Through my personal investigation I have learnt and researched about Jersey throughout the second world war going through its occupation by the Germans and its Liberation in 1945. The images I have taken mostly relate closely to occupation and liberation, though they vary due to some being portraits, some being objects and some being landscape images. The portrait imagery initially taught me about different types of lighting and how I can set it up to get a nice bright clean image of the person within the photograph. The object imagery, which was of lots of different items found within the occupation, gave me much more freedom of what I can do with them creating simple montages of related items and teaching me more lighting techniques. The landscape imagery, which I have taken of bunkers to link with occupation, is the main thing I am going to try and develop with my personal study. This will allow me to further develop my skills with a camera by setting it up differently depending on the weather conditions or lighting levels outside, and also allow me to explore a lot more of Jerseys bunkers and heritage to get a much better view of what life would have been like in Jersey during the second world war.

I believe portraiture inspired me during my personal investigation. I believe portraiture inspired me due to the realization of the amount of things a person can do within an image and how much emotion some people are able to create within an image, which can be used to emphasize a point or show someones views on something.

Landscape imagery has also inspired me a lot due to the amount of unique areas of land you are able to find and use, especially all the landmarks within Jersey relating to the German occupation. This has also inspired me due to the amount of different angles and ways you can photograph these areas, such as in different lighting or weather, like at night or during the rain.

Irving Penn was an American photographer known for fashion photography, portraits and mostly still life. He was born on June 16th 1917 and died October 7th 2009. Penn attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, where he studied painting, drawing and graphics. Penn first worked as a freelance designer for three years. After this he was invited to go join vogue magazine. He worked on the layout of the magazine before beginning photography. He then worked their until 1950. After this he began his own photography studio.

Penn’s still life images use a collection of lots of different things such as food and other objects. The imagery depicted within Penn’s still life images varies a lot, and usually has lots of different items that aren’t related.

The image above is using artificial lighting. It is placed in such a way so that shadows around the sides are completely removed and only shadows within the objects remain.

This image consists of lots of different items, from playing cards, to dice and chess pieces. These items add colour to the image and create an interesting look with the lighting reflecting off of them.

In 1802, Thomas Young theorised that all different colours were produced optically through your eyes, and there were only 3 wavelengths of light, this is called trichromatic. These colours were red, green and violet. These theories also provided the first framework for the first commercially viable method of colour photography, the autochrome.

Emile Guilton was the founder of the Societe Jeriaise photographic archive. Emile took the first colour photograph in Jersey using autochrome. This image was called Lumière Autochrome. Though it is hard to see, each image is made up of lots of small dots with one of three colours, red, violet and green. Our eyes make the dots within the image merge into the colours they would make when mixed and create this bright image of colours.

The image above is an example of autochrome image, made by Emile F. Guiton. This is an early example of colour photography using the autochrome technique. The image is of plants in a vase. These plants are pink, and the use of autochrome allows this pink to show brightly due to the colours mixing into the colour it should be.

The phrase “Still Life” comes from a dutch word “Stilleven”. This phrase became popular in the 16th century because during this time, it started to become recognised as a genre of painting. Though, the actual painting style was being used by artists for much longer before. Still Life is a genre that consists of using non-living objects, such as flowers and fruits to show meaning within the image. These meanings can be things such as showing power or wealth, by doing things such as changing the types of flowers or fruits being used. Vanita is another style of Still Life. Vanitas typically show something to do with mortality or death, usually through the use of objects like skulls to achieve this.

The image above is a painting by Sir Nathaniel Bacon. He was a British painter. He created this painting toward the end of his life during the 1620s, when this kind of genre was just really gaining popularity. The image above shows lots of different fruits and vegetables. These were all grown in England at the time, but were not all within season at the time of the image. This creates an idea of wealth because it means they are able to get these items imported during times of the year when they don’t grow in England. The idea of wealth can lead an idea of power due to them having access to lots of different expensive and non-seasonal fruits and vegetables, with the image showing off what they have, while others, especially at the time will not be as fortunate and may not really have anything.

Henry Mullins started work in London in the 1840s. He moved to Jersey in July 1848. He set up a studio known as the Royal Saloon. He initially had a partnership with someone else called Mr Millward, though by the following year he was working by himself and carried on doing this for the next 26 years. He advertised his photographs as cheap and coming in various sizes. With the price reduced to half of that in London.

His collection of images was obtained by Clarence Philip Ouless in 1883 and was given to La Societe in 2006.

This is an image of a Mr Bolton by Henry Mullins.

Technical: This image looks as though it would have been taken in his studio using unnatural lighting. I say this due to the simple background within the image, and the lighting coming from the left hand side of the of the camera shining mostly onto one portion of his face. The shutter speed would have been set quite high due to the amount of light captured off of his face and hands.

Visual: The image had been developed in a brown colour. This would have likely been due to camera limitations with not being able to take images in colour. The image has come out with a huge contrast between lighter and darker colours, with the lighter colours only really showing up where his face and hands are, and the darker colours being in the background and his clothing. This likely would have been done due to camera limitations, but also could have been done for other reasons such as making the person within the image look more professional as you can still make out some of the details within the dark suit.

Contextual: This image is one of his very early pieces. This image was taken during the time period of 1848 – 1850. This was just after he had started his portraiture business. This likely was taken when he was starting to become known around the island and began taking images of influential individuals around the island. He was known as the first professional photographer Jersey had due to his skills with the early cameras.

Conceptual: Henry Mullins work became popular with people within the Royal Militia Island of Jersey. It was very popular for these people to get their picture taken and for their families to. The image above could relate to this as I am unsure who Mr Bolton was or about him. Though, he could have been one of the many influential people that Henry photographed such as Dean Le Breton.

Martin Parr, born May 23rd 1952, is a modern documentary photographer. A lot of his work is based upon social classes and power. Some work that links to power are his Liberation imagery, in these images he uses the event of Liberation Day which is celebrated every year in Jersey to create photographs, usually of people to show the power that people that lived through world war 2 have regained power.

Technical: This image uses unnatural lighting, which is coming from above. Though the lights are dim and therefore cause the brighter colours within the image to stand out more, such as the hats and the people. Martin Parr has taken this image from fairly close up using a wide lens to see as many of the people within the frame. He may have decided to take it from this close to display how closely he and we are related to these people.

Visual: This image uses lots of colours. The main colours that stand out are red, white and blue. This was likely done to show the people within the images overwhelming love for Britain. This is also shown by the Union Jack logo being repeated throughout the image overhead and on the hats.

Contextual: This image was taken at a Liberation celebration which is a celebration in Jersey to remember the day the island was liberated from the German occupation at the end of World War 2. This image shows people who likely were very young during the time of the war or born shortly before it ended.

Conceptual: This image was taken as an image to celebrate Jerseys freedom from Germany during World War 2. It was taken on a Liberation day celebration, it shows lots of people who were likely alive within the war sitting down with Union Jack hats. An idea Marin Parr may have had while taking this image is to stay close to the people within the room to show the connection between him and them. He may have also decided to take the image while they were all holding the hats in the air to show that they have faith in their country.

Below is a selection of images from my Home Sweet Home photoshoot. in this photoshoot I have taken environmental portrait photographs of my mother within the home, to show things she does and images to create emotions.

This is a selection of my favourite images I have taken within this photoshoot. The last one especially shows emotion due to the person seeing the image wondering why she is looking out of the window.

This first shot I taken of Bob I decided to use a close up shot to his face. This allowed me to gather all the details within his face properly. I have decided to do this because of the fact I had him looking down which made him seem sad, creating a sense of empathy in the person viewing the image for Bob. Doing a close up to his face also meant that I could have his face easily be the main attraction of the image. I went with a black and white image, as I thought it worked well with the image, keeping the detail and adding slightly deeper shadows, so that parts of his face stood out more.

All the below shots are half-body shots. I have done this so that things such as his walking stick are visible, to show his age and to symbolize all that he has gone through within his life time.

This below image I have done in colour. I decided to add contrast to the image to make the black areas look blacker, but I also decided to have less shadows so that the dark areas only really show up within parts of the face and clothing, bringing out the details that I managed to show with the camera.

This image below I again have done in black and white. It is a similar image to the colour one above with Bob looking off to the left. I have made him look in this direction within these images because of the almost heroic look it gives him. Like the image above I have left the shadows within this image pretty light so that only each little detail within his face can really be seen through the darker parts of the image.

In the below image, I again have made it black and white. I have done this so that I could use a blue tint and contrast options to make the shadows appear darker and cover more of his face. This along with how I have had him looking down is supposed to show him reflecting on his past and symbolize and regrets he may have had in the past, such as possibly shaking the hand of the German soldier at the end of the occupation.

Bob Le Sueur is a resident of Jersey and lived through the occupation of Jersey during world war 2. He was around the age of 19 at the start of the occupation. During the beginning of the occupation, Bob experienced a lot such as being woken by an air raid from German Bomber planes. These planes dropped two silver cylinders with parachutes attached each with a note inside telling them that the military control of the island should be surrendered to them within 24 hours. Though, there was no military on the island due to its demilitarization earlier. Due to the limited population throughout the islands, and since it was demilitarized, the British army was told to not help and stay at their posts and do their best.

During the occupation Bob helped Russian prisoners (who were seen as sub-human to the Germans) escape German hold. One of these was someone who was held by two of Bobs friends who shared a flat. He and some other people he knew, managed to get a fake German identification card for him, and a ration book so that he was able to at least stay alive with them.

Bob himself did not have a crystal set radio, but those who did were aware of Berlin falling on April 30th. Though, the Germans did tell everyone that Hitler died defending in the Jersey Evening Post. This quickly lead to the end of the war and Liberation where the surrender papers were signed. Bob also has a story of Liberation day where when using hose-pipe tires on his bike, one of them snapped, sounding like a gun shot, which made German soldiers nearby to him jump to the ground in fear. Bob then told us that this is the experience that made him realize that the Germans were human just like us. He then mentioned how he wanted to go and shake one of these German soldiers hands, but could not bring himself to do so, likely due to the fact they were still considered the enemy and if people saw him do it they may consider him some kind of traitor.

The Jersey archive is a collection of imagery and documents that have been collected throughout the last few hundred years. This collection mostly consists of documents and is used for research and to keep an accurate depiction of how peoples lives have changed throughout time. The catalogue holds over 200,000 documents within it. A lot of this came from world war 2 during the occupation and liberation periods when documents such as over 31,000 registration cards of people alive during the occupation, including personal details such as name, address and date of birth. Every member of the public is able to access the archive through the use of the internet or by going to the archive itself. Lots of people use it for different things such as research about previous historical events such as the occupation, or to research their own personal family history. This archive is very different from the other archive I have visited, Societe Jeriaise. This is because this archive has a much larger quantity of documents within it, unlike Societe Jeriaise which did have documents, did not have nearly as many and had a lot of photographs and images from individuals depicting things like war and the occupation.