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First Photoshoot : Devils hole | Smugglers Inn : Landscapes

After starting some research into the legends I went out to start my first photoshoots. For this first photoshoot of landscapes I went out to Devil’s Hole in St Mary and the Old Smugglers Inn in St Brelade. I went out for this photoshoot at around midday on quite a cloudy and drizzly day. I felt this was a good time to go out to create the landscape photographs as I still had a good natural light source due to the time of day however due to the weather on the day it produced quite a gloomy and eery aura to the photographs which I feel is good and useful as I am trying to reflect something slightly eery and mysterious with the subject of these being legends and stories. The aim of this photoshoot was to go out and create a portrayal of the reminiscence on the landscapes and the island. One of my aims was to capture photographs of the actual Smugglers Inn Pub as well as the statue found on the trail to Devil’s Hole as these are some of the main aspects of the stories as well as the cave itself. Below I have my contact sheets of my photoshoot from the locations as well as the sheets from when I started to narrow down the photographs before I started to edit the photographs. I flagged down the photographs and then I also star rated them to help me decide which photographs I could potentially use in the final outcome of my personal investigation and which I would use to edit.

In order to narrow down my photographs for editing and experimenting with I had to decide and find which would be most relevant for my wants towards the final outcome of the whole investigation. For devils hole, ones with the statue and the caves where my main aim and focus to get as I feel they will help to tell the most story and be the most useful towards the outcomes and narrative of the storytelling. I have also tried to include some minimal photograph close ups of the landscape and the nature surroundings, as the landscape was so diverse. For the Old Smugglers Inn I wanted to try and mainly focus on the actual building of the pub as well as the landscaped hill leading down to it to create a narrative of the area and the surroundings of where the stories happened.

For the editing of my photographs I chose 8 out of the photoshoot to edit and experiment with, although 8 might end up being too many for the final outcome I feel if I have 8 to edit and choose from this gives me a wide range to explore with and hopefully use in the final photo-book of the personal investigation. For the actual editing part of these photographs I have explored editing the contrasts mainly and highlights and the shadows of the photographs. For some of the photographs I also experimented with some of the colour filters for the added extra effect depending on how easy the photograph was to work with in the first place as some were difficult to just adjust the contrasts and exposures deepening on how the light was sitting in that photograph.

Below are showing thew outcomes from the Devil’s Hole portion of my photoshoot. As I came to the cliff path and walk of the hole I came across some difficulties with taking pictures of the statue of the demon in the lake. It was missing it’s hands but also that it was difficult to get an up close photograph of the statue as once you were able to get quite close there was a lot of foliage and branches in the way, I have the idea that when I return to do the tableaux shoots I will retake some photographs of the statue as I will have extra hands that will help to move and keep branches out of the way. Even though the statue has been replaced over time I still feel that it holds significance to the tale and the place as the head was that of the ship that wrecked and helped to create and keep the legend of Devil’s Hole alive. The photograph I did manage to capture is a side view of the statue, with the editing and using contact effects I feel I have been able to develop at least one outcome of the shoot that I feel was successful. I was able to produce two outcomes of the landscape cliffs that are the hole itself as well as the cliffs and sea below, I think that these outcomes were successful. I liked these photographs as I feel it helps to depict thee surroundings of the legend and the stories, these cliff paths have been opened up to the public, as the main part of the legend is set on the cliff path and the cave below I feel it is important to the story to capture as when the water rises into the cave it creates such booming noises which add to the story and legend of Devil’s Hole. For my last two pictures from this shoot I wanted to capture something small and different I feel that the log going into the lake created for an interesting photograph, I enjoy the lines and shapes that are created into it as well as the green algae sitting on top of the water, after the editing I feel this has become one of my favourite photographs from the shoot. The image of the sign I created I wanted to capture something different that showed how the space had been adapted to involve the public into the legend by allowing them into the space which is something important to capture when looking into how these stories and myths have effected and occupied the landscape and the public.

Below show my outcomes from the Old Smugglers Inn from the photoshoot. I found this place harder to capture as I couldn’t take photographs inside the building as it is an indoor public space and I cannot avoid not taking pictures of people inside so was only able to capture the outside of the building and the surroundings of the pub. For my photographs I tool pictures of the actual building and connecting cottages and tried to experiment with some of the angles I was using to create the photographs, for example the one with the writing of the Old Smugglers Inn I tired to shoot it from a lower angel looking up to create a different effect than I had done with the other photographs in this portion of the shoot which is why I chose that photograph to edit and explore. For the photograph of the building and the connecting cottages I walked further down the road towards the beach to capture it looking up the road rather than head on and flat to the building as I felt it created for a more of an interesting photograph to experiment with and I believe helps to give then sense of the surroundings and showing how the legend is somewhere in everyday life of the public and the landscape. I took the photograph towards the beach to include something slightly different and away from actually looking at the legend but instead just the surroundings and the parts connected that are just everyday life, as well I feel it helps to connect the other parts of the legend with the idea of pirates staying and lodging in the Old Smugglers Inn which would have come from the slip paths from the beaches. The last photograph from the shoot I have chosen to edit is one that I again took up the road, I edited this photograph a little differently by putting a filter over the top while editing in Lightroom as I felt it made it more interesting and gave it more character compared to when I just edited with the contact and exposures normally, I feel that the warm tones and the photograph not being completely crisp but still clear create an effect of it being older and more mysterious which is something I wanted to gain out of this photoshoot and editing to produce the idea of it being a mystery, legend and story incorporating its way into our lives which I feel I have been able to start to suggest in the photographs.

Devils Hole and Smugglers inn Planning

Smugglers Inn

The parish of St Brelade is a quaint community well known for its rural fields and stunning coastline. With history dating back as far as the sixth century it is difficult to get away from a sense of that history, including the peace and solitude as well. Despite what you may experience in modern St Brelade, this seaside parish was once a haven for buccaneers. The Old Smugglers Inn on Ouaisne Bay was the place they came to not only rest, but to hide out when the heat was on. Due to this many expect the histories and myths to come from one of these bloodthirsty cut-throats haunting the Old Smugglers inn, which is however not the case, instead it is said to be the ominously named Woman in Black. It is said to be here in one of the above and surrounding cottages that a man sitting in bed noticed a women who he assumed was his girlfriend sitting on the edge of the bed wearing a black dress. A few moments later his girlfriend walked into the room. The witness of this event reported not being scared by the incident but instead found in calming. For many years both patrons and staff have reported encountering the mysterious figure of a ghostly woman in a black dress.

Although this is not one of the most well known legends of the island I feel is one I find interesting and one that I could create good photographs out of with tableaux effects as well as landscape and surrounding images. I feel with the use of costume and effects this is something I can produce well and create. For this I would use two females and a male model in the tableaux scenes. I will generate the two sets of photoshoots with landscapes and tableaux to show and portray the legend, with also varyings of lights and times, eg. daytime, nighttime, to use the natural lighting I can as well as artificial to generate effect which can help with the editing later on.

Devils Hole

Before I went out to portray the myths and legends of devils hole I went out to learn the story of what it exactly entails. The legend surrounds a night in October 1851 when a French cutter ‘La Josephine’ struck the rocks off the north coast of Jersey and was wrecked with the loss of one of the crew. The ships demon figurehead was washed up inside the hole and the ship itself was also said to be curse. The figurehead, adapted carved by local Jean Gifford,  created a statue of the devil which was set up above the crevasse for people to see. The location that I am planning on using for my shoots will be the site of Devil’s Hole itself. This natural site is a crater in one of Jerseys cliffs, measuring about 100ft across and 200ft deep. The hole is a natural formation probably caused by the sea eroding a cave until the roof of the cave collapsed to form the crater we now see.  At high tide the cave floods and water is forced through the tunnel and out of the hole, creating a booming noise, which is a feature of many St Mary legends. Today there is a pathway deigned to allow the public visit this natural attraction. The lower part, once quite dangerous, now has wooden steps and handrails. However, the access path ends at a large specially constructed viewing platform.

In Erren Michaels book ‘Jersey Legends’ gives one of the best descriptions of the tale. Erren Michaels description gives me inspiring information that will help me in my attempt to accurately portray this legend. This includes a description and detailed illustration of the devil character; The devil stood before him, tall and terrifying. The cold light of the moon framed the creature in silver. Its eyes were filled with sorrow and wrath as it looked down upon him”. As well as an insight into the importance of the statues and surrounding area where the cursed ship sank. 

To show and produce this legend well I will be generating at least two sets of shoots, one of the landscape and the surroundings and one in character with tableaux elements of having it all staged with costumes and maybe props. Below I have some historical landscape photographs as well as some images found at the location I am hoping to be able to use these as inspiration and help towards the tableaux and landscape shoots.

Jeff Wall

Known as both an artist and art historian Jeff Wall is a Canadian photographer and writer whose work simultaneously showcases and challenges some of the most dominant assumptions about art and art-making. Wall’s early photograph shares qualities and themes with Conceptual art as well as aspects of appropriation art of the 1970s and 1980s, by investigating the assumed, required elements of fine art and borrowing narrative and visual details from outside the established art world genres.

Wall stages the scenes he photographs, intricately designing every detail to achieve his desired visual effects. Ironically, the final images often appear to be mid-action, spontaneous and candid moments. In Wall’s earliest photographs of the late 1970s and 1980s clear references are made to some of the most famous paintings in the history of art since the Renaissance. Wall admits nodding toward the titans of early modern painting such as Delacroix and Manet.

I have chosen to look at Jeff Wall as one of my artists for the way in which he stages his photographs but also for the way in which his photographs also focus on the surroundings as well as the people inside. The landscape and parts of the island relating to the legends is something I want to try to focus on slightly so have take Jeff Wall as a photographer to see how he takes and stages photographs without any people in to still make an impact and mean, show and hint at something without the use of people. I am going on to do a photoshoot of landscapes in the places that I want to centre the stories around, unlike Jeff Wall who stages the photographs to create his photographs I am going to be taking the photographs of the landscapes as they are however I have similar intentions.

Jeff Wall’s Work:

The Destroyed Room (1978)

The Destroyed Room from 1978 is one of Wall’s first and most iconic photographs. The work consists of a large photograph printed as a cibachrome transparency within a fluorescent Lightbox. Around 5 by 8 feet in size the work is both vivid and imposing. Offering a stark and intrusive view of a seemingly ravaged space the image forces the viewer to confront the destruction of items found within the typically intimate space of a bedroom. Visually we can see clothes are spilling out of the drawers of the wooden dresser, a bed is turned on its side with its pale green mattress slashed, possessions such as clothing and accessories are strewn about the floor and large pieces of the red wall are missing, exposing the pink insulation underneath.

With this photograph Wall first began making overt references to some of the most famous examples of classical painting from the 19th century. In The Destroyed Room, the large scale oil painting titled The Death of Sardanapalus, painted by Eugene Delacroix in 1827 is the source of inspiration. The Death of Sardanapalus depicts an act of violence that occurs, Wall shows an aftermath. Wall has purposely left remnants of the staging process of the scene in the final image, making the fabrication of the room obvious.

Statement of Intent and Action Plan

For my personal investigation I plan to investigated the way that myths and legends can not only be just stories but found and incorporated into our lives and surroundings of where they are suggested to be true or really just a myth and legend. I want to look into ones that specifically surround where I live on the island or where I used to travel along, having come from a fairly superstitious family I have been told the stories before and have a lot of reference made in telling and incorporating them into stories as a child. I feel that sometimes these myths and legends or stories can be a huge part of peoples lives or the identity of a place, these stories occupy peoples lives and these places which is something I would want to explore. I plan to take the photographs and explore my ideas in a tableaux way as well as incorporating photographs showing the landscapes and places of these myths and legends, I want to incorporate these stories as if they are merging in with real life. The folklore of Jersey’s legends has become common knowledge to a lot of locals and has been built into the island (eg. statues of the devil at devils hole). I want to explore this by looking into a few of the legends in detail and exploring how I can portray this with tableaux and landscape photography.

Action Plans:

  • Devils Hole – Greve de Lecq
  • Blinding fairies – Lavoir des dames
  • Women in Black – Smugglers Inn

For my first photoshoots I plan to go out into the landscapes and see how the areas and surroundings of where these myths are suggested to be are looking and how it may effect them, I want to try and speak to some people who live around the areas for example at the Smugglers Inn pub and how they believe it or to what extent they do. I feel photographing the landscape will give me a stronger idea of a starting point for the tableaux photography and an idea of the spaces I can work with and for some outcomes will give me a sense of place and show the island in it’s natural state and compare and contrast it with the tableaux creations of maybe what the island would look like if these legends that occupy the island were real.

For my Tableaux photoshoots I plan to have people in costumes with props and other things embedded and acting in these mythical characters. I want to try and create a sense of these stories actually being true and showing them in the island. My aim is to show these myths physically occupying the island not just as they do now mentally with stories, but instead incorporating the idea and narrative of what if these stories that are told and believed to some extent true or how would they look in our everyday life now compared to when they were spread as rumours or stories that have stuck for generations being known in the island to locals and used as tools sometimes for tourism.

As another photoshoot possibility I also have a plan to take some disposable candid photographs, creating the effect of these myths being seen in real life, I would then plan to move into the studio and take object photographs of these images, suggesting a reality to the myths and stories, seeing to what extent I can push these myths to be real and believed as they occupy the island and peoples beliefs, as a sense of security or identity. To what extent do these myths and legends create an identity, culture and past of the island and its locals, creating an occupation of stories and rumours.

Personal Investigation – Mood Board

Below shows a mood board of my ideas from the starting point of Occupation vs Liberation. I have two main starting ideas, one relating to the subject of gender roles and exploring what I had previously touched on in my AS exam work however going into more depth, looking into gender roles in the media: advertising, movies and tv shows, ideas of swapping the genders in the photographs and recreating things with exaggerated stereotypes to make a statement. My second idea relates to the idea of myths and legends, looking into stories and myths of the island of Jersey. Looking into creating these photographs and making up an image of the myth in a tableaux effect, looking into how these myths could occupy all pf the island and maybe how the older generations may believe them or effect the space of the island.

Below I have some artists I would be interested into looking at and I am gaining inspiration from. These include Anna Gaskell who looked at using children stories, Jeff Wall a photographer who uses tableaux photography, Cindy Sherman and exploring gender especially the female gender and Kourtney Roy somebody who looks at the ideal female and the male gaze using her work.

Essay Questions Possibilities

Key Ideas:

Occupation of beliefs and stories – myths of the island

Anna Gaskell – Jeff Wall – Tableaux photography – Narrative and stories effecting the photography – Anna Gaskell and her work being influenced by movies and paintings – Jeff Wall and the use of staged and tableaux photography, also looking at the environment and place.

Possible Questions:

How has stories and literature influenced the work of Anna Gaskell?

Literary Sources

Text in book

Harvard System of Referencing

Bibliography:

  • David Bate (2015), Art Photography, London; Tate Publishing

Quote Inside Text: David Bate says; ‘The aim of art to produce a dissemblance, rather than a resemblance, of the world is nowhere more clearly manifest than in the dialogue between the codes of photography and the values of painting.’ (Bate 2015; 29)

Online Article

Bibliography:

Noble L. (August 8th 2013); Ryan Schude; The Photographic Journal

Youtube Interview

PICTORIALISM VS REALISM/STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

Pictorialism

Key characteristics/ conventions:
  • In 1839 photography first created in order to objectively present subjects scientifically.
  • Fixing images onto objects, highly scientific, not heavily considered as an art until pictorialism was presented. 
  • Photography was considered too easy to be considered a form of art.
  • They wanted to make photographs look like paintings and drawings to penetrate the art world, which juxtaposes original purpose for photographs.
    • Experimenting with chemicals in the dark room, and placing Vaseline on the lens.
  • Highly romantacised landscapes 
  • Allegorical painting influenced pictorialism
    • Looks at story/parable of figures in a landscape informing us of ways to live out lives – acts as a teaching for viewers. (similar subject matter)
  • Male photographer emphasised erotic aspects of images, female subjects.
  • Began staging scenes which influenced Tableuax
Associated Artists:
  • Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879)
    • Used family as subject matter in their natural environment. 
    • Imagery is dream like, symbolic, wings, long hair etc.
  • Peter Henry Emerson (1898)
    • ‘Naturalistic Photography’
  • The Vienna Camera Club (Austrian Group)
    • Hugo Henneberg
    • Heinrich Kuhn
    • Hans Watcek

Realism

Time period:
  • Emerged in 1840, and was created to showcase photography did have to be like a drawing or painting.

Key characteristics/ conventions:
  • Creating photographs which retaliate with pictorialism, and shows real life. 
  • Creating detailed, shape, images
  • Capturing the world we live in, bringing up issues within society during that time period.
  • Social Reform – Thought their images could impact and change the lives of the subject.
    • This influenced the movement of photo journalism and documentary photography
Artists associated:
  • Walker Evans (1903-1975)
    • Captures the lives of family who travelled from farm to farm due to forced labour.
      • During the Great Depression
    • Documentary of the family – first photo-book which showcases a narrative
  • Paul Strand