An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. The term is most frequently used of a genre of photography.
By photographing a person in their natural surroundings, it is thought that you will be able to better illuminate their character, and therefore portray the essence of their personality, rather than merely a likeness of their physical features. It is also thought that by photographing a person in their natural surroundings, the subject will be more at ease, and so be more conducive to expressing themselves, as opposed to in a studio, which can be a rather intimidating and artificial experience
The main use of environmental photography is to help explain a certain period in time or a certain person’s lifestyle. There are many famous photographs that were taken during the Great Depression, and these photos would definitely constitute as environmental photos. Whenever you are taking a photo that explains the environment of that period of time, you are taking an environmental photography.
Past Experience
This is my second time experimenting with environmental photography as i have done it n the past on my 2019 blog post in which were i explored Arnold Newman’s environment.
Plan
This time i’m exploring my current home environment using environmental photography, i which where i will photograph my guardians in their home doing whatever they normally do so i can capture them as naturally as possible, i wont ask them to pose for me or i might not even tell them that i’m photographing them. then i’m going to photograph my room mate doing whatever he normally would be doing.
Finishing up
After taking all the photographs i need i will make a contact sheet on light room cc to chose the best portraits that i will be using, and i will edit these best photos on light room as well until i’m happy with them, after that i will be posting them on my blog post.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the point of my whole project is to experiment with environmental photography and increase my experience in it meanwhile i will be demonstrating how the people at my current home live. On the other hand i will also be expanding my skills in editing.
Joan Tapley, a living survivor of the German occupation in Jersey came to our school to tell us her really interesting stories of how it was like for her living in Jersey during the occupation and how she and her family survived it. After that she was kind enough to let us photograph her and take portraits of her in the schools studio, so i chose the best one of these portraits and i edited it to make three different versions of it.
The Original Photograph
This is the best portrait i chose in the end as i really like Joan’s pose and face texture along with the great angle in where there’s some clear light on her left and then on the other side there’s a reflection of light, so this adds so much vibrancy and color to the photograph.
The Edits:
1)
first thing i did after choosing the photograph i want to work with is change the colors in it by adjusting everything from exposure to temperature manually until i came up with this really colorful portrait
2)
after editing the photograph i imported it to Photoshop cc where i embedded a frame behind it and binded them together to produce this really alien like color feature to the portrait and it really caught my eye so i decided to make it one of my three final edits
3)
Using one of light-rooms automatic filters i turned the original photograph into black and white, then i did some changes like raising up the contrast, after i was done editing it i embedded a frame on top of the image o make it look like an old style image.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, the purpose of this blog post is to improve my editing skills and to prove how many different forms someone can create from one photograph.
During World War II, the Crown left Jersey defenseless and the Island became occupied by German forces.Jersey War Tunnels are a product of five long years of occupation; they bore witness to the particular cruelty of the Nazi regime.Dug deep into the hillside by forced and slave workers from nations across Europe, they now contain an underground collection of thought provoking exhibits that tell the fascinating story of Jersey’s occupation from resistance, through to starvation, then eventual liberation.
The imposing, cavernous entrance tunnel will take you deep into the hillside, into a network of extraordinary tunnels unlike anything you have seen before. This vast network of underground tunnels was designed to allow the German occupying infantry to withstand Allied air raids and bombardment in the event of an invasion. In 1943, it was converted into an emergency hospital.
As the UK announced that it would not defend the Channel Islands, residents were faced with an impossible choice – to stay and face the unknown enemy or to go, leaving behind families, friends and possessions.
Daily Life
As restrictions and shortages increased, daily life for islanders became more difficult. This recreation of a Jersey home during the occupation gives an insight into the make do and mend mentality that kept residents going throughout these dark years. In the final months of occupation, Islanders became desperate. Food shortages were acute and with no knowledge of when the war would end, the Island entered its darkest times.
And while we were in the war tunnels we saw a representation of the daily rations they used to get which were barley enough for the people.
Fortress Island
Far in excess of their military significance, the Channel Islands used one twelfth of the reinforced concrete of the entire Atlantic wall. Had the Nazis deployed these resources more reasonably, they could have doubled the strength of the Atlantic wall and had a profound effect on the Allied advance.
The Unfinished Tunnel
Men toiled with picks and shovels, loading rocks into trolleys and pushing them back up to the tunnel entrance. In the semi-dark and the damp, with the constant fear of rock falls, this back-breaking work went on in 12-hour shifts. I experienced it all through an interactive audio-visual experience in the unfinished tunnel itself.
Conclusion
In conclusion, going to the Jersey war tunnels has made me connect and feel what living and working in them at that time felt like. And i’m glad we got to see all those stories of what happened in these tunnels at the time during the occupation.
the jersey archive was made to store documents and photographs from old time, and it mainly holds all aspects of the history of Jersey. And its considered the safest place to keep records and old documents as it has storage rooms made specifically for this reason.
With collections recognized by UNESCO, the Jersey Archive is the Island’s national repository holding records on all aspects of Jersey’s history. Researchers can use archive resources to trace their family history, the story of their house or street and to find out more about the German Occupation of Jersey during the Second World War. Jersey Archive also holds the collections of the Channel Islands Family History Society.
The long term preservation and security of the records in there care is there highest priority. Since the Public Records (Jersey) Law was passed in 2002 the Jersey Archive has been the official repository for all archival records produced by public institutions.
Jersey Archive does also accept records from businesses, clubs, societies and individuals. These can be donated or deposited on long term long loan whereby ownership remains with the depositor. Once cataloged, documents are carefully packed in acid free materials and stored in the correct environmental conditions.
Jersey Archive, as the official repository for the Island documentary heritage, can offer guidance, information and documents that relate to all aspects of the Island’s History
Personal Opinion
I personally enjoyed the school to the Jersey Archives as we got to see how they keep there documents safe, and we also got a closer look at there store rooms which were really interesting and how they kept there documents safe from rotting, insects etc.
In this blog post we are going to explore two artists: William Collie from the Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive, and Lewis Bush from Archisle Contemporary Programme. we are going to explore these two artists that have worked in photography in Jersey and were going to compare their work together.
About Artists:
Lewis Bush is a photographer, writer, researcher, and educator. His practice draws attention to forms of invisible power that operate in the world taking the stance that power is always problematic because its natural resting state is arbitrary and untransparent. Regardless of the intentions of the people and institutions possessing power, these are the states to which it constantly seeks to return. The Archisle Residency, now in its fifth year, brings international contemporary photographers to Jersey to create, educate and exhibit. The residency awards a bursary of £10,000 for an exhibition of new work responding to the culture of the Jersey and set of these works enter the Archisle Collection at the Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive.
William Collie was probably the first photographer to use Fox Talbot’s calotype process in Jersey and some of his previously unpublished photographs featured alongside those of Fox Talbot in an exhibition at the Musée Dorsay in Paris in 2008 of the first photographs taken on paper in Britain from 1840 to 1860. Collie was born in Scotland in 1810 and was in business in Jersey in Belmont Road and Bath Street from before 1850 until 1878. Collie was certainly taking photographs before he diversified his business into the art, but given his undoubtedly extremely important position in the early years of British photography, remarkably little is known about him, and few of his pictures are accessible online.
examples of their work:
One of the earliest photographs printed on paper. William Collie’s picture of Jersey market women taken in 1847 Lewis’s collection of photographs of towers around Jersey island
Conclusion
In conclusion we can see how the two photographers that worked in the same place which was Jersey are completely different and have a really different taste in photography, while Collie is photographing more towards the darker and older photographs of people mostly, Lewis photographs newer kinds of images of old or historical things.
For my zine i’m planning to take many photographs around Jersey of anything that has to do with the occupation of Jersey and focus on photographs with a lot of sky in the background.
Then i’m going to add a camouflage background instead of the sky part.
After that i’m going to adjust the color level of the end results and create a purplish effect in the end.
I was inspired to make this idea by mistake as i was just trying editing and effects and came up with this idea on one of my photographs and it was really eye catching so i decided to continue with this idea to create my zine.
The first thing i wanted to do before i created my zine was to research an artist that caught my eye with their work, so i wondered about my photography class looking at the zine previews that are found there and the artist Sky Ayling Phillip caught my eye with one of her work which was a zine called “Paper”
Now unfortunately i tried to find Sky on the internet in order to research them but i didn’t find them
What i liked about Sky’s work is how they used a flower wall paper-like background in each of her photographs and cropped out some objects like window, doors, etc. in order to show the wall paper in the background only behind some parts in the zine
This is one of her work found in her zine called Paper, this piece of art as you can see contains a missing person that Sky cut out of the image to make the background wall paper visible, which adds a lot of color and meaning to the photograph and the mixture of the black and white background in addition to the colored flower wallpaper really exposes and makes the wall paper piece stand out and catch is the eye of the viewer.
Other pieces of her work:
i took some photographs of her zine “Paper” using a camera with manual focus and chose the best two photographs
Conclusion
In conclusion, Sky’s work inspired me with a lot of ideas for my zine and i just wanted to give her credit by writing this blog post about her work.
Archives are used to store peoples memories and preserve them so that the past is not forgotten. Archival organisations preserve archives and pieces of history for the public to use and look at the past.Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization’s lifetime, and are kept to show the function of that person or organization. And also its a place where people can go to gather firsthand facts, data, and evidence from letters, reports, notes, memos, photographs, and other primary sources. they also keep records of many forms including correspondence, diaries , financial and legal documents, photographs and film. Most state governments, schools, businesses, libraries, and historical societies maintain archives. people also use archives in their everyday lives to create and store information about their personal and business activities and archivists identify and preserve these documents if they are of lasting value. In reality photographs are not objective and they are highly influenced by the perspective of the photographer so it makes people sometimes question whether the photograph is true or not? while the real question should be what does a specific photograph do? Because it can effectively represent an interaction with human memory and culture even if it contains biases or misrepresentation.
Due to Jersey being located between England and France it has a broad and rich photographic history. The local Societe Jersiaise photographic archive alone includes over 80,000 historical images dating back to mid 1900s.
Data archiving is the process of moving data that is no longer actively used to a separate storage device for long-term retention. Archive data consists of older data that remains important to the organization or must be retained for future reference or regulatory compliance reasons.
Archives are made also for normal people with access to phones or media to store day to day memories like photos or videos so these will never be forgotten, also theyre used for advertising, news, documentary, fine art, identity and anthropology. And one of their biggest abilities is providing visual history, knowledge and power.
To help me explore archives i asked my own parents to look up old photographs, documentaries or anything that can make up an archive of my past. My grandmother told me that she keeps an archive of my life in Jersey and it was a folder containing everything from my first ever vehicle to photographs of my travels around the island. I liked the archive because in years to come i can look back at the archive and remember how i used to live. And this is why archives interest me. The only problem with these kinds of archives is that they can be damaged or lost because it is just a folder with paper after all. So that’s where virtual archives come in handy as an online archive cannot be lost s easily except if of course you forget the password for some reason…or the data itself is held by an unco-operative body.
So there is no specific answer to whose archive is it as for example i am the creator of this blog post so to me i think this archive with the images in them belong to me but in the same time all my blog posts are under the control of a “gatekeeper” which is the company or source that runs the website so they might consider my blog posts as theirs so their is no real answer to the question in the end.
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. The Bailiwick of Jersey and Bailiwick of Guernseyare two British Crown dependencies in the English Channel, near the coast of Normandy. The Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by the Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces) during the war.
Anticipating a swift victory over Britain, the occupiers experimented by using a very gentle approach that set the theme for the next five years. The island authorities adopted a similar attitude, giving rise to accusations of collaboration. However, as time progressed the situation grew gradually worse, ending in near starvation for both occupied and occupiers during the winter of 1944–45.
Before the Occupation
Between 3 September 1939, when the United Kingdom declared war against Germany, and 9 May 1940, little changed in the Channel Islands. Conscription did not exist, but a number of people traveled to Britain to join up as volunteers. The horticulture and tourist trades continued as normal; the British government relaxed restrictions on travel between the UK and the Channel Islands in March 1940, enabling tourists from the UK to take morale-boosting holidays in traditional island resorts.[1] On 10 May 1940, Germany attacked the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg by air and land and the war stepped closer. The Battle of France was reaching its climax on Empire Day, 24 May, when King George VI addressed his subjects by radio, saying, “The decisive struggle is now upon us … Let no one be mistaken; it is not mere territorial conquest that our enemies are seeking. It is the overthrow, complete and final, of this Empire and of everything for which it stands, and after that the conquest of the world. And if their will prevails they will bring to its accomplishment all the hatred and cruelty which they have already displayed.
Evacuation
The realization of the necessity of civilian evacuation from the Channel Islands came very late. With no planning and secrecy being maintained, communications between the island governments and the UK took place in an atmosphere of confusion and misinterpretation. Opinion was divided and chaos ensued with different policies adopted by the different islands. The British government concluded its best policy was to make available as many ships as possible so that islanders had the option to leave if they wanted to.
Emergency Government
The British Home Office instructed the Lieutenant Governors that in the eventuality of the recall of the representatives of the Crown, the Bailiffs should take over their responsibilities, and that the Bailiffs and Crown Officers should remain at their posts. The Lieutenant Governor of Jersey discussed with the Bailiff of Jersey the matter of being required to carry on administration under German orders. The Bailiff considered that this would be contrary to his oath of allegiance, but he was instructed otherwise
Invasion
The Germans did not realise that the islands had been demilitarised (news of the demilitarisation had been suppressed until 30 June 1940),[ and they approached them with caution. Reconnaissance flights were inconclusive. On 28 June 1940, they sent a squadron of bombers over the islands and bombed the harbours of Guernsey and Jersey. In St. Peter Port, the main town of Guernsey, some lorries lined up to load tomatoes for export to England were mistaken by the reconnaissance flights for troop carriers. A similar attack occurred in Jersey where nine died. In total, 44 islanders were killed in the raids. The BBC broadcast a belated message that the islands had been declared “open towns” and later in the day reported the German bombing of the island.
Occupation
The German forces quickly consolidated their positions. They brought in infantry, established communications and anti-aircraft defenses, established an air service with occupied mainland France, and rounded up British servicemen on leave. and the Germans occupied the island of Jersey for 5 years
Liberation
Liberation of the German-occupied Channel Islands Plaque in the Royal Square, St Helier: On 8 May 1945 from the balcony above Alexander Moncrieff Coutanche, Bailiff of Jersey, announced that the island was to be liberated after five years of German military occupation. On 10 May 1985, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent unveiled this plaque to commemorate the Liberation.Although plans had been drawn up and proposed in 1943 by Vice Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten for Operation Constellation, a military reconquest of the islands, these plans were never carried out. The Channel Islands were liberated after the German surrender.On 8 May 1945 at 10:00 the islanders were informed by the German authorities that the war was over. Churchill made a radio broadcast at 15:00 during which he announced that Hostilities will end officially at one minute after midnight tonight, but in the interests of saving lives the “Cease fire” began yesterday to be sounded all along the front, and our dear Channel Islands are also to be freed today.
HMS Beagle, which had set out at the same time from Plymouth, performed a similar role in liberating Jersey. Two naval officers, Surgeon Lieutenant Ronald McDonald and Sub Lieutenant R. Milne, were met by the harbor master who escorted them to his office where they hoisted the Union Flag, before also raising it on the flagstaff of the Pomme D’Or Hotel. It appears that the first place liberated in Jersey may have been the British General Post Office Jersey repeater station. Mr Warder, a GPO lineman, had been stranded in the island during the occupation. He did not wait for the island to be liberated and went to the repeater station where he informed the German officer in charge that he was taking over the building on behalf of the British Post Office.
Sark was liberated on 10 May 1945, and the German troops in Alderney surrendered on 16 May 1945. The German prisoners of war were removed from Alderney by 20 May 1945, and its population started to return in December 1945, after clearing up had been carried out by German troops under British military supervision.[c
Aftermath
10 May 1945: The restoration of British administration is proclaimed
The main Liberation forces arrived in the islands on 12 May 1945. A Royal Proclamation read out by Brigadier Alfred Snow in both Guernsey and Jersey vested the authority of military government in him. The British Government had planned for the relief and restoration of order in the islands. Food, clothing, pots, pans and household necessities had been stockpiled so as to supply islanders immediately. It was decided that to minimize financial disruption Reichsmarks would continue in circulation until they could be exchanged for sterling.
