remains the same throughout: slightly glossy. RBW is a mix of full bleed landscape images covering two pages as well as portrait. It is a soft back book that can be bent easily, there is no cloth cover or intricate binding.

The title is probably what attracted me most to the book; ‘Raised By Wolves’ is a term which was coined by one of the subjects who was being photographed, he wrote it down on a note and Goldberg has displayed it next to his portrait in the book. I interpret the meaning of this title as coming from how most of the young subjects in this book have been abused physically/sexually etc, by their own parents and have been brought up around constant drug abuse. Therefore they couldn’t escape from this way of life and ended up living on the streets and mostly following in their parent’s footsteps- the young runaways had been set up to fail since birth.

The focus narrative in RBW is the story of Tweeky Dave and Echo. The pair share an appetite for heroin but not much else. He moons after her, proposing marriage and children, fueled by impossible, sweet bravado as he walks, half-starved, down Hollywood Boulevard with his bedroll. She recognizes him as worse than a bad risk and dumps him to run with other boys, who abuse her. She becomes pregnant, has her baby, then returns, broke, to her mother’s home. This is all portrayed through numerous written interviews with the two, as well as other characters, and through constant photos and notes that they have written.

“I didn’t really fit in to my family as much as they wanted me to and I think that lead me eventually to photography. A camera back then, and probably still now, was like having a calling card that let you into places that you normally wouldn’t go to, or to people you normally wouldn’t talk to. I moved to San Francisco at the end of 1976 and probably soon thereafter I started going out on the street. Some of the people that I met were living in transient hotels, and they invited me into their homes and I photographed them.That was interesting to me. I was dealing with a group of people who I had very little contact with; they were poor, they were hidden, they were invisible people in these grimy rooms.”

Jim Goldberg spent 10 years photographing, audio-taping and videotaping to prepare this book. The book pairs images of the adolescents in their makeshift environments with extensive interviews. Their stories are accompanied by testimony from social workers, doctors, parents and police. The truth about a runaway’s childhood is sometimes hard to determine. These kids seem acutely aware of what adults want to hear. Some may not separate the rights of parents to exercise authority from fantasies of child abuse. But the blase accounts they gave Goldberg of violence at home and of streets rife with prostitution, AIDS and hard drugs are too numerous to be discounted.

“I had the idea of having people write their stories on the photographs and, although I didn’t really know what I was doing, that turned out to be something really integral to my practice for 40 years. I just saw something that I felt I needed to try and make sense of. And using text enabled me to do that.”

There is a definite link between the images and text in the book. As each image more often than not came alongside a note or physical writing on top of the photo, in the subject’s handwriting. Goldberg has since been using this process for many years as it allows a more open discussion between the subject and how they are being portrayed through the photograph, in their own words.

Bibliography: https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/flipping-gaze-photos-jim-goldberg-documentary-storyteller/ , New York Times.

To start practicing and developing a response to Ed Templeton’s art/photography. I’ve decided to use some select film photos which were taken and developed over the summer, these comprise of just some candid/unposed photos of my friends, as well as some I have gathered from my most recent photo-shoot. Next I am going to scan them, edited them all into black and white to create a sequence to the images, then I am going to print them out and start working over them physically with paint, pens, nail polish etc, and also add in some text where needed, I also decided after doing these to incorporate red as a colour into my book when working over the top- this is because it complements the black and white really well and contracts all the darkness aswell. I really like how they all turned out and since this process takes a long time to get each imagine finished I am planning on using all of them as finals for my photo-book, since they all have a clear unification and go well as a collective. I think its clear that they have all been influenced by Ed Templeton which was my intention, but they also are not exactly the same and include some elements of my own which I really like aswell.

In this shoot I took self portraits of my birthmarks, to add a sense of self and identity to my photobook. My birthmarks have significance to my identity, as they are a part of me.

I took my mirror out into my garden and set it up against trees and walls. I ensured that my reflection wasn’t seen in the mirror to continue the theme of lack of identity.

1. Research a photo-book

The photobook I will be looking at will be Looking for Alice by Sian Davey. The narrative is from the perspective of Sian, a mother and she captures the day to day life of her daughter Alice, who has down syndrome. Davey captures raw photos that outsiders wouldn't usually see, Alice's interactions with her family, strangers, animals and the world around her. Sometimes she is smiling, sometimes she's crying, sometimes she is all dressed up and other times she is completely naked. Alice experiences the world differently to everybody and Davey is able to capture Alice's unique experiences due to her being her mother who has an intimate relationship with her daughter.

2. Who is the photographer? Why did he/she make it? (intentions/ reasons) Who is it for? (audience) How was it received? (any press, awards, legacy etc.)

Davey started capturing images of her daughter from when she was a year old. In Davey's prologue at the beginning of the book she describes how Alice is "no different to any other little girl or indeed human being; she feels what we all feel and needs what you and I need". Davey later on discusses how "ninety two percent of Down's Syndrome babies are terminated at the pre-natal screening stage." I feel that Davey is trying to display to her audience that Down's Syndrome children are still children, wonderful, quirky and it is beautiful to watch them grow up. Davey is also trying to challenge the perceptions of difference within society as Alice should be treated with no less respect than any other being within society. Davey describes how she struggled to initially love Alice due to "fear and uncertainty", however, Davey discusses how Alice is loved "unconditionally, as it should be". Just because Alice is different doesn't make her any less of a beautiful being and that she should be valued everywhere "without distinction, without exception, without a second glance". 

3. Deconstruct the narrative, concept and design of the book such as:

The book is a hardback and feels heavier than it looks. It has a linen cover which adds a rough texture and the pages. The pages are white and are matte paper.The images are all colourful images. After you turn the first page there is a sheet there is a piece of greaseproof/acetone paper with what ooks like a blurry shadow is printed on. This adds depth to the books and I believe that it is deliberately there to make the readers question the difference, just like how many strangers tend to queston Alice, who many class as different due to her disability. The format size is around A5 and the book is portrait. The cover features an image that also features in the book of Alice standing on a fence and looking out into a meadow. There is a letter press into the cover which indents the writing and makes the letters gold.

The title is more poetic rather than literal because the photographer is Alice's mother, she doesn't really need to literally look for Alice as she's always around her. However, it can have a more metaphorical meaning, such as looking at the way society percieves Alice, how they treat her differently and how they should really treat her. The subject matter is Alice, who is Davey's daughter. She can be percieved as being unique to many other children due to her having Down's Syndrome, however, one of Davey's purposes of her book is to display that although Alice has a disability, she is no different to any other little boy or girl. The images consist of Alice interacting with her family, friends, strangers, animals and generally the world around her. 

Most of the pictures are in the same place, near the top of the page and in the middle of the page. There are no double page spreads however, there are some images that are larger than the usual pattern and does overlap onto the other page. Some images don't have text for them, however, some images has text either below them to explain the image or on the opposite page. For example, the image above has writing underneath it which calls the image The hen and the cat. At the beginning of the book there is an introduction by Davey explaining the book and her reasons to make it. She then has an extract by David Chandler called The love you take. David Chandler is a writer, editor and curator in the fields of photographic history, contempory photography and visual arts. At the end of the book, a poem by Luke, Alice's brother and Sian Davey's son. It is titled sister and it is assumed the poem is dedicated to Alice.