At the Jersey Arts Centre there was a recent show of the exhibition “Invisable Hands” by Alicja Rogalska. The exhibition is known as being associated with migrant workers as well as The Morning Boat whilst it tries to show Jersey through the perspective of migrant workers. This has shown to be important due to migrant workers being a large part but not being known much about due to the lack of knowledge on the past.

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Looking through this exhibition allowed main parts in the agriculture sector in Jersey to be seen which has proven to needing to be more attention due to its importance with the living/ working conditions which people experience everyday and which most middle class people would be appalled by if they saw and if they were educated. Looking through, I liked how Rogalska captured the images as it allowed for a clearer concept to be shown as well allowing more emotion. She also has a video playing which explored the visuals of context towards the images as well as adding emotion which images cannot do in some cases. The video also allowed for us to use more senses such as listening adding a personal effect. The highlights allowed to show the importance of being aware of your surroundings, as well as knowledgeable as to what other go through and how they live which I found was very effective.

Carrying on with the subject of videos, a video was played at the exhibition which was taken of migrant workers in creating clay figures, the most well recognised being a potato which represents their culture as well as helping to symbolise what they do. In order to create the video, the workers were interviewed which was also put into the video where we could see them creating the potatoes out of slay along with the way in which they do it. The title of ‘Invisable Hands’ is shown clearly as we can see that their faces are not shown in the video, only the actions they are doing with their hands.

As seen from the images above the images have been taken in poor quality helping to images to have an interesting back story as it could be possible that they are self taken images, explaining the low level of technique in the actual images.

My personal opinion on this exhibition is that it successfully shows viewers the true aspects of being a migrant worker through both their living and working conditions reflecting social as well as political issues with our government. The use of both imagery and media helps for viewers to gain understanding of the overall concept.

The images above are all from Yury Toroptsov’s project called “Deleted Scene”. Toroptsov took a lot of these images in Russia, where his father lived and died.

The image below is from one of Toroptsov’s books and is one of my favourite of his images.

Technical: This image uses natural lighting, during the day time to create a natural looking image of lots of derelict housing. The image also shows lots of clouds above which creates a sad and dull atmosphere within the image.

Visual: The image is made up of a lot of brown and grey colours. These colours are used to show how broken-down and old this area is after years since he was there. It shows that the area has either become run-down or was always a very dull place to be.

The image also has this idea of space because it shows this 3D area behind the main aspect of the image (the wooden poles) with all these old and similar houses covering the landscape behind.

Contextual: This is apart of Toroptsov’s study on his home town in Russia. During this project he was trying to show areas he knows his father was to show that the memory of him. It shows an old run down area to show how old and derelict the area has become since he lived there.

Conceptual: The idea behind this work was to go back to areas his father had gone to show that him and his family remembers where they lived and how they lived through showing all the old buildings and broken down areas that they their family went to. This image shows how it may have aged and looks older over the years.

For my personal investigation based around the ideas of Occupation and Liberation, I will be exploring the concept of mental health and mental illness using some ideas of abstraction and modernism as well as elements of street photography/social reform photography.

For my own personal investigation project I wanted to focus on a subject very close to me personally which is mental illness, and more specifically, depression. I find that this fits really well into the idea of occupation/liberation, as it is something that takes a hold of someone, controlling them and cutting them off from the outside, similarly to that of the island during the occupation in WWII. As the idea of mental illness is something that is difficult to see physically, which means that it is much harder to show images which will represent it in the way that I want, as unlike the occupation of jersey which left remnants of bunkers on the island, there are very few ways to tell that anything has happened/is happening inside the head of a person.

However I not only want to create a made up story, but something more personal to me, which is about my own experience, and try to show almost autobiographical elements in a slightly abstract way. The first ideas that come to mind when showing this subject would be something to do with emptiness and Isolation. For instance, I was thinking of using nature to show many of my key points I want to come across for my personal investigation, using lone trees or out of place flowers to show isolation or abandoned buildings to show the concept of being empty.

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?

I have decided to change my project to focus on the lives of my twin sisters. Twins have a bond that is drastic and can't compare to regular relationships between siblings. My sistersd are also identical twins and people regularly associate them as one person. However, I want to display how they aren't the same person and how although they have many similar chracteristice, they also have numerous differences that make them different characters.

Some artists I am considering to look at is Ariko Inaoka as she focuses on the similarities of tins and their intense bond, and fictional photographers such as Vivienne Sassan and Anna Gaskell.

For my personal investigation I will be focusing on people and things effected by World War II, with this I have come up with 2 ideas;

The first – My work is situated on a farm, which has been in Jersey since pre WWII, due to the Germans restricting farm usage during this time, it would have had an influence on the farm. Due to having easy access and a relationship with the owner of the farm and the farm being within the family, I believe it would be easy to gain information about what happened during that time, and acquire photos and maybe some photos during that time.

The second – My grandfather was born in Punjab, India, and was 8 years old during this time of WWII, India was affected during WWII. He is fascinated in genealogy which is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. He has worked with my other grandfather to help retrace the other half of my family. He has retraced his side of the family back generations with immaculate detail. With his passion for genealogy and experience of being a young child during World War 2 I feel that this would be able to bring me much more detail to the story and how it affected him, but also it would bring a personal aspect into it with it being my grandfather but him recollecting his memories from that time.

Another idea and personal aspect to this is on the other side of my family who also had involvement with the world war. My granddad on my dads side was involved in world war 2 and put my grandfather up for adoption with the thought that he wasn’t making it back home after, and the family who then adopted my granddad were an Armenian family, which the father was a survivor from world war 1. My grandmothers father (My great grandfather) was a firefighter during the Blitz, which was Nazi Germany’s sustained aerial bombing campaign against Britain in WWII.

I have to hone in on one section, which I think due to accessibility and being personal will be my granddad who was born in Punjab.