Still life is a form of art depicting any arrangement of inanimate objects, often using various commodities such as food. The style has its roots in Greco-roman art however was truly pioneered by a group of Dutch artists during the 16th century. Their artwork served as a form of rebellion against the conservative themes of art (most of the art of the renaissance featured strong religious undertones) by displaying themes of opulence and debauchery. Despite this history, still life currently occupies the lowest rung on the ‘hierarchy of genres’ however its success with consumers has allowed it to stay relevant in modern art.

Still life is an umbrella category covering several sub-genres; The earliest form of true still life painting is the early renaissance paintings, these typically depicting harvests or flowers as a symbol of wealth.

Vanitas was a form of still life created to display the futile struggle of mankind against time. The work often feature numerous symbols showing the effects of time as well as death and decay. These symbols range from more obvious symbols such as the use of clocks and various animal skulls to more subtle symbolism such as the use of lilies to represent death. Where traditional works of still life aimed to display the opulence and achievement of man, vanitas undermined this by displaying that this possessions are meaningless as time would inevitably claim them in the end.

Robert Adams is an american based photographer who worked primarily during the 70’s. His photography has earned him several rewards including 2 Guggenheim fellowships, a MacArthur fellowship and a Hasselblad award. Robert lived in Denver Colorado for the majority of his life and as such attended the university of Boulder Colorado. Between 1964 and 2009 Robert began shooting photos under the collection known as ‘The place we live’ showing the evolving landscape and social climate of the place that Robert Adams called home for the majority of his life. A lot of Roberts work features a documentary style of photography however some of the images do have more of an artistic styling to them. Most of the images are shot using quite harsh lighting presumably on film. The source of lighting varies between images however more use natural sunlight. there are however quite a few examples of night-time shots using various forms of artificial lighting.

The lighting used in this is a harsh natural light likely taken around mid day due to the intensity of the shadows as well as their direction. Since the image is in black and white there is no discernible color temperature nor tint. The image is quite high contrast with no visible light source in frame or glare. The aperture appears to be quite small as the whole frame is in focus. High speed film was likely used due to the harsh natural lighting visible in frame however the aperture appears to be small and that might’ve required compensation to be correctly exposed. since a lot of his shots are of various buildings and american architecture often prioritizes speed and cost of materials resulting in rather geometric shapes of buildings, the images often feature strong geometric elements often consisting of rectangles. There are some patterns created in the image consisting of various tiling or masonry elements in the buildings. Although a lot of the images aren’t necessarily of homes they are still of his hometown.

Most of his daylight shots were taken very similarly to this image in terms of technical elements.

His night-time shots differ from his daylight shots in that they often feature a visible light source and sometimes utilize glare within the image.

As Bob stated during the interview, they were aware that the liberation day was coming however they were unaware when. In order to keep up morale for while awaiting their liberation, they occasionally held parties using home made alcohol, usually to celebrate the end of availability to a particular resource such as gas or electricity. According to Bob there were many Russian and Polish harbored by locals, the locals would forge an identification card for the refugee and apply for a ration book. this would allow the refugee to eat without cutting into the local’s food supplies.

An example of one of these parties was the night that the gas supply was to be shut off. “Guests that haven’t properly eaten in a year, give them rabbit and calvados” calvados being a form of apple or pear brandy. The house at which this party was being hosted also happened to be harboring a Russian refugee who happened upon the calvados before the party was due to start. While he was locally believed to be Polish by the other jersey residents, his behavior that night showed off his true heritage as his songs and dance could be heard down the street. There was an incident during this time when a group of German soldiers could be seen walking down the street which resulted in the Russian being pinned down with a dish cloth in his mouth. Thankfully the Germans were chanting there own songs and thus were distracted from the racket.

Due to their use of crystal radio sets as well as the German section of the newspaper, they were aware of essential events to the war such as the fact that Berlin had fallen. Bob spoke of the Germans that had told locals that Hitler had died, although the news had perpetuated the lie that Hitler had died defending Berlin in spite of his less glamorous reality. Hitler had appointed a naval commander who hastily made an appointment to negotiate an armistice on may 7th, and on the 8th Europe was liberated followed by Jersey’s liberation the next day. The surrender of the channel islands was signed on a British destroyer off the coast of Jersey.

Zine Composition – It is important to have some type of link between the images in a zine in order to form a coherent piece of work, this can be done even by putting similar images on each 2 page spread or by keeping some form of link be it thematic or in the style of photography across the entire zine. This not only helps the images to belong to the zine, it also allows the images to flow throughout the zine.

Juxtaposition can also be put to good use as this can also create a link through the images. This is most commonly done using color however can also be done by simply changing the feel of the images (such as using a smaller aperture next to a large aperture image in order to contrast the amount of depth of field) however juxtaposing the themes of the images can also be done to great effect.

The title and cover of the zine is arguably one of the most important elements of the zine and allows for a great degree of freedom in order to attract a viewer.

Other techniques such as typography and graphics can be used in a zine for a visual effect or for the sake of pacing.