The aim of this exhibition was to offer a platform for workers to express their perspectives on agricultural labour in Jersey. It is also a way of showing the undocumented lives of the workers rather than the marketing representation. The project was conducted via a collaboration between migrant workers, the artist Alicja Rogalska and The Morning Boat. I really liked this exhibition because it wasn’t just one medium it used videography, imagery and typography to send out an important and personal message. The workers may not be highly qualified or a university graduate but they are grounded. Many people in Jersey who are unemployed won’t take these jobs because they think they are above it, they leave agricultural workers with no choice but to hire people from abroad. A big problem is that people say immigrants are taking their jobs but in reality they are filling jobs that people are too stubborn and lazy to take.

The agri-care prize was displayed in a box as the ‘bronze potato’ which is awarded for the best employer of migrant labour in the agricultural sector. The award is also a way of giving the workers a voice in their industry because they are essential the backbone and without them Jersey’s agricultural sector would be failing. It is important that the workers have a say in their living conditions and terms of the contracts because Jersey politicians and employers need to treat foreign workers as they would local workers, just because they can’t speak English doesn’t mean they are any less human.

The pictures featured in the exhibition were all taken by workers on their phones. Images were of the fields, their accommodation, themselves etc. The phones they used weren’t anything near an iPhone 11, this emphasizes the minimalist life they live in Jersey when working here. The photos were displayed in black frames with a thick white border and the pictures themselves were relatively small and they were symmetrically placed in two rows.

There was a video which featured the workers sculpting potatoes, the top 10 were displayed as part of the exhibition. The purpose was to create the most life like looking potato and who better to do that then the people who spend their livelihood picking them. The sculpting provided time for conversation between The Morning Boat and the labour workers through the translation of Alicja Rogalska, as the project was about giving a voice to the workers.

To what extent does Surrealism create an unconscious representation of ones inner conflicts of identity and belonging?

“we are convinced that ‘it happened’- that the events they represent as real, that they actually took place” (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019: 18) Some images are literal, they are taken at the exact moment and capture an exact action but they is an extent to whether this is actually real life. A camera can only capture so much, it takes a segment of a situation, it doesn’t show the whole things. Unless we are the photographer, we never fully know what happened, we may come up with idea and concept, but they are only part of our imagination. My essay is focusing in on surrealism, which is the idea that the unconscious is where all imagination is held.  Surrealists believe the rational mind repressed the power to unlock our imagination. Therefore, in photography for an image to come under this genre it must be subtle in its meanings, it must make the viewer question ‘is this real?’ Claude Cahun is one artist I am going to discuss and explore how she expressed her identity through surrealism photography, around the time of 1920. She said herself that she does not have the answers to her questions, and as such unusually makes visible the rawness, torment, and distress of not knowing. To liberate the extent, I am going to use the surrealist Man Ray as I can argue that his work isn’t motivated my inner conflicts. “From Daguerre’s age to ours: photography has undergone a transformation, not only technologically but conceptually.” (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019: 18). Photography has progressed in our modern world and has grown alongside human knowledge to become more and more technical. As well as that ideas have progressed behind the motivation of capturing images. Nowadays, it doesn’t just have to be straight photography it can have a hidden meaning or enigmatic codes. There aren’t guidelines needed to be followed to create a meaningful photo. 

My first photo shoot for my personal project is based on my most recent artist reference by Chris McKenney. I used his ‘self ghosts’ project as a basis for the shoot, using my little brother as the subject as I felt a younger silhouette was representative of the age I started to have conflicting thoughts of my identity. Natural outdoors lighting was used for these images and were set in my garden on walls, around bamboo and oak trees. I had a high level of control as I positioned my brother where I pleased, I made sure I went out when there was reasonable amount of light and when the wind was at a low force so that the bamboo leaves were stagnant. Some of the images were originally overexposed, this was due to the harsh light filtering through the clouds, so I either cropped it out or selected the area and decreased the exposure. I chose black and white to create a cold tone to represent how you feel when you remember a memory that you forgot about and never wanted to think about ever again. These memories can change your mood in an instant and they crop up at the most random times.

The white wall represents the tabula rasa and how we all all born a blank slate, throughout life its in our hands to decide where we belong, what we like and what we want. I used a wide lense to capture the white wall and the brown wood in order to optimize the contrast as well as symbolizing the conflict. The black and white represents the to and through I had with whether I sat in my family.

Oak trees have a much slower rate of growth, its around 0.5m per year. The hands around the oak tree link to each other as it takes them years to grow and so do our hands. It’s the idea that I needed time as a child to get used to the changes like an oak tree it takes a long time to reach your full self.

I used the sheet over his head to symbolize the lack of identity I had and how I didn’t see where my place was in my family. Bamboo can grow 1 mm every 90 seconds, it’s one of the fastest growing plants in the world. In this image bamboo is representative of the divorce and how everything was changing around me and fast but I was stuck in a cycle of conflict and confusion as to how I fit into this change. New step-mum, new step-siblings suddenly I wasn’t the only child, I wasn’t the only women in my dad’s life he had a new wife who I now had to call a step mum whether I liked her or not.

I used the window that was semi-transparent as I wanted to move the focus away from my brothers facial features because your looks are such an important part of you identity. I want to just focus in on his hands to display the fact that identity isn’t just how you dress it’s also your DNA, your fingerprints, your bloodline, who you genetically call family.

Hands were significant to me as I child as I used to fiddle with my thumbs, pick at my fingers and suck my thumb at times of stress they were like a stress mechanism that relaxed me in times my anxiety was high. The window this was taken at is on my side door, no one ever uses it. The side door symbolizes how I felt, my family weren’t ignoring me, I had a purpose but I felt useless.

In this image I wanted to keep in the bathroom as it represents the home I had but how it just felt like a building to me, which is how I feel about my Dad’s current house. The idea that my brother has assess to the house but he feels like he locked outside and he looking in on the rest of his family, hes the outcast. Although he has a family who loves him he fells a distance between them, he doesn’t know if he fits in so he stays outside in order to let the rest of the family get on without friction.

The cardboard box signifies the constant movement to different houses, I have moved to six houses, which were all down to my parents finding new partners. The idea that whenever someone moves they can easily just pack up their worldly belongings and relocate to a new setting.

Bibliography:

Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. (2019), Photography Decoded. London: Octopus Publishing House

Quotes from the text:

“we can still ask ourselves in every single instance: under what circumstances are these images to be trusted as real?” (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019: 17)

“the lack of human subjectivity makes it an example of ‘true reality’.” (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019: 18)

“The process of manipulation starts as soon as we frame a person” (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019:18)

“we are convinced that ‘it happened’- that the events they represent as real, that they actually took place” (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019: 18)

“One can then ask: what are the differences between reality and witness and points of view” (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019: 18)

“From Daguerre’s age to ours: photography has undergone a transformation, not only technologically but conceptually.” (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019: 18)

“it is a subjective impression that is at the same time both fleeting and enduring- just like any good piece of drama.” (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019: 18)

Surreal Photography by Christopher Ryan McKenney

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)

Key Words-

• belonging
• separation
• lost
• family
• home
• divorce
• identity
• alone
• confusion
• uncertainty
• stability
• choice
• unknown

Questions-

• How can elements of Surrealism be used to express and visualize a persons inner conflict around belonging in society?
• To what extent does Surrealism create an unconscious representation of ones inner conflicts of identity?
• How does Chris McKenney use surrealism to express supernatural ideologies?

MODERNISM

Time period: first half of the 20th century

Key characteristics/ conventions : Modernism refers to a global movement in society and culture that from the early decades of the twentieth century sought a new alignment with the experience and values of modern industrial life. Building on late nineteenth-century precedents, artists around the world used new imagery, materials and techniques to create artworks that they felt better reflected the realities and hopes of modern societies.

Artists associated: Margareth Bourke-White

Key works: Grant Wood-American Gothic

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

• photojournalism
• avant-garde movement

POST-MODERNISM

Time period : Postmodernism is best understood by defining the modernist ethos it replaced – that of the ‘avant-garde’ who were active from 1860s to the 1950s. Postmodernism overturned the idea that there was one inherent meaning to a work of art or that this meaning was determined by the artist at the time of creation. Instead, the viewer became an important determiner of meaning, even allowed by some artists to participate in the work as in the case of some performance pieces.

Key characteristics/ conventions :

• It is the movement away from modernism.
• It involves the mixture of different art medium that reference political, cultural and historical issues.
• The concept itself lacks rules, it’s up to the photographer to decide what messages they encode and how these messages are represented in an image.
• In a way it’s initial motive was to challenge the idea of modernism.
• Common targets of postmodernism and critical theory include universalist notions of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, language, and social progress. The ideas rejected by postmodernists include the idea of artistic development as goal-oriented, the notion that only men are artistic geniuses, and the outdated assumption that non-white races are inferior. Feminist art and minority art that challenged canonical ways of thinking are often included under the umbrella of postmodernism or seen as representations of it.

Artists associated: William Eggleston and Robert Rauschenberg.

The snapshot type imagery which Eggleston created throughout his career, created anecdotal meaning about everyday aspects of life. The accessible and simplistic method of his photography, such as using the Kodak’s Brownie camera, meant that his work had a personal touch to subjects he had no direct personal link with. Color also represented a multitude of themes in his work such as the contrast between the new and the old, the ordinary and extraordinary, the man-made and the natural. In many senses he was a non-conformist, associating him as a prominent figure in the postmodernist art scene. He also explored a contemporary commercial printing process of dye transfer to see the ways in which this could contribute to the representation of color and how this could become the focal point instead of the selling of lifestyle, concepts or ideas. During his career there were a few occasions where Eggleston encountered the work of Andy Worhol, exposing him to other popular forms of mediums, contributing to his experimental photography style. Eggleston’s use of the anecdotal and everyday is set apart by his focus on details such as facial expression which can be seen in the image above. Throughout his career he pushed the boundaries of documentary photography associated with the works of Robert Frank and Walker Evans. His photography effectively captured the shift of life in the South from rural to cosmopolitan societies.

In the work above we can see an example of the extreme focus which Eggleston pays to the facial expressions and body language of the subjects. There is a clear contrast in character from the youthful appearance of the woman on the right and the sickly, pale and tired lady on the right hand side of the image. There is also an overall contrast of color from the left and right with the radiant blonde hair, African print dress and the dark, flat hair and blue toned dress. There is a distinct lack of facial expression with with the woman on the left as she lays on the sofa, in a lifeless and melancholy fashion, observed by the Goddess like presence of the light haired woman. The image provokes overall feelings of conflict and change. Opposed to the typical conventions of postmodernism, this image in particular follows close conventions of Tableau and Renaissance art with the stylized body language and dramatic lighting. This image very effectively showcases the postmodernist features which Eggleston focused on within his work.

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

• Tableaux- staged photography which displays a pictorial narrative.
• Intertextuality – when you include others work.
• Eclecticism – the mixture of styles.
• Refiguration – re-structuring an original image.
• Collaboration-working alongside other artists.
• Pastiche – copying an original.
• Re-cycling- using materials more than once.
• Dadaism: Dada or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century. Dadasim had an influence on postmodernism in its questioning of authenticity and originality. ‘Combined with the notion of appropriation, postmodernism often took the undermining of originality to the point of copyright infringement, even in the use of photographs with little or no alteration to the original.’ -The Art Story.

Art Movements & Isms

PICTORIALISM

Time period : 1880s-1920s

Key characteristics/ conventions : Photos had to look like paintings and drawings in order to fit in as a new medium.

Artists associated: Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), The Vienna Camera Club, The Brotherhood of the Linked Ring, Photo-Secession, Sally Mann.

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes: Put Vaseline in lenses to weaken the sharpness of the image. Allegorical paintings- figurative mode of representation conveying meaning other than the literal.

REALISM / STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

Time period: 1900s

Key characteristics/ conventions : provides an accurate and descriptive records of the visual world. The term ‘realism’ can mean to depict things as they are, without idealising or making abstract

Artists associated: Walker Evans, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand.

Social Form Photography- Images of those in poor classes who live in slums taken by wealthy photographers in the hope that it brings light on the issue, start of photojournalism

Dave Campany’s booked is called ‘So present, so invisible, Conversations on Photography’ it includes interviews with world-class photographers. The interview I am going to discuss is with Paul Graham a British fine art and documentary photographer. He has lived in New York since 2002, so a large majority of this work is based in America but he has projects based in Northern Island after the famous ‘Bloody Sunday’ in 1972 as well as a project called A1 which is based on the Longest marked road in the UK. This most recent work ‘A Shimmer of Possibility’ based in America is a sequence of edited images of everyday street life. When he was emerging as a photography colour photographer was beginning to make and appearance in the industry. In his interview he was saying how it was hard as an artist to break out of the cycle of black and white photography. ‘ I don’t want to call it radical but some found it so,’ clearly the audience and some artists at the time were threatened by evolving technology, which made it harder to introduce colour. ‘You can use the beauty of the landscape to seduce people into engaging with a picture they normally wouldn’t look at,’ I picked this quote because this is the basis of excellent photograph it’s all about capturing such a powerful image that people can’t help but look at it. The whole idea of attracting more than just one audience is a way to stretch yourself as a photographer by being able to take an image that has more than one simple concept. When discussing his style and how it can be seen as controversial he uses this metaphor, ‘you don’t call cooking with ingredients that came from the garden documentary cooking, it’s just cooking’. He saying that photography is a broad creative subject which has no rules, it’s all about capturing in the moment through observation just because he doesn’t stage or plan this photos doesn’t mean their aren’t part of medium.

Graham doesn’t says his in his interview but I found it powerful, ‘Perhaps instead of standing at the river’s edge scooping out water, it’s better to be in the current itself, to watch how the river comes up to you, flows smoothly around your presence, and reforms on the other side like you were never there.’

Most of Graham’s images are of interest to me but this one of the most striking. I love the overall simplicity of this photo, yet it’s contextual depth. The main focal point is how their is only black people present, the odd thing to me is that they all seem to be very comfortable in such a public environment. Conceptually, I think this photo is displaying how idotic prejudice views are about the black community. In the photo Graham portrays the subjects reading newsapers crossing the road, chatting, all normal acts. Some white people hold the view that black people are constantly out in public causing trouble, this image challenges this racist view. He uses natural daylight to capture this untempered image. It is neither under or over exposed which is a hard skill considering he works under low control situations that require a steady hand and quick eye. He uses a medium lens inorder to capture the setting as well as a fast shutter speed to avoid motion blur. The photo has very dull colours giving it a cold temperature with the greys and blues. The Pepsi van, the mans hat, the womens jacket, the post she is leaning against all work together as a spetrum of different shades of blue, creating harmony within the colours. There is a combination of textures, the uneven and cracked pavement, the smooth road tarmac, these opposites create constrast between the surfaces. The lack of repetition is what makes this a candid image, its raw and unplanned, creating an authentic documentary style photo.

Christopher McKenney is a conceptual artist from Pennsylvania specializing in horror surrealist photography. He is also known for his live concert photography alongside his ability to capture his concepts. In 2012 he went to the woods with only a sheer, a chair and a frame, he began taking photos. He achieved the images below by self-portraits in which he put the sheet over his head and photo-shopped his body out.

 ‘I like taking away identity when photographing and to leave people thinking. I only make the photos I do to express myself and what other people see or think is up to them, as long as I make them feel anything I’m OK with that.’

McKenney has used natural daylight to capture this image, the colour tone is fairly warm from the fallen leaves. This is a self-portrait which was taken on a self-timer so that he had time to put the sheet over his head and position himself in the seat. There is high level of control in this image as he is manipulating where he places the chair, how he puts the sheet at an angle, the background, it can be seen as a tableaux vivant as he is essentially acting out a concept. The textures are rough with the dead leaves collated on the forest floor and the green leaves blowing in the wind which contrast with the dull prickly branches. The image is neither over or under exposed, McKenney achieved his by trial and error as well as editing in photoshop when erasing his body from the chair to create this ghost like image. The project itself is called ‘Self-Ghosts’, McKenney doesn’t go into detail about the idea behind the concept and says it’s up to the audience to decode their own concept. Personally, I think that he is representing the idea that we make ourselves evil, we all have hidden demons, some people choose to let them free by exerting criminal act for instance whereas other leave their self-ghost dormant. On the other hand, I believe that McKenney is also trying to portray the idea that both the supernatural and ‘real world connect in everyday life. The contrast between the the chair/sheet and the ghost creates the concept that the supernatural isn’t so different to use and that they can experience the same world as us. The focal point is the floating sheet and then the audiences eyes moves out to see the chair then the forest setting, this links with this concept and how McKenney is telling a story with the the ‘normal’ background and the abnormal ‘foregroud’.