For my own zine, I will be basing it around the theme of desperation of the Jersey people at the time of the Occupation ( The German Occupation of the Channel Islands lasted for most of the Second World War, from 30 June 1940 until their liberation on 9 May 1945), and also exploring the feeling of being ‘betrayed’ by the UK forces for technically abandoning the island.
Youtube Clip on The Occupation
The layout of my zine will consist of 16 A5 pages. With a mix of photo-montages that I have made, some archival photos and own black and white photos from bunker trips. For the colour scheme: I am going to go with only black and white photos with some red touches. E.g the front cover of my zine will have a red sky which I painted on it, and other pages will have red text and different backgrounds.
Ernest Baudoux (1828-1897), born in France, was a prominent and prolific photographer in Jersey from 1869 to 1887. He made his living as a portraitist, and taking pictures of affluent islanders’ houses. He also took a large number of pictures documenting outdoor Jersey in the 1870-80s. Baudoux worked in Jersey from 1869 at 11 Craig Street and 51½, 56 and 59 New Street. In 1885 he was joined in business by his son, but two years later they sold out to John Stroud, a young photographer from London, who in turn sold his business, including many of Baudoux’s glass-plate negatives, to Albert Smith. Some of these photographs have been attributed incorrectly to Smith and the Photographic Archive of La Société Jersiaise have a project under way to attempt to correctly identify who took each of the 3000-plus images in their collection attributed to Smith.
The portraits, most of which have names inscribed on the backs (although often only surnames, so that it is difficult to link pictures to particular families) are supreme examples of the Victorian art of photographic portraiture. They convey the fashions of the time, both in clothing and hairstyles. If the subjects of the images appear rather dour this is easily explained. They would have to hold their pose for a lengthy period, which is why they can often be seen posing with their arms folded and supported on the back of a chair, or a firm cushion. Staring blankly at the camera for the required time was relatively easily accomplished, whereas holding a smile was impossible.
A Chromotype portrait
Gallery of some of Baudoux’s portraits:
A gallery of photographs by Ernest Baudoux from the 1870s and ’80s.
Olgaç Bozalp
‘Born and cultured in Turkey, Olgaç Bozalp has spent the last decade of his life in London, bestowing him with a hybrid perspective of the Eastern and Western worlds. His cultural awareness and sensitivity to personal identities mixed with fashion and documentary is what makes his work feel simultaneously nostalgic and alien. Olgaç explores the world of his subjects by frequently shooting in their homes, providing an intimate portrayal between subject and photographer that is undeniably captivating and informative.’ – Futures Photogprahy
Olgaç Bozalp hails from a small, sleepy, conservative town in the centre of Turkey called Konya. With not much to do, aside from escape to the metropolis of Istanbul for entertainment, a restless Bozalp started to create his own fun. “I was always bored in my home town so I started creating these characters for myself,” he explains. “In retrospect, even though I wanted to get away from home, it has actually played a big role as inspiration for my work. My relatives, their homes, the decor – I wanted to recreate those environments in my photographs.”
Analysis of above photo: This photo by Olgac Bozalp is one of many of his environmental-like portraits. It shows a young woman of Eastern European heritage posing on an old fashioned bed. She has a direct intimidating stare into the camera which with the pose creates a seductive kind of atmosphere. The background is most likely her home or somewhere she is staying, the walls are covered in dated wallpaper and the furniture seems to be from a decade long ago. There is a cardboard sign on the wall, with ‘Only Angels Speak To Me’ scrawled across it in black and green paint. This phrase could relate to or mean anything and I think Bozalp wanted to leave it open to interpretation. The colour scheme is orange toned with a pop of blue from her dress which stands out against the bleakness of the rest of the room. Overall the image is quite striking because of the confusion from the sign, the old colourscheme nd dated furniture and her pressing stare into the camera.
Comparison of the both photographers: Despite being from two very different time periods, Baudoux and Bozalp still photograph their subjects in a similar way. Both photographers incorporate the subject’s home/background in their photos, this can be seen more in the Bozalps however it is still evident in Baudoux’s photos as you can decide what class the person/person is in through looking at the background and their gestures in the photos. Another note able similarity of the two is the clothing that all the subjects wear. In Baudoux’s case they convey the fashions of the time, both in clothing and hairstyles. For Bozalp, hisa portfolio features commissions from major fashion brands including Carven and Gucci, who recognised his unique style; a mix of travel reportage and fashion. He street- casts his subjects, and often spends time getting to know them at their homes before each shoot. Being connected to the Middle East region, Bozalp has been at the forefront of a movement to diversify visual culture, introducing new ideas about gender, beauty and race. “We sell products consumed by diverse groups of people, so how come they’re not being represented on the product?” he says. “We shouldn’t categorise beauty – that’s why I really like photographing people who never thought they could be models, or see themselves in those sort of clothes. It’s the main ingredient of my work.”
Robert Winter Le Sueur, MBE is a Jersey resident who was awarded an MBE for his efforts in assisting escaped Russian prisoners, in Jersey, during the Nazi Occupation of the Channel Islands. During the Occupation, Le Sueur was able to move about due to his work as an insurance agent. He acted as relay in a network of people sheltering escapees: from 1942 he handled eight or nine escapees.
Bob Le Sueur visited our photography room and recounted stories from the Occupation which I have recorded and have posted below. He also allowed us to take photos of him in our photography studio.
I Was There. Bob Le Sueur – Jersey Heritage
‘Bob shares photos from his personal collection as well as personal recollections about living on a highly militarized island cut off from Britain.’ – Channel Islands Occupation Society (Jersey)
Sandy Kim is an American Photographer (b. in 1986). Kim grew up in Portland, Oregon where she began her photography career, then leaving at 18, she traveled to San Francisco. She started photographing what’s around her. Her friends, her loves and her life. Even unashamedly turning the camera back on herself. A large turning point in Kim’s career was when the band she befriended and was photographing, “Girls”, started to break through, her images suddenly were appearing in The New York Times and other publications. Her use of point and shoot cameras and unique style even received praise from art photographer Ryan McGinley.
She really knows how to use natural light, like early morning light, or sunset light in an apartment. She pays attention to it and that’s always the sign of a good photographer, knowing when and how to use that light. She’s small, a fly on the wall, with balls to pick up her arm and take the photo without asking permission. Sandy brings her camera everywhere and she’s always ready and waiting for the moment. She documents her life in San Francisco and you get a sense of the scene there-but not in a blogger way, Sandy is actually talented-an artist. I like how she still shoots film. it’s old school. She reminds me of when I was young – out partying every night, snapping away so that the pictures can provide evidence of the night.” – Ryan McGinley, DAZED 2011
‘The Secret Life of Girls’
‘Sandy Kim turning the camera on herself is not that unique. But her exciting, off the hip style is what’s garnered her well deserved attention. Almost as if a great image emerges from not very much pre-thought or planning. You can see the planning and execution from other photographers. Not Sandy Kim. The intimacy of her photos are her own. Whether you live that lifestyle or not, you feel connected.’
-Anatomy Films
Sandy Kim never considered herself a photographer, and so spending more than 10 dollars on a camera seemed stupid. Which is how her point and shoot persona and thrift store finds began. And she still prefers film over digital. She likes being “stuck” with what she has to work with. She very much dislikes editing on a computer. And anyway, “the images don’t look the same”. While she’d be the first to admit her lighting and composition are not always thought through in the technical sense, she feels photographs are made to remember experiences and moments in time.
Aside from these photos, Kim has also created some interesting zines over the years. SKY2K by Sandy Kim: In her underwear and topless, Kim places herself at the center of various public spaces for this series, published in honor of the 2013 New York Art Book Fair as a one-shot zine. The twelve pages that contain the new work are actually just two pages folded and cut to fit the format of both a book and enormous poster at the same time.
A zine (pronounced zeen) is an independently or self-published booklet, often created by physically cutting and gluing text and images together onto a master flat for photocopying, but it is also common to produce the master by typing and formatting pages on a computer. The publication is usually folded and stapled. The first ‘zine’ was made in 1775 when Thomas Paine self-published Common Sense and used it as an instrument in promoting the ideas that contributed to the U.S. War for Independence. Others credit the Science Correspondence Club in Chicago for producing the first zines in the 1930s called The Comet. These were based on the sci-fi genre and called fanzines. With time, the publications came to be known simply as zines. Just a perfect example to demonstrate the free spirit of zine culture.
Zines have always been associated with political themes and continue to be published on the same. From feminism to Black activism, there are zines on every theme possible. However, limited distribution allows only some to become aware of such publications.
Zine culture has made its comeback in the recent years, due rise of individual expression in social media. Social movements like Black lives matter Portland launched a zine to express their work and beliefs. And what’s cool about creating your own zine in the modern era of the internet is that you’ll have no circulation restrictions. Everyone with an internet connection can easily read and share your ideas.
To display the photo-montages which I have made for my final outcome for the Identity and Place stimulus, I have decided to display them in a trio. Starting with the middle photo-montage, I placed this one there because it has bright red text on it which made it stand out more and it was the only one with text on it, I also wanted peoples eyes to be drawn to the center so they can read the text and see what it’s all about. I was originally going to put the two portraits at each end of the display because they were similar, however I changed my mind.
The Finished Display
Background
I was also originally going to have a window mount in either black or white, however some things went wrong and then I decided to go without one and just mount them on a thin piece black card, which solely went around the edges, and then place them on white mount card afterwards. Below you can see that I was trying to figure out to use either black or white as the background colour, eventually I went with white because I thought black would be too dark and a bit distracting from the photo-montages.
These are my final photo-montages in a series of 3, which I have made as a response to the ‘Identity and Place’ stimulus.
The method I used to create these was first finding all these photos and taking some more recent ones. Next I photographed all the photos using my phone and transferred them over to my computer where I then printed them all out and began to experiment with what I was ripping/cutting out and where I was going to sew the piece back on. After deciding on what was going to go where, I scrunched up all the photos to make them look torn and then used glue to stick the pieces on. When the glue had dried I then started stitching into the photos with black thread and a needle, in order to make the pieces like patches.
Final Outcomes
This is the first one in the series, and one of the only ones that I only used 2 photos to create. The base picture is a passport photo of my mum from the 70s and the two eyes are from a photo of me, which was taken about a month ago, this age difference contrasts the base photo which is around 40 years old. This can also be seen through the fact the most recent one is better quality, there is less blurring and it is in colour. Whereas the older one is in black and white and the features on the face do have some blurring. This photo-montage was also the only one which I decided to add text to. I used acrylic red paint in order to paint on the words “I am nobody, who are you?”. I chose to write this as I felt the piece was missing something and the words link in the identity theme. The original creator of this phrase (which has now become a popular saying) was Emily Dickinson. Dickinson was a notable poet, born in 1830-1886. Her poem ‘I am nobody!’ has now become one of her most famous. The poem addresses a feeling of being on the outside, it is about being “us against them”.
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
Emily Dickinson
The inspiration for the layout of the text came from an artist named Dominic Beyeler. I first saw one of his pieces based on this saying on the Instagram Explore page, and I just thought it looked really interesting and cool, the way he had laid out the text over the persons face, and how it all fit perfectly. Therefore I decided to try it out on my photo-montage as it was lacking something, and I think it turned out really well. The painting could have been neater and more exact however, I feel that a messier look gives the photo-montage more authenticity.
Above is the second photo-montage I made. I used two photos to make this: the black and white one is of my mum and her brother, playing and posing for a photo. This was around the late 60s. I like how both of them seem happy and smiling, it is a breath of fresh air which contrasts some of the more depressing photos which are more common these days. The coloured photo is one from the early 2000s of me and my brother, posing for a school photo together. I thought this was quite a weirdly strange photo-montage as the two photos fit together quite well despite being taken a long time apart. Some parts are almost perfectly matched such as the hands at the bottom. The stitching in this one is also a lot more prominent than the last and there is more of it due to there being more pieces of photos to stitch on. Overall I enjoy the contrasting colours of the two photos and how they match together really well apart from at a few places.
This is my last one in the series. It is solely portraits/passport photos of me and my mum, at different ages in our lives. The base photo is a coloured photo of my mum in her 20/30s. I have layered over the top ripped out features from photos of me. Some of them match well and others don’t, which was the point of what I was doing. The piece of neck/jaw/hair matches almost perfectly with the base photo of my mum, some parts are a bit off because of the sizing of the photos but I think that this makes the finish product look more interesting and cool to look at when the pieces don’t match up. The addition of an extra eye also makes the portrait even less ordinary.
My plan is to create pieces of work based on how a person’s identity is shaped through their upbringing, genes and their parents & family. I have planned to use archival imagery of my family, in particular my Mum and I, and create a series of photo-montages based on different features and genes which I have inherited from my Mum and also incorporate things that are different between us, such as: different features on the face or hair when we were both growing up. I am interested in physically taking old & new photos, cutting/ripping them apart and putting back together, taking out parts, sewing things in order to create something new out of it. This demonstrates the way in which old traits and genes from parents are passed onto the child and although they become influenced by many different things, their physical and personality traits are mostly handed down from their parents.
I have found various photos of the two of us when we were aging and growing up. I also found some photos that are eerily similar, despite having been taken 30-40-50 years apart. These are the photos I have used to make my photo-montages from. There is a variety of photos of me, my mum, my uncle & my mum and me & my brother. There are also a variety of black and white, and color photos. Some are passport, school and Polaroid photos, and others are just simply photos which have been randomly taken. I think this is a good mix to have in order to create more diversity in the photo-montages.
Case Studies
I have done case studies on Annegret Soltau & Joachim Schmidt and I am influenced by their work and the methods they have used in order to create it. Annegret’s timeline of her daughter & grandmothers bodies was thought provoking to me, and I have decided to develop my work along same lines as her. My photos reflect that my mum and I have done similar things, taken the same photos but just in a different time and with different people, and I want that to be able to be seen through my work.
The Finished Display
