What Does Photography Have in Common with an Empty Vase?
“My work uses the social context of incarceration to explore the philosophical concept of absence,”
-Edgar Martins
Edgar Martin’s project “What Does Photography Have in Common with an Empty Vase?” links into the idea of loneliness and has a representation of emptiness, linking into my idea of dissociation nicely. In this project Martin’s has tried to recreate something missing within a photograph, but how do you take a photograph and try to create meaning out off something that doesn’t exist? The project is a collaboration between Martins and some of the inmates incarcerated at HMP Birmingham, the largest privately-run prison in the Midlands, United Kingdom. In order to add different perspectives into his photography Martin’s talked frequently with the inmates and their families to also add a depth of meaning.
In each of his photographs the photographer has tried to cut something out of the photo whilst he’s taking the photo or after he has take it e.g. he may outline a figure as if it was meant to be there, therefore creating a sense of loneliness and detachment, as well as a feeling of nostalgia as the viewer will want to see what they think they may have had. In some of the photographs, this vacancy is explicit: in one still life photograph, a single child’s shoe is presented plainly on a light pink background, a label declaring “DADDYS GIRL” pasted across the toe. In others, a feeling scratches the back of our mind, edging us towards the thought that something/or someone is missing especially when Martin’s takes two photos where one off them has no subjects and then he takes another photo where he’ll ease the viewers mind by then putting two people in the middle of thew same photograph from before but doesn’t give the observe the satisfaction of showing their identities.
My ideas that are influenced from this photographer are to do with the feeling that something is missing; not necessarily the layout of the photographs or the composition/style. The reason why I’ve linked dissociation and anxiety to this photographer is because they have similar feeling and views towards life which are similar to my own. Something missing in the world around us and knowing it should be there as well as not knowing whether we have control over these issues or not. The anxiety part of my idea links in due to the loneliness and vacancy that appears in Martin’s photographs, the feeling of not having support or what you hoped for links into the nervousness and paranoia linked to anxiety.
“From a humanist perspective, the work seeks to reflect on how one deals with the absence of a loved one, brought on by enforced separation.”
– Edgar Martins
The photographs shown below link to my layout more than my concept of my zine/film compared to the photographs above. more specifically the phots that have a composition where there is a small subject and a big area around them. There is various different types of portrait photography I’m able to link to Edgar Martins work e.g. street, environmental, traditional and possibly fine arts.
INTENTIONS: to express life where someone may be experiencing poor mental health to do with anxiety, dissociation and nihilism. In the film/zine, dream-like springs to mind when I’m thinking of what I visualise for my project. I will link my film to rebellion and how mental health rebels against its subject. I also want to demonstrate the main character rebelling against society norms; to think that life is just a game or that nothing that you do has much meaning behind it which relates to nihilistic thoughts.
TECHNIQUES: Tripods, personal perspective, specific editing to put my point across, transitioning from different scenes by using objects and shades which are similar to each other.
VISUALS: What a person with these issues may see in their life and how their mental affects them and the people around them. The effects I will use to edit the film/zine will show people and objects fading away as the person is quickly becoming somewhat nihilistic and unaware of their surroundings. I also want to try and do a lot transitions that interest the people watching to make the viewer feel more immersed in what they are watching and make them feel like they’e coming back to reality after they’ve stopped watching.
SOUND: A lot of eerie sounds to symbolise dissociation and how the person may feel like they’re in another world. The phrase “zoning out” relates to this and is the easiest way to describe what dissociation may be like; the person becomes unaware of the world around them and goes in to a state of day dreaming of some sorts. When thinking about what music I might put in the background I was thinking of putting the start if bohemian rhapsody by Queen at the beginning of the film, as it has lyrics that may relate to my project.
INSPIRATION: My own life and what I’ve experienced or heard from the people around me with their own mental health issues. I also think about the film split when it comes to the conceptual and contextual side of the film/zine as the main character in the film has a disorder where he dissociates himself from who he truly is and the life he is living, although I am not basing my project off of a personality disorder and I am basing it off of thew dissociation dude of things. As well as David Lynch’s work and Chris Nolans work, more specifically the film -Inception.
STEP BY STEP:
The Reality:
Filming me sitting on the sofa
Filming the tv and putting on creepy 50’s tv shows on the tv
Flipping back and forth from the shots
Show glitching on the tv and start to add UP music to the scene to transition into the first day.
First Day:
My Room – Filming waking up from two different angles and flip between them making sure to get good lighting – around Golden hour.
Film daily routine of getting dressed, doing make up and brushing teeth.
Leaving the house – filmed from different angles, and then walking into school with a friend.
School- looking in the mirror and washing hands and sitting with friends also filmed from different angles.
Going home- walking out of school with a friend and then walking back to my house.
Second Day:
My Room – Filming waking up from two different angles and flip between them making sure to get good lighting – around Golden hour.
Film daily routine of getting dressed, doing make up but taking out brushing teeth to make the day slightly shorter but overall showing the same thing but a different day.
Leaving the house – filmed from different angles, and then walking into school with a friend BUT starting to show a sense of there being something wrong by adding glitching graphics and filming me walking by myself then editing the two scene together to make it look as if my friend is disappearing.
School- looking in the mirror and washing hands and sitting with friends also filmed from different angles but do the same glitching as last time as well as myself disappearing to make a pattern of something going wrong. As well as making thew audio glitch to have the full effect.
Going home- walking out of school with a friend with the glitching again and cutting out walking home to shorten the day.
Third Day:
My Room – Filming waking up from two different angles and flip between them making sure to get good lighting – around Golden hour.
Film daily routine of getting dressed, doing make up but taking out brushing teeth to make the day slightly shorter but overall showing the same thing but a different day. As well as starting add glitches within my house and cutting out scenes to make the day shorter.
Leaving the house – filmed from different angles, and then walking into school with a friend and adding glitching graphics and filming me walking by myself then editing the two scene together to make it look as if my friend is disappearing again but again making the day shorter.
School- looking in the mirror and washing hands and sitting with friends also filmed from different angles but do the same glitching as last time as well as myself disappearing to make a pattern of something going wrong. As well as making thew audio glitch to have the full effect.
Going home- walking out of school with a friend and then walking back to my house but filming from different angles and standing in different places to edit me glitching into different places.
Final Part:
My Room – Filming waking up from two different angles and flip between them making sure to get good lighting – around Golden hour but adding glitches right from the start to show that nothings right.
Starting my daily routine but adding glitching and other shots of me wearing white contacts and looking possessed and staring to add colour to the black and white movie to show reality come back into place. As well as adding demonic sounds to make the viewer feel more disturbed.
Adding the shot of me having white eyes with a lighter and then glitching back into reality.
Back to The Reality:
Transitioning out of the glitching screen
Filming me sitting on the sofa and then fading into the title screen – WAKE UP
For my project I’m thinking of basing it off of mental health and how it rebells against your love for others. The main focus would be anxiety and how this mental illness can cause people to dissociate themselves from life itself. Dissociation being a big part of the narrative, I am looking to create a film/zine where a lifestyle in reality can turn into something quite dream-like and somehow showing a glimpse of what it may be like for someone who has anxiety or a disorder where it causes them to dissociate or even become nihilistic. The way I’m going to shoot this project will be in first person and having self portraiture intertwined within my film/zine. I am planning on representing these dream-like scenarios by cutting out parts of the world and scenery are myself and possibly cutting out the people around me as well to act as the dissociation. I’ve done a lot of research as to why dissociation happens and what mental illnesses can cause this; illnesses such as; anxiety, depression, PTSD, bipolar, schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder. I chose to base my project off of anxiety as I have experienced a lot of anxiety throughout my life as many people have and I feel like I can portray the feelings towards life from someone who has experienced anxiety better than any of the other illnesses listed.
Mood Boards of Inspiring Photographers
John Mannell
This photographer is a London based therapeutic photographer using photography to combat depression and anxiety. When looking at Mannell’s work I felt inspired as he usually takes photographs of individual strangers living their daily life but no one knows anything about their background or their mental state. This links into my project as I will be photographing/filming myself therefore I will be the stranger who no one knows anything about and I will be showing a segment of my life through a photo/film.
‘As I was driving along earlier I saw Julian sat in the horribly cold weather and he looked and smiled at me and gave me the thumbs up as he could hear my music playing. I thought not much more of it but then when I went on my coffee break I thought I would walk around the corner to see if he was there as I knew he would make a great portrait due to the white on his face but when I got closer the match sticks in his beard too. At first I felt bad asking for the photo as you are making an image which to some extent plays on someone’s misfortune by being homeless. But by the same coin to not ask him as I would ask anyone else would be excluding him from what has become a people led project. I sat and spoke to him and we had a cup of tea together as he told me how he used to be a professional dancer and his days back in Jamaica when he was younger. Its horrible that he has ended up on the street but I guess what makes it worse is how so many people walk past and just ignore (me included on so many occasions). He was such a nice guy. Christmas is not a nice time for anyone on their own and I guess if we can just give that one cup of warm tea it might help them feel that Christmas spirit we all love.‘
-Photo of homeless man below
‘Every now and then I take a photo of someone that shows them as I saw them not just visually but personality too. I had a really long day at work and had messy hair, dirty jeans and scruffy top. You could think I’m on the sympathy vote but the reference is to try and show the contrast between me and this man named Devine. He is a security guard and has worked as equally a long day as I have but looked unbelievably smart. His demeanour was proud yet calm and he spoke gently. He was kind enough to walk along the street to pose near some light coming from the Morley’s chicken shop to help take the photo. Anyway, I like this one as from the brief chat we had shows himself as I saw him.’
‘When I was at night school my final project for my city and guilds was a look into my experiences of depression. The image is a metaphor for so many experiences in my journey. When I started to use photography as therapy I took photos at night when no one was around. It felt like a daunting and somewhat vulnerable task. I had no way to explain this other than a photo of me taking the fear head on. You feel like there is no end or hope sometimes but step by step you can feel progress even if the end goal isn’t really clear.’
Daniel Smith – Fade Out
Smith’s work caught my eye as it is fairly dream-like and somewhat ominous. His photos consist of landscapes that occasionally have people posing on the distance to create meaning and representation. He gets his inspiration to take these photos by listen to lyrics in music and poems that he comes across and becomes attached to the ideas he creates in his head before he actually takes the photo. When he is taking his images he dissociates himself from what he is seeing through the lens and doesn’t feels emotionally attached to the images until later on when be is editing them. He says that his work links into depression and helps him to deal with his own mental health; it allows him to feels like he’s not alone I. the world when he takes photos of the subjects in the photo as it’s meant to represent himself.
Daniel Regan
I chose this photographer as my inspiration as well, as his work also comes across quite dream-like but also has a sense of reality. The dream-like connotations are from the light pink, yellow ands blue tones associated with clouds and the sky when put together. A lot of his photographs also Remi d me of waking up in the morn ing due to the lighting and what the main subjects of the photos are e.g. coffee, bedsheets, frosty windows etc.
“Something that I’ll take from Maytree into the rest of my life is to never feel ashamed to talk about my difficulties,” Regan admits. “At Maytree we’re not there to fix someone; we’re there to allow people to speak openly about their crises. It can be uncomfortable, but we want people to live because they want to live, not because we want them to. I think the motivation for me is that it is such an incredible privilege to be able to help people in suicidal crisis, particularly because I have been there myself. ”
-Regan talking in an interview about the photograph of the bed and the bedsheets.
When it came to this half of my project I decided to choose a Love Story to do with my Dad and his love for music. I then made this into a zine to put the narrative together; I decided to lay it out as if the viewer was looking at the past and the present by adding archives from his previous gigs and places he travelled to and to his current position where he has his own music school and studio. I tried to link in the two photographers; Rinko Kawauchi and Francis Foot as my current photographer and archive photographer. I linked them by adding archives to my zine and by trying to represent hidden meaning and representation throughout each page e.g. Wabi Sabi. When I was planning my photoshoots for the zine, I was thinking that the different stages of my photo shoots will relate to different people, as some of the things that my Dad loves, someone else may be able to have the same passion and admiration; someone may be happy with someone they’re with and be happy with the life they’re living; someone may love a certain hobby; someone could be slowly finding a new love in their life, whether it’s a person or they find something they love as a hobby or something that brings them happiness in another way e.g. someone may love being surrounded by nature. These different things in life that my Dad loves will be shown in my photo shoots; music/guitars.
Rebellion
The filming of certain clips could have gone a lot better as the camera was shaky at times but it added top the effect of how something bad was going to happen. Moreover, some shots were blurry although they didn’t appear blurry until using premier due to having to enlarge the video because it didn’t fit the frame properly. Furthermore, another improvement that could’ve been made is the amount of things we filmed for the life before lock down so the narrative was more clear but we ran out of time. We also went over the time limit of 90 seconds as we already tried to cut the movie down as much as possible but still tried to have a clear narrative at the same time. Whilst editing I put a lot of small clips together to create a lot of effects and montages. Firstly I cut up my longer videos into shorter ones and put effects such as glitching in between to represent everyday life falling apart. I also faded in certain clips such as the beginning of the film and the beginning of lockdown to represent a change of events. Furthermore, I edited the shadows/saturations/contrast etc to make the film more vibrant and dull the places I wanted it to. I linked the more vibrant shots to the photographer Alex Prager who I mentioned in my film manifesto; he links to my film as he filmed colourful crowds in everyday life, just as I filmed everyday life at school as the more colourful part of the film. On the other hand, Theo McIness relates to the beginning of lockdown as he photographs people in masks and social distancing and edited them to be black and white; my way of linking him was making the sections in between the glitching black and white to show that lockdown was taking over. I also edited the sounds and music to make sure they were the right volume for each scene as certain things became louder, such as the clock, as the film went on. I also edited the videos of the clock as they were originally an hour; I managed to speed up the video to make a time lapse and made the clip around 14 seconds all together.
Recording: When filming the majority of the film we didn’t have a tripod too steady the camera. We tried our best to keep the camera steady where possible and did moving shoots as well where we panned the camera around the area. We filmed in around 5 different locations some of which include: town in the afternoon and at night, St Peters Woods, our friends house, in the classroom etc. We did this to show different parts of the day that repeated most days which we then turned into a montage/time-lapse. We tried to make sure to get different times of the day to try and make sure the viewer knew that time was passing as well as filming the clock with the news in the background to represent the time in lock down. We thought of smaller details also such as the writing on the white board whilst filming the clock e.g. Karens party on the 12th of March and going to the cinema; this is to show that plans got cancelled due to lockdown. We also used some content from the Guardian to make it more clear what was going on during the lock down. At the start and at the end of our film we filmed my Dad with my dog in the woods and at the end we did it in exactly the same location to represent finally having the freedom to see our friends and family.
When it came to recording the audio we used voice memo on our phones to clearly record parts of the film. When recording the audio we didn’t usually film at the same time as the camera didn’t pick up the audio as clearly as voice memo did. We recorded the video of the Queen off of BBC news to create a dramatic affect during our film as we overlapped her voice over the riots in Italy due to lock down lasting too long; the riots noises included sounds such as screaming, bombs and eeriness, creating a sense of fear. The juxtaposition of this and the birds at the birds peacefully singing at the beginning and the end of the film is meant to represent the silence and the noise. The reason we named our movie Silent Noise was because when people were in lockdown by themselves they would have nothing but silence except for the reminders in their head of what was going on in the world around them and how hectic the world was outside. I also recorded and made a piano sequence to fit with our film and tried to link up chord changes with scenery changes as much as possible.
Editing: Whilst editing I put a lot of small clips together to create a lot of effects and montages. Firstly I cut up my longer videos into shorter ones and put effects such as glitching in between to represent everyday life falling apart. I also faded in certain clips such as the beginning of the film and the beginning of lockdown to represent a change of events. Furthermore, I edited the shadows/saturations/contrast etc to make the film more vibrant and dull the places I wanted it to. I linked the more vibrant shots to the photographer Alex Prager who I mentioned in my film manifesto; he links to my film as he filmed colourful crowds in everyday life, just as I filmed everyday life at school as the more colourful part of the film. On the other hand, Theo McIness relates to the beginning of lockdown as he photographs people in masks and social distancing and edited them to be black and white; my way of linking him was making the sections in between the glitching black and white to show that lockdown was taking over. I also edited the sounds and music to make sure they were the right volume for each scene as certain things became louder, such as the clock, as the film went on. I also edited the videos of the clock as they were originally an hour; I managed to speed up the video to make a time lapse and made the clip around 14 seconds all together.
fading in clips and writing
cutting up clips
changing volume
colouring effects
Evaluation: The filming of certain clips could have gone a lot better as the camera was shaky at times but it added top the effect of how something bad was going to happen. Moreover, some shots were blurry although they didn’t appear blurry until using premier due to having to enlarge the video because it didn’t fit the frame properly. Furthermore, another improvement that could’ve been made is the amount of things we filmed for the life before lock down so the narrative was more clear but we ran out of time. We also went over the time limit of 90 seconds as we already tried to cut the movie down as much as possible but still tried to have a clear narrative at the same time.
RULES: We have to incorporate the 3 words in our 90 second film
WORDS: Risk – Everyday – Failure
TECHNIQUES: Tripods, personal perspective, collaging
VISUALS: Young people at parties or people in crowds in comparison to people at home alone.
SOUND: People talking/singing (at the party or in the crowd) and an eerie noise gradually getting louder to represent the silence that surrounds the people at home alone.
INSPIRATION: The life everybody currently lives in.
The Silence
There are two parts two our film; one part being people isolating themselves to keep themselves safe as well as other and abiding by the governments rules. This part of the project could link to people’s mental health through lockdown and how people rebel against the people risking others lives and rebelling against the virus itself by staying home and keeping their distance from others.
Theo McIness – Kennington Oasis Project about the pandemic
The Noise
The other part of the film is the people who don’t abide by he rules and rebel against the government. There are many reasons why people would break the rules; wanting see family or friends, some people think corona is a just a lie in order to help the environment, or some people just want to rebel.
Alex Prager Crowd Photography
Sounds (Piano throughout)
Visuals (first person for all but lockdown segment)
Birds
Scenery on a walk Title overlayed(5-10 secs)
Cars (traffic)Talking
Normal life before lockdown:Lessons, Canteen, Rush hour, People in town,TV in the background (news)(1-5 secs each (15-25 secs total)) Timelapse of everyday life(7-10 secs)
Muffled sounds (everyday life) cuts toBoris J on the news
Black screen(3-5 secs)
Boris J on the newsBLMAmbulance sirenTicking clockKettle noise
Timelapse of lockdown life (repeated routine)Ticking clockKettle(20-25 secs)
The term Identity Politics is described to be political approach that people who fit into the category of race, class, religion or social background, in which they would take a particular approach develop political agendas and organise based upon the interlocking systems of oppression that affect their lives and come from their various identities.
The definition of Culture Wars
A lifestyle warfare is a cultural combat between social agencies and the warfare for dominance of their values, beliefs, and practices. It often refers to matters on which there is normal societal disagreement and polarization in societal values is seen. The time period is normally used to describe current politics in the United States, with troubles such as abortion, homosexuality, transgender rights, pornography, multiculturalism, racial viewpoints and different cultural conflicts based totally on values, morality, and life-style which are described as the most important political points.
LGBTQ
People’s identities have always been important but in today’s society, the freedom to be yourself is now more important than ever. The LGBTQ community have greatly suffered the. it comes to expressing themselves and being who they want to be without anyone being around to criticise them or judge them. Many people are blind to the fact that homophobia is still around and think that celebrations such as pride is a pointless march which just belittles heterosexual people. Of course this completely untrue; pride is a celebration of rights and freedom to be yourself and no harm is meant to come from it whatsoever. On the other hand, there are people who are more extreme with their views and are completely against the LGBTQ community, a lot of people call these kinds of people “old fashioned”. Old fashioned people believe that straight is the only way to go and nothing else is acceptable. A lot of the time this can be due to their religion or their own upbringing.
Thankfully a lot of people today are very accepting and supportive of people in the LGBTQ community which has allowed more people to show who they truly are and being less afraid to do so. Being allowed to show off to the rest of the world through pride rather than hiding from everyone is way or liberating everyone around you. The freedom of expression is what makes a lot of us human and unique from each other. The pride that everyone has within themselves helps people to become successful and happy with their lives which is why our identities have a huge roll in our daily lives.
Shannon O’Donnell’s work revolves around demonstrating gender binary.
Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time – Karl Marx
Influences:
Claude Cahun – “Her work is very political. I found it strange at first but once I got to learn about her and her gender bending, I thought her work was completely abstract and completely strange. Claude Cahun would write letters and put them in soldiers pockets telling them to shoot sergeants in the heads. Rebelled for her art and didn’t care about consequences.” Claude Cahun’s work relates to Shannon O’Donnell’s work as they both look into whether there are only two gender and how your gender defines you. Both try to make a political statement with their work. Originally, Claude Cahun’s name was Lucy Schwob in the early 20th century in France. By changing her name she was protesting against sexual and gender stereotypes.
Duane Michals – A famous photographer from the last century, mostly known for his work with series, multiple exposures and text. During the 1960’s Michals excelled in field photography and manipulated the medium to communicate narratives, this era was heavily influenced by photojournalism. He is widely known for his fame by frame format. The text that is handwritten on a lot of his texts gives the photos more personalisation and makes them more poetic as Michals intended.
“Duane Michals is another interest, not extravagant and big, just simplistic.” – Shannon O’Donnell
Casa Susanna – her photography began in the 60’s by taking photoshoots of men and transgender women. Her work was thought as an escape where men and transgender people could be theme-selves and not be ridiculed. The image were private and intimate for the models and the photographer and gave the models as sense of normality and safety.
“One day they could very housewifey, the next day they could be a group of women together having a gossip over tea.”
Walter Pfeiffer – He takes photographic portraits of friends, lovers and the youth surrounding him in cities such as Zurich, Paris and New York. His work links him to other photographers of that decade, such as Nan Goldin and Nobuyoshi Araki. His first published photographs appeared in the 1980’s.
“One click, and that’s it,”
Adi Nes – This photographer’s project is called Soldiers. Juxtaposing masculinity and manhood, his images use soft lighting, are very posed and use young models.
Theoretical Development – Judith Butler– talks about masculinity and femininity. In a interview she talks about how a young man was judged for the way he walked and was considered gay.
“Androgyny is not trying top manage the relationship between the opposites it is simply flowing between them” – June Singer
Shrinking violet was one of her projects in 2016. Mocking the traditional role that women held. In order to progress her work further into gender studies.
Another project was Abort Mission in 2018- she saw people praying outside an abortion clinic. Protesters claiming it to be their religion, although nothing says you can’t abort a child and that you should pray in public. A road in Cardiff had a lot of sex clubs and pubs around the area where the anti abortion protesters were.
By Your Beside in 2018 – her mum was in a coma because she couldn’t breath for herself. It was Christmas Day and she was taken into hospital, she fought for two days and was then put into a coma, had 2 bacterial infections in her lungs. Made a film and interviewed people in her family about the experience, the film was called Susans Sleep. Used sound sacking/layered audio with own footage and music.
The next project was The Cat and The Mice, at the river side in Cardiff the suffragette movement in Wales, to do with Margaret Macworth and Kate Evans. The suffragettes were violent and the suffragists were more political, less known and didn’t like the suffragettes. She titled this project as The Cat and The Mice because it was about the suffragettes getting starved in cells in prison and found out about this due researching archives in books and medals from Kate Evans from surviving in prison. One of the events that occurred during the suffragette movement was Margaret Macworth throwing a bomb into a postbox. Shannon O’Donnell took a photo on where the postbox was blown to pieces which has now been replaced. She also took a photo of Tescos where the peace hall had been replaced. To add to her project she made an exhibition called Where they Stood. In this project she reconstructed the place where the suffragettes were force fed. The room where she did had a chair in an empty room, Shannon O’Donnell reconstructed this.
Another big movement that happened during these times was due to Emily Pankhearst – her aim was to get attention and be in newspapers to get more publicity. The suffragettes were seen as terrorists and were laughed at due to their “stupid actions” at the time. The incident where people started to have more debates on the true meaning behind what the suffragettes doing was at a horse race where Emily jumped out in front of the King’s horse when she was trying to put a flag on the horse. People also saw this as a suicide mission and died from the injuries.
Thats not the way the river flows was another project in 2019; mocking masculinity and felinity and questioning what makes you what you are. She made a short film about it. Still images are taken from her films. She made a poem about gender and the idea that society follows a strict binary of male and female. She made the film in black and white. The way she documented this project was by setting up a tripod and pressing record; she says it “adds to it as its more like a performance” she then takes photos of the the good shots in the film. She takes the stills into premier film and then into photoshop and edits them. Her work is more of a documentary, as she looks at large political problems and responding to the world around her.
Is it just being a women or is there more layers to it? – Shannon O’Donnell
Current work:
Photography at uni – did presentations and seminars and harshly critiqued. Progression wise there was a lot more research and theory in history at uni. It was more independent, self driven and difficult and challenging. Her course drove the idea of big projects over a couple years and getting grants and awards.
She is currently working in jersey in the photographic archives, Digitising a lot of film negative and analogue processes and makes videos for social media. She does this on a camera set up and shoots on the laptop straight from the camera.
There were many reasons as to how and why I made my zine the way I did but here is some backstory to the meanings behind it which may explain some of my reasons: my final zine is about my Dad’s journey with music, in particular his journey through his life with his guitar and where he is today. My dad has play the guitar since he was 13 years old and today he is now a professional guitar teacher as well as a musician that gigs as often as possible. He has been in multiple bands and is currently in a duo called Acoustic Shock with another guitarist called David Ashurst.
Whilst my Dad was travelling around the world to places such as New York, Florida, California, Canada, Africa,Australia and many other places he was in a professional band called Cruise Control and played in many famous pubs and stages. Eventually he came from Canada to Jersey in his 30’s to settle down whilst the other member of the band, Jim, carried on trying to be successful as a professional guitarist.
Overall, everything went correctly whilst making my zine and it told the story accurately and clearly of what my dad’s life was like when it comes to music.
My Final Zine and the Experimentation
I used this photo of my dad’s old band as it’s quite an iconic image of them and has a good composition. The photo was taken from when Cruise Control was becoming popular around Nashville in the early 80’s. The picture clearly represents what my dad as a career also which is why I also thought it was a good fit. The title on the cover is meant to represent my dad’s journey with his love for music. I thought Heart Strings was a good fit for the title of my zine as it can also be heard often as “pulling someone’s heart strings” representing someones emotions and admiration for something.
For most of my layouts for the pages in my zine I used the pipet tool to match a colour or shade from the photograph so they made a nice comparison next to each other. The older photos look nicer next to a dulled out yellow tone as if it was an old piece of paper from the day the photos were taken. This photo was taken in Jersey above the Pulente Pub where he started his job as a bar tender fro over 10 years.
I chose this photo, as the place where I positioned my dad contrasts nicely with the backdrop with the red sound proof foam panels and his guitar. I chose to put the photo over the two pages as it fitted better as it was a landscape photo. The writing also fitted better in the top left hand corner in comparison to an other place on the two pages. I kept the writing format as it was as they are lyrics and although they may have fitted somewhere better on the page if I changed the layout, it may not have been as easy to recognise that they were lyrics.
I’ve laid out the page similarly to one of the older ones above. I’ve used the pipet tool to add similar tones from the photo to the other page, again to make the page look older as well. My dad was living in Australia with his friends Kevin and Nigel at the time. He gigged at multiple place and worked many labour jobs on farms and building sites to be able to afford to travel to his next destination.
I again chose this photo, as the place where I positioned my dad contrasts nicely with the backdrop with the red sound proof foam panels and his guitar. I chose this photo to go in my zine because I liked the composition and the way my Dad is looking into the lens because it makes the photo feel interpersonal as if he is staring at the viewer.
This photo was also taken in Jersey above the Pulente Pub. I liked the composition of this photo as my dad is placed in the middle casually posing and the objects surrounding him add to the narrative of what is happening in the photo.
I decided to choose this photo of my Dad, Jim and his wife as it was one of the last photos of them together. The words ‘Like A Rolling Stone” is the title of the song that was written through out the zine. I chose that song as it is my Dad’s favourite song that he has loved for many years as well as the lyrics having some correlation to his life a the time. I also chose to just put the title underneath the photo with nothing else as I think the simplicity ends the zine nicely and rounds everything up. I’d like to think as well that my Dad’s Journey with music relates to this title for many reasons. One of them being that he was similar to the band; The Rolling Stones, in the sense that he travelled around the world as they did playing music and doing what he loved for a very long time just like they did. In a metaphorical sense he is like a literal rolling stone and he goes through his life taking different paths and rolling with the punches along the way. I also added the white around the photo was chosen to blend nicely into the front page.
Whilst editing my images for my zine I tried to consider my previous artists references to make the photos look as high quality as possible.
In Light Room I selected several images using the rating tool and colouring different images to show which ones I liked the most and which ones I thought were the best quality e.g. green being the best quality and red being the worst, 5/4 stars are photos i like the look of due to their composition or the vibrancy etc and less than 5/4 stars are photos i don’t like the composition of.
Whilst editing this image I thought that the photo was slightly too dark, so I decided to lighten the exposure, as well as lightening the shadows a lot and darkening the highlights so it wasn’t too bright. I also lowered the contrast so there wasn’t such a drastic difference between the light and dark tones.
