MOUNTING LAYOUT IDEAS FOR FINAL OCCUPATION AND PERSONAL STUDY IMAGES:
Here are some proposals for ways in which I could exhibit and present my final images:
EVALUATION:
To evaluate my occupation project overall I believe it was a success and that I have been able to produce strong imagery and responses to tasks along with detailed image analysis’s that have explored the technical, contextual and conceptual elements of those images. I believe my strongest work in the occupation project was the bunker photography. This is because I found it the most interesting and therefore was able to give a lot more thought into it and produce some high quality images such as the ones portrayed alongside my still-life images that are mounted up in my portfolio folder. These images I feel could have been improved further by having carried out a second photoshoot on the bunkers or others similar, that I could’ve experimented on and captured further images which would have had been a lot more revised and contained a greater attention to detail and complexity. Having said this I still believe my work in this area was very strong and inputs significantly into the overall outcomes of the project.
To evaluate my personal study, overall I believe that it was highly successful in what I was trying to capture and the message I was trying to portray along with that. I believe the quality of my images was kept to a consistently high level and that all my shoots were methodical, and well carried out. I believe a finished photo-book was the best way to present the final outcomes, due to the large amount of sequencing involved and pairing between some of the images alongside the appropriately fitted and relevant quotes from the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street”. One way I could have improved this project was by creating a plan to and photographing objects that my subject “Max” posseses which relate to the theme of extravagance and wealth and the contradiction this has to the stereotypical polish immigrant workers here in Jersey. This alongside the already captured images may have just added some further depth and detail to the overall portfolio and made my work slightly more interesting. Again, having said this I believe overall the the project was a significant success and had captured all of my aims and intentions in the final outcomes.
Essay Question: How and why does Lauren Greenfield explore class, status, wealth and extravagance?
Introduction and context:
My area of study is an exploration of class, status, wealth and extravagance. I am exposed to varying levels of wealth accumulation living in a small island that is a tax haven, is neither part of the EU or of the United Kingdom and where there are both obvious signs of poverty and more commonly, wealth here in obvious abundance. Jersey attracts High Net Worth individuals from around the globe, and the banks here hold enormous reserves. We are influenced by this in our daily lives and both capitalism and consumerism are over-powering aspects of life in Jersey. There is often a clash between “old money” with class, education, status and influence…and “new money” with brashness, ambition and aspiration.
Jersey employs many polish, migrant workers some whom are highly skilled in other areas but are in fact working in unskilled jobs with limited rights, housing and care packages. In an island that was once occupied by Nazi forces that employed slave imported labour during World War 2 these present-day workers may feel oppressed by their employers. But Poland has a resurgent economy itself, one built largely on agriculture and so it seems ironic that Polish migrant workers are still drawn to this place.
Artist credit below to: Alicja Rogalska Written text credit to: The morning boat
An exception to this is my friend Max. He is from an affluent Polish background and feels very much “liberated”. He has grown up in very comfortable surroundings, and will no doubt become a part of his family’s growing business empire. There may be power struggles looking, and expectations, pressures and demands on his time, ambitions and way of life .I wanted to capture how Max behaves and be able compare his life to mine, but also to how this is in contrast to many migrant workers from the same part of the world.
Documentary photography, that stems from realism, can reveal and exploit stereotypes quite easily. It can be difficult to have a neutral gaze and observe without prejudice…and for this assignment I sometimes feel that I am an insider looking inwards, but at other times an outsider looking in too.
Lauren Greenfield is a renowned photographer who works in the field of photographing those of privileged backgrounds and who hold high amounts of wealth and/or fame. She is a strong benchmark of which I will be using to explore and aim to produce similar work to, following her grand theme of exploring ideas of wealth and affluence. I will respond to her work by aiming to photograph my friend Max who is of similar background to those Lauren photographs, looking to capture him in moments that demonstrate a lavish/luxury lifestyle in comparison to the average person and compare my images to Lauren’s work and to work created in a local exhibition around the below average lifestyle of migrant workers at the other end of the spectrum who have come to the island to work and are in essence still under a feeling of occupation.
Historical/ theoretical context within art, photography and visual culture relevant to your area of study:
The context of which my work operates in comes along the lines of documentary, realism photography. The term ‘Realism’ can mean to depict things as they are without idealising or making abstract. It is a 19th century art movement, particularly strong in France, which rebelled against traditional historical, mythological and religious subjects and instead depicted scenes from life. Photography grew up with claims of having such a special relationship to reality, and its premise, that the camera’s ability to record objectively the actual world as it appears in front of the lens was unquestioned.
This supposed veracity of the photographic image has been challenged by critics as the photographer’s subjectivity (how he or she sees the world and chooses to photograph it) and the implosion of digital technology challenges this notion opening up many new possibilities for both interpretation and manipulation. A belief in the trustworthiness of the photograph is also fostered by the news media who rely on photographs to show the truth of what took place.
However, for the most part it can be said that in photography, realism is not so much as style, but rather one of its fundamental qualities. From its beginnings in the 1830s and 40s, photographers and viewers of photography marvelled at photography’s ability to capture an imprint of nature. The fathers of photography, Louis-Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) and William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), both described it as a medium that allows nature to represent itself, seemingly without the intervention of the artist. Photography’s capacity to depict people, objects and places realistically made it suitable for trying to record and document individual likenesses, scientific discoveries and foreign places – concerns that were of particular interest for 19th-century Europeans. From the early 20th century, photographs were regularly published in newspapers as part of the representation of local and national events.
Realism in photography can be seen as a pre-cursor to documentary approaches to photography and can have many subcategories that come under its general umbrella, one of which relates to my project very well which is Social Reform Photography. The rural poor or the urban environment were not subjects for Pictorial photographers. But when a Danish immigrant, Jacob Riis published his book, How the Other Half Lives’ about the slums of Manhattan a new kind of realism was born with a socialist dimension. A number of photographers such as Lewis W Hine and Dorothea Lange began to document the effects of industrialization and urbanization on working-class Americans. Their work brought the need for housing and labour reform to the attention of legislators and the public and became the origins of what we now call photojournalism. This shows direct ties between my work and this category of realism photography due to the nature of capturing people from a certain background (albeit the other end of the spectrum to the subjects described above), and the day to day encounters these people come across which give insight into the events happening in their life and how their differ from one’s self.
Key Realism Images:
Tish Murtha,Youth Unemploymentseries, 1981
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen and Tish Murtha are both celebrated photographers known for their individual documentation of the lives of communities within the North East of England.Konttinen, who originated from Finland, studied photography in London in the 1960s, moving to Newcastle Upon Tyne in 1969. There she co-founded Amber Films, a film and photography collective with an aim to reflect local lives with both respect and gritty realism. Konttinen herself spent seven years photographing her neighbours in the working-class East End of the city in which she lived, which culminated in her book Byker. The series captured a community on the brink of dispersal and drastic change, as many of the houses were about to be demolished making way for new housing developments. Her work is a window into a 1970’s life which was shared by many communities across the land during an era of great social change.
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen,Byker,Young woman in Mason Street,1971
Unlike Konttinen, Murtha was raised in a Newcastle council house and aimed to reflect the community on her own doorstep. Born into a large family of Irish descent, in the impoverished West End of the city, her 1980s work captured an era incorporating the bleak effects of Thatcher’s Britain on northern communities. One of the photographer’s first exhibitions was called Youth Unemployment (1981), a series which was even used as a source of debate in the House of Commons. While often preserving a sense of both warmth and humanity, Murtha continued to use her photography to raise many social and political concerns for her hometown, as well as for the country as a whole.
Artist Study:
Lauren Greenfield Is an American artist, documentary photographer, and documentary filmmaker. She has published four photographic monographs, directed four documentary features, produced four traveling exhibitions, and published in magazines throughout the world.
She is extremely well renowned predominantly for exploring class, status, wealth and extravagance within her own work, primarily through documentary photography.
Generation Wealth:
Her main body of work surrounding this field is named “generation wealth”. This project is multi-platform and had been worked on from 2007 to 2017 through first-person interviews, with Greenfield starting in Los Angeles and spreading across America and beyond. It was based around the visual history of our growing obsession with wealth and it demonstrates a revelatory cultural documentation of wealth for viewers to explore, looking into depth at and documenting how we export the values of materialism, celebrity culture, and social status to every corner of the globe. Greenfield also uses this project to put across this modernised attitude people have acquired of wanting to get rich at all costs which has boomed in recent years. Such as the stories within this project like those of some of the students, single parents and families interviewed, who are overwhelmed with debt, yet determined to purchase luxury houses, cars, clothing and holidays. Some of Lauren’s most popular and influential work that relate very well to the area that I am studying within documentary photography are as seen below in her projects named, “Fast Forward” and the more popular of the two, “Generation Wealth.”This visual history of the growing obsession with wealth uses first-person interviews in Los Angeles, Moscow, Dubai, China and around the world to bear witness to the global boom-and-bust economy, and to document its complicated consequences including materialism and the desire to be wealthy at any cost.
The Los Angeles children encountered early in the book have become defined by the search for status through material acquisition. They buy multi-thousand-dollar handbags to take to class. Other kids in their grade are given BMWs when they turn sixteen. They compete over whose family can afford the best designer clothes, the most elaborate bar mitzvahs, the biggest houses. A 12-year-old whose working-class mother is bankrupting herself to finance the girl’s love of Ed Hardy designer tank tops is interviewed at one point. She explains how she knows she is putting great financial strain on her mom, and says she sort of feels bad about it, but explains: “I want the world; I want designer clothes, I want eternal happiness, the fountain of youth. I want to be able to afford ritzy private schools. I want the best of everything. Money is most definitely important for everything on my list of what I want.”
Fast Forward (Growing up in the shadow of Hollywood):
“Fast Forward” is a powerful look at Los Angeles youth culture and its influence on the rest of our society. From the affluent children of the Westside to the graffiti gangs and party crews of East LA, young Angelenos reckon with an overwhelming barrage of advertising and entertainment images emphasizing money, possessions, and eternal youth. This collection of 79 colour photographs, accompanied by interviews with the children and their parents, reveals the realities of growing up fast in a culture that is at once irresistible and unforgiving. A compelling precursor to Greenfield’s widely praised “Girl Culture,” “Fast Forward” is a telling document of the direction in which today’s ultra-image-conscious culture is pointed. It also documents the experience of growing up in Los Angeles, and the ways children are influenced by the values of Hollywood. The quest for “fame,” the preoccupation with trends, the culture of materialism, and the obsession with image that characterizes Hollywood is reflected in the everyday lives and rituals of L.A. youth. A recurring theme in the project is the fleeting quality of youth. As one teenager says, “You grow up really fast when you grow up here. L.A. is so fast-moving, and kids really mature at a young age. Everyone is in a rush to be old, to be going to the clubs, going out… It’s not cool to be a kid.”
Image: Mijanou and friends from Beverly Hills High School spending their Senior Beach Day at Will Rogers State Beach in Los Angles. Mijanou won the title of “best physique” at Beverly Hills High.
The photo that really launched Lauren’s career was called Mijanou and friends from Beverly Hills High School on Senior Beach Day. A picture taken in 1993 in Santa Monica, California, as part of this project. Greenfield came to make this picture circuitously through an internship at National Geographic, which was the professional experience to which Lauren’s career is also indebted. In the process of making this photograph and the project for which it became the iconic image, Greenfield explains how she found her voice as a photographer. The photograph of Mijanou ended up being the cover of the book and was published and exhibited internationally. Mijanou wasn’t rich, but she lived in a world where her friends were. She explained to Greenfield about the pressures of her world and how it was hard when you could not keep up, but she also recognized that her beauty allowed her entrée into the popular clique.
Conclusion:
Comparison to Invisible Hands:
Having compared my work to the Invisible Hands exhibition project and the resulting effect (that exposed an insight into living conditions for many Polish immigrants) a number of things can clearly be seen. However, one main idea jumps out for me which is that Max, the subject in all of the photographs can be seen in a sense as a successful migrant who is very much ‘liberated’. He is a product and an extension of a well-educated and newly successful Polish economy but stands out as an exception in Jersey amongst his fellow countrymen.
With this imagery of nice cars, expensive clothing and luxury holidays travelling to exotic locations Max fits in more naturally with the expectation of the stereotypical wealthy Jersey banker / investor / businessman.
This therefore creates a strong juxtaposition to how the migrant workers are living and means that because they are tied down to this life of manual, hard, outdoor labour. They can be seen as people who are still ‘occupied’ and are not free due to their living and working lives/conditions, which for the most part is not due to their choice and would be very hard for them to leave and/or change.
My strongest image analysis: Max and his father. Bali, December 2019.
This image could be called in some ways a fluke. It was not anticipated and by no means planned, which also adds to a rather natural, deeper, underlying context people may like to think about when viewing this image.It was captured after Max had asked me to compare the height of him and his father back to back in a photo to show who was taller.
Although it being a seemingly innocent and mundane request, it got me thinking about this idea of Max wanting to know who is taller for a reason. It gave an impression of this desire of his to, in a way, fill his father’s shoes and/or follow in his father’s footsteps. As if he was trying to size up how far he had to go before he would be able to become this man he’s looked up to and been in the wake of his whole life, following in his footsteps until one day, filling them.
Overall throughout this project, having followed the theme of documentary photography, it can leave questions challenging the truth or reality of what is being observed and sometime even the honesty behind it. For example, when a piece of documentary photography is carried out, it is following guidelines of what the photographer “sees” and how they have interpreted what they are studying over a prolonged length of time.
Representation becomes an issue at this point, and the integrity of the photographer can come into question. Both Lauren Greenfield and I have garnered the trust of our subjects and built up a level of trust. This means that there is a responsibility to show the subject in a fair way, without prejudice and hopefully with neutrality. In a sense, we have both acted as insiders looking in, but we could argue that we are outsiders looking in too. A connection, emotional or otherwise, with the subject will often open opportunities…but in turn create a new set of challenges. A sympathetic and sensitive view is always required.
This, without doubt varies between any different person due to human nature and can allow for people to come up with different approaches to the same task and give different perspectives that may shed a particular person, place or ‘thing’ in a different light. This means that due to the variation in and amongst documentary photography, it could be a possibility that biases can be introduced into documentary photography, just the same as they could be implemented into other photography genres such as for example, portraiture.
Therefore, allowing for documentary photographers to be able to create imagery or manipulate imagery in ways that create opinions by viewers in favour of what it is the photographer wants them to see. This can also mean that documentary photographer can tell you a lot about the photographer themselves due to their work being a reflection of what they choose to read or pick out as important from a person, place or situation.
“Fast Forward” is a powerful look at Los Angeles youth culture and its influence on the rest of our society. From the affluent children of the Westside to the graffiti gangs and party crews of East LA, young Angelenos reckon with an overwhelming barrage of advertising and entertainment images emphasizing money, possessions, and eternal youth. This collection of 79 color photographs, accompanied by interviews with the children and their parents, reveals the realities of growing up fast in a culture that is at once irresistible and unforgiving. A compelling precursor to Greenfield’s widely praised “Girl Culture,” “Fast Forward” is a telling document of the direction in which today’s ultra image-conscious culture is pointed.
It also documents the experience of growing up in Los Angeles, and the ways children are influenced by the values of Hollywood. The quest for “fame,” the preoccupation with trends, the culture of materialism, and the obsession with image that characterizes Hollywood is reflected in the everyday lives and rituals of L.A. youth. A recurring theme in the project is the fleeting quality of youth. As one teenager says, “You grow up really fast when you grow up here. L.A. is so fast-moving, and kids really mature at a young age. Everyone is in a rush to be old, to be going to the clubs, going out… It’s not cool to be a kid.”
Who?
The photographer who created this book is Lauren Greenfield, an american artist, documentary photographer and documentary film maker, who has published four photographic monographs, directed four documentary features, produced four travelling exhibitions, and published in magazines throughout the world.
Lauren made this book as a result of her being interested into how kids in Los Angles seem to grow up quicker under the influence of Hollywood, and how they are affected by the culture of materialism and the cult of image.
Single Image Analysis:
Mijanou and friends from Beverly Hills High School spending their Senior Beach Day at Will Rogers State Beach in Los Angles. Mijanou won the title of “best phisique” at Beverly Hills High.
The photo that really launched Lauren’s career was called Mijanou and friends from Beverly Hills High School on Senior Beach Day. A picture taken in 1993 in Santa Monica, California, as part of her project Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood.
Greenfield came to make this picture circuitously through an internship at National Geographic, which was the professional experience to which Lauren’s career is also indebted. In the process of making this photograph and the project for which it became the iconic image, Greenfield explains how she found her voice as a photographer.
The photograph of Mijanou ended up being the cover of the book and was published and exhibited internationally. Mijanou wasn’t rich, but she lived in a world where her friends were. She explained to Greenfield about the pressures of her world and how it was hard when you could not keep up, but she also recognized that her beauty allowed her entrée into the popular clique.
3. Deconstruct the narrative, concept and design of the book such as:
Book in hand: how does it feel? Smell, sniff the paper.
In hand the book feel rigid, it smells like plain plastic with no real scent to it other than that other than plastic and plain card/paper.
Paper and ink: use of different paper/ textures/ colour or B&W or both.
The books opens with a card page and then is followed by glossy plastic pages with the images and text on until the final page. which is again, card.
Format, size and orientation: portraiture/ landscape/ square/ A5, A4, A3 / number of pages.
The book is landscape and is around an A4 size however is not exactly A4 and is probably a custom size. There area 127 pages.
The book is a hard cover with a dust jacket and uses saddle stitching.
Title: literal or poetic / relevant or intriguing.
The title is very direct about what the project Is focusing on, it dictates exactly what the projects main theme Is without giving too much away. The choice to have ‘Fast Forward’ in large text is a smart idea because it makes the book seem more youthful and erratic, similar to life lives of the teenagers she isn’t photographing which is one of the main themes Greenfield is exploring in the book.
Narrative: what is the story/ subject-matter. How is it told?
The story is as described above about how Greenfield documents the life of teenagers growing up in Hollywood and how its faster and more full-on than other areas of the world. Therefore Lauren presents quite a fast paced approach to looking into all of the youths she is studying, quickly moving from one to another in order to keep up this fast paced theme.
Design and layout: image size on pages/ single page, double-spread/ images/ grid, fold- outs/ inserts.
Most of the images follow the theme of 1 page, 1 image, however throughout the book there are interludes where text is positioned on the side of a page and an image will take up about 2/3 of a double page spread. The normal image size would take up most of the page, leaving a small border around the edges which is usually white. There are no grids, fold outs or inserts.
Editing and sequencing: selection of images/ juxtaposition of photographs/ editing process.
The sequencing of images follows quite a logical pattern of putting images created in the same shoots or trying to present the same principles together on single pages one after another with slight variations here and there.
Images and text: are they linked? Introduction/ essay/ statement by artists or others. Use of captions (if any.)
The book has a preface written by the photographer Lauren Greenfield and a quote next to an image on the 11th page before the main part of the book begins. Then throughout the book for the majority of images there are small bits of text either dictating the event, situation, people and ages. Then as she pics out singular images to talk about she uses 1/3 of a double page spread to write text and the other 2/3 for the image.
My book specification is going to follow along the lines of a story about my subject – Max my Polish friend – and in a nutshell, about the life he lives. The narrative behind it will be following him along on his ventures through everyday life and how this differs from the stereotype of polish immigrants in Jersey. The sequencing will be a photo on each page, with each double page spread having two similarly linked images of Max going about his life.
Narrative: What is your story?
Describe it in:
3 Words: Luxury, Travel, Affluence
A sentence: About my friend Max and how his affluence affects his life journey.
A paragraph: The story of this book is to explore multiple avenues in which my affluent migrant friend Max can be viewed as out of the ordinary and contrary to the stereotype most people have about his polish nationality and what he should be acting like and doing.
Design:
I want my book to look fairly minimalistic and effective. So that is easy to interpret and the images are distinct in showing what I want them too. I want it to feel smooth and solid so that it is versatile and gives off a professional, well put together feeling to those who read it.
Paper and ink: I have chosen for the paper colour to be black because this gives the book a more finished feeling than just leaving it as the plain white page colour. It also allows for the images to stand out due to the contrast in the bright image colours to the black surrounding. It also means that the book isn as harsh on the eyes as white may be, meaning it is nicer to read. The paper type is Standard 80.
The ink colour I have therefore chosen the text in the book to be is white. I have chosen this because this colour contrasts the black background directly and stands out more than any other colour would whilst also looking aesthetically pleasing.
Format, size and orientation: I have chosen my book to consist of a standard portrait 8 by 10 inches format.
Binding and cover: My book will be a hardcover with and image wrap around it. The image will be from one of the photoshoot I have carried out and will not be included within the book due to it being on the covers. The reason I chose the image I have done to wrap around the covers is because it fits the black and white aesthetics of inside the book whilst also showing a detailed, close-up and personal image of the main subject that is being viewed. It also gives viewers the opportunity to come up with ideas or pre-existing concepts before they read the book after looking at the picture of the subjects face and the facial expression they are showing.
Design and layout: The design and layout of my book was all done spur of the moment due to the fact that I thought it would be best to experiment with different image layouts and page designs whilst creating my book in order to really find out which ones were most effective rather than plan it ahead and find out it does not look as good after having invested time and effort working on it.
Editing and sequencing: All images have been enhanced through light-room to emphasise things such as colour contrast, the main focus of the image and in some images the actual make up of them and what they contain (by this I mean methods of cropping in order to remove unwanted distractions or areas that would not look right or effective in the final image presentation.
Some examples of editing I have done are visible below:
Image 1: In this fist image, to enhance it I have altered a couple of things. One of those things is the colour contrast. I have altered this because it brings out the darker colours in the subject and his clothing which makes him stand out a lot more from the background blue and browns which gives him a more prominent and powerful nature. I have also increased the texture to add more detail to the subject and scenery behind due to its abnormal and abstract nature which is visually interesting. I have also increased clarity and cropped the sides slightly to focus the viewer on the main subject more.Image 2: To start off with in image two I turned it to black and white colours to bring the viewers attention away from the colour differences and into the minor detail in the face and the different characteristics all the minor details bring to a person. Hence why I also turned up the grain and contrast to give really definitive lines and shapes.Image 3: Here in image 3 I have again altered image settings such as texture and clarity to bring out the scenery and colour in this image. I have reduced the noise completely to smoothen any grain to help follow the background setting in the ocean which is very smooth looking in this image. The contrast in this image is also turned up to a fairly high level, again to Gove the image more depth and exaggerate the colour differences even more. This image was a lot about the visually pleasing aesthetics which relate to the actions the subject is carryout out for fun which to many are unusual and diverse.
Images and text: The text I have added into my book is in the form of quotes from the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street”. These fit very well alongside the images I have taken due to relation the movie has with extravagance and wealth and the how those directly link to the life that my subject is living and that im trying to portray.
The main photographer i will be studying is Lauren Greenfield.
Lauren Greenfield Is an American artist, documentary photographer, and documentary filmmaker. She has published four photographic monographs, directed four documentary features, produced four traveling exhibitions, and published in magazines throughout the world.
She is extremely well renowned predominantly for exploring class, status, wealth and extravagance within her own work, primarily through documentary photography.
Some of her main work pieces are as follows:
Generation Wealth:
Her main body of work surrounding this field is named “generation wealth”. This project is multi-platform and had been worked on from 2007 to 2017 through first-person interviews, with Greenfield starting in Los Angeles and spreading across America and beyond. It was based around the visual history of our growing obsession with wealth and it demonstrates a revelatory cultural documentation of wealth for viewers to explore, looking into depth at and documenting how we export the values of materialism, celebrity culture, and social status to every corner of the globe. Greenfield also uses this project to put across this modernised attitude people have acquired of wanting to get rich at all costs which has boomed in recent years. Such as the stories within this project like those of some of the students, single parents and families interviewed, who are overwhelmed with debt, yet determined to purchase luxury houses, cars, clothing and holidays. Some of Lauren’s most popular and influential work that relate very well to the area that I am studying within documentary photography are as seen below in her projects named, “Fast Forward” and the more popular of the two, “Generation Wealth.”This visual history of the growing obsession with wealth uses first-person interviews in Los Angeles, Moscow, Dubai, China and around the world to bear witness to the global boom-and-bust economy, and to document its complicated consequences including materialism and the desire to be wealthy at any cost.
The Los Angeles children encountered early in the book have become defined by the search for status through material acquisition. They buy multi-thousand-dollar handbags to take to class. Other kids in their grade are given BMWs when they turn sixteen. They compete over whose family can afford the best designer clothes, the most elaborate bar mitzvahs, the biggest houses. A 12-year-old whose working-class mother is bankrupting herself to finance the girl’s love of Ed Hardy designer tank tops is interviewed at one point. She explains how she knows she is putting great financial strain on her mom, and says she sort of feels bad about it, but explains: “I want the world; I want designer clothes, I want eternal happiness, the fountain of youth. I want to be able to afford ritzy private schools. I want the best of everything. Money is most definitely important for everything on my list of what I want.”
Fast Forward (Growing up in the shadow of Hollywood):
“Fast Forward” is a powerful look at Los Angeles youth culture and its influence on the rest of our society. From the affluent children of the Westside to the graffiti gangs and party crews of East LA, young Angelenos reckon with an overwhelming barrage of advertising and entertainment images emphasizing money, possessions, and eternal youth. This collection of 79 colour photographs, accompanied by interviews with the children and their parents, reveals the realities of growing up fast in a culture that is at once irresistible and unforgiving. A compelling precursor to Greenfield’s widely praised “Girl Culture,” “Fast Forward” is a telling document of the direction in which today’s ultra-image-conscious culture is pointed. It also documents the experience of growing up in Los Angeles, and the ways children are influenced by the values of Hollywood. The quest for “fame,” the preoccupation with trends, the culture of materialism, and the obsession with image that characterizes Hollywood is reflected in the everyday lives and rituals of L.A. youth. A recurring theme in the project is the fleeting quality of youth. As one teenager says, “You grow up really fast when you grow up here. L.A. is so fast-moving, and kids really mature at a young age. Everyone is in a rush to be old, to be going to the clubs, going out… It’s not cool to be a kid.”
Image: Mijanou and friends from Beverly Hills High School spending their Senior Beach Day at Will Rogers State Beach in Los Angles. Mijanou won the title of “best physique” at Beverly Hills High.
The photo that really launched Lauren’s career was called Mijanou and friends from Beverly Hills High School on Senior Beach Day. A picture taken in 1993 in Santa Monica, California, as part of this project. Greenfield came to make this picture circuitously through an internship at National Geographic, which was the professional experience to which Lauren’s career is also indebted. In the process of making this photograph and the project for which it became the iconic image, Greenfield explains how she found her voice as a photographer. The photograph of Mijanou ended up being the cover of the book and was published and exhibited internationally. Mijanou wasn’t rich, but she lived in a world where her friends were. She explained to Greenfield about the pressures of her world and how it was hard when you could not keep up, but she also recognized that her beauty allowed her entrée into the popular clique.
I have started by drawing up a mind map on different elements of the occupation and things i associate with them or that spring to mind when i read them.
THEME/ISM:
After producing my mind map on areas I interpret as linking to the theme of occupation and mainly liberation, I decided that I would do my product by following the grand theme of the freedom nowadays that people have. The techniques I will use in my project are: Documentary/ Realism and Straight Photography combined with Portraiture. These techniques fit this project well because they will help me to present my work clearly and directly so it is easy to interpret.
MOOD BOARD:
My Statement on Intent/Aim:
My personal study will be revolved around my best friend Max. Max is a 17 year old surfer from Poland who lives with me in Jersey and goes to St. Brelades college to strengthen his English whilst also being given math tutoring with a local teacher. He is of a very wealthy Polish family who carry a high level of class and travel around the world as and when they wish.
My study will therefore be about me exploring the lifestyle of Max and how he counters the stereotypes people may have about polish immigrants on the island whilst demonstrating the extent to which ‘liberation’ has given youth in the modern day to live such luxurious lives and have to freedom to live and explore where they want in the world. I then want to go on to explore further ideas of freedom in relation to liberation and look into the in depth area of travelling.
Towards the end i would like to present my project to show all of the above whilst also being able to create links between both the subject areas whilst also showing where I have taken inspiration from artists such as the two I am looking in to which are Mike Brodie and Theo Gosselin.
Key questions I will be looking into:
How can photography bear witness to the ways of life or events of the world?
Does a portrait tell us more about the person portrayed or the photographer?
Can personality and identity be expressed in a portrait?
How can photography reflect inner emotions such as fear and isolation?
The visit to the migrant workers photography exhibition was very unique. It incorporated a lot of different ideas into a very minimalistic designed display which gave a clear presentation of the work captured and what the main features of the project were and why.
The main interpretation I took away from this project was the focus into striving for people in the island to voice themselves about things that they find or think are inadequate or unfair and that need rectifying in order to help make the island we live on a better place.
In this case, this over-arching theme was shown through presenting the workers’ living conditions and showing the tough and below standard daily routine that many of these immigrant workers are used to. With the hopes of it reaching a large variety of public attention and interest which in the long run, would help for this matter to be picked up on by the farmers who hire them, the local people who may help out to give them better living conditions and then ultimately the states who could put more money into helping those who aid the production of one of jerseys largest exports after finance and milk.
Examples of some of the photos that stood out to me:
A MIGRANT FARM WORKER DRESSED IN HIS WORKING ATTIRE.
THE LIVING CONDITIONS OF SOME OF THE WORKERS.ALTHOUGH COVERED IN MUD ON A COLD GLOOMY DAY THE WORKERS REMAIN CONTENT.ANOTER EXAMPLE OF SOME OF THE WORKERS’ ACCOMMODATION.A GROUP OF MALE WORKERS ON A FIELD NEAR THE COAST.
Below are images describing the in-depth detail to which concerns the Jersey migrant workers push for better treatment and the activities and planning carried out to help raise awareness to alleviate the problem at hand.
Below the “Perfect Potato” can be seen. Originally created by one of the workers from clay to give to the winner of the agri-care prize, it later ended up being a symbol to show that all of the workers had shown great dedication and motivation towards their jobs which meant the prize was given to all of them, rather than just one.
Key characteristics/ conventions: From the 1880s and onwards photographers strived for photography to be art by trying to make pictures that resembled paintings. A lot of nude photography and nature was present.
Artists associated: Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936), The Vienna Camera Club (Austria), The Brotherhood of the Linked Ring (London), Photo-Secession (New York) founded by Alfred Stieglitz.
Key works: H P ROBINSON – HE NEVER TOLD HIS LOVE (1884), ALFRED HORLSEY HINTON – FLEETING AND FAR (1903), GEORGE DAVISON – REFLECTIONS (1899). Alfred Stieglitz: Equivalent (cloud studies).
Methods/ techniques/ processes: Using Vaseline to blur the lens. Scratch the images/ use chemicals to alter the colors etc. Manipulating images in the darkroom, scratching and marking their prints to imitate the texture of canvas, using soft focus are among other techniques.
REALISM / STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY
Time period:
Key characteristics/ conventions:
REALISM – Photography grew up with claims of having a special relationship to reality, and its premise, that the camera’s ability to record objectively the actual world as it appears in front of the lens was unquestioned. This supposed veracity of the photographic image has been challenged by critics as the photographer’s subjectivity (how he or she sees the world and chooses to photograph it) and the implosion of digital technology challenges this notion opening up many new possibilities for both interpretation and manipulation. A belief in the trustworthiness of the photograph is also fostered by the news media who rely on photographs to show the truth of what took place.
STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY – Were photographers who believed in the intrinsic qualities of the photographic medium and its ability to provide accurate and descriptive records of the visual world. These photographers strove to make pictures that were ‘photographic’ rather than ‘painterly’, they did not want to treat photography as a kind of monochrome painting.
SOCIAL REFORM PHOTOGRAPHY – The rural poor or the urban environment were not subjects for Pictorial photographers. But when A Danish immigrant , Jacob Riis published his book, How the Other Half Lives’ about the slums of Manhattan a new kind of realism was born with a socialist dimension. A number of photographer’s such as Lewis W Hine and Dorothea Lange began to document the effects of industrialization and urbanization on working-class Americans. Their work brought the need for housing and labour reform to the attention of legislators and the public and became the origins of what we now call photojournalism.
Artists associated:
Walker Evans (1903-75). Often considered to the leading American documentary photographer of the 20th century. He rejected Pictorialism and wanted to establish a new photographic art based on a detached and disinterested look. He most celebrated work is his pictures of three Sharecropper families in the American South during the 1930s Depression.
Key works: Walker Evans, Hale Country (1936),
Methods/ techniques/ processes:
Cubism and Fauvism, Abstract geometric forms and structure of subjects.
