EXAMPLES OF EFFECTIVE LAYOUT:

Below I have included examples of effective layout which showcases a wide variety of different layouts within my book. Within one of my spreads I have included a hand written letter from one of my family friends’ which describes their reality of living in Jersey. It is written in Russian therefore I decided to include a small translated quote on the bottom from this text, reading “There is no way out.” I felt as though this was a very poignant quote which fit in well with the personal narrative which I was trying to include within my book. With my image making, I am much less focused on the pictorial aesthetics but rather just a documentation which clearly reflects the inequity between housing prices and the property conditions. Further, this investigation led me to posit as a prospect buyer, yet my intent was purely image taking, which lead to my work being rather up front and raw, simply taking an image as it first appears. It was also unsuitable for me to take images which appeared as close ups of possessions as I had to take in mind the privacy aspect of the people who live here, and their lives being all on display for people to see as they enter. I felt this property was a good representation of my statement as in an image we can see one of the allocated bedrooms being used as a storage room, demonstrating how small and cramped conditions “low-priced” properties such as these can have. Much like Andium Homes, the exterior of this building is much more reminiscent of 1990’s Russian cubism with the minimal architectural features. Not only taking into account the housing conditions, this property is located near Springfield Stadiums which is socially considered as a rather dingy and hopeless area to live in due to the concentration of social housing and migrant communities.

OVERALL LAYOUT:

As a final layout I fell as though it is very effective and clearly conveys all the different aspects of the housing market well. Through my own image taking I was able to see see the ways in which not even government subsidised agencies are able to provide housing which is truly low cost and appropriate for a low-income family. Taking a documentary style approach to my image making, I was able to produce images which in many ways appear sterile and routine, appearing like that of an estate agent. My work I feel has effectively captured the same underlying message as Nick Hedges in the sense that neither or are able to provide citizens with appropriate living standards, weather that be of a lack of government support or over-privatisation of the housing market, both situations put ordinary civilians at a risk for homelessness. These complicated themes were captured within the images which I took in a simplistic and subtle manner.

EXAMPLES OF LAYOUT:

LAYOUT IDEAS/CONCEPTS:

In terms of the layout of my photo book, I was aiming to keep the inside fairly simplistic and plain to harmonize well with the subtle imagery which goes inside it. My choice of front cover was deliberately the most simple and subtle images as I felt this was important when adding text onto the image for a front cover. The images both tie in well together due to the small light rays coming in horizontally through the window and casting beams within the room. They tie in well together due to their settings, composition and light. For my front cover, I also chose to keep the title in white as this emphasizes the sophisticated style of the images and keeping in within the color scheme. The back cover is very much similar, being very profound and uncomplicated in nature. Both of these images had been edited in order to add noise and increase the contrast to make them fit in better with the film imagery which can be seen within the other images.

As for the inside layout of my book, there is a combination of both single and double page spreads which again goes well within the simplistic layout and stylistic features of the front cover. There is a also a combination of both film and digital imagery which has been manipulated in order to look film-like by adding noise and increasing the tones of red and yellow within the images to make them warmer. As a start, I will be including my film images and adding a padding of 100 in order to make them sit central within the image, adding this padding I feel stylistically fits with the flow of the book and provides a point of continuity.

EXAMPLES OF IMAGES I WILL BE INCLUDING:

In terms of the selection process for my book, I took the approach of ‘does this fit the massage I am wanting to portray?’, in the sense that does it showcase an inequality in the Jersey housing market, between the price of the properties versus what the condition of these homes is actually like. Stylistically I also consider weather these images fit well together and if there is a flow to the narrative. The images combine a good range of the prospectus of the state of St.Helier, social housing and also the interior of these homes. The three aspects which I was hoping to capture from the very start. Taking a documentary photography approach to this subject, my work IS following the conventions of realism. The idea that picture knowledge could be universal relates to what is known in philosophy as the ‘realist’ approach. Realism is the idea that a photograph of an object or a person bears a close relationship to that object or person. There is a link between the object or person photographed, and the photograph. The photograph, in other words, is a trace of something real. Because it was necessary for the object or person to be present at the moment of photographic recording, it can also be said that there is a link between the photograph and the events, objects, people, etc., it depicts. Examining the work of Nick Hedges, there is a clear link between my own personal study and the depictions which I aim to imitate in terms of its contextual aspects and intent. I will be comparing two works from Nick Hedges, from the exhibition ‘Make Life Worth Living’, It was commissioned by Shelter, a charity working against homelessness to raise consciousness about the poor living conditions many Britons experience. The photographs were taken between 1968 and 1972 and are an intimate glimpse in to the human cost of poor housing.

FINISHED LAYOUT SO FAR: