Identity politics is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as the tendency for people of a particular social group (religion, race, sexuality, economic background) to form political alliances and stray from broader party politics. The term is more commonly used in conjunction with minority groups like the LGBTQ+ community, ethnic minorites, disabled people or immigrants and the issues that often concern or involve them, like debates on gun control, women’s reproductive rights, racially-based police brutality, and immigration policies, but this is inaccurate as it can be just as easily applied to more right-wing and non-minority-focused policies and political issues, not just the left and the minorities. For example, the simple fact of whether someone voted “leave” or “remain” on the Brexit referendum has well-known associated stereotypes that could even be used to guess the voter’s race, economic class, gender, or even their career.
The massive increase of the use of identity politics in everyday political issues could be held responsible for the culture wars said to be on the rise, especially with the rising tensions on other issues as well. A culture war is defined as a conflict between groups of different ideals and beliefs. While on the one hand, identity politics are useful for helping to give minority groups rights and to help people band together and raise awareness of issues they feel may affect their own community disproportionally to others, the rise of “extreme” identity politics has been linked to an increase in tribalism and the massive degrees of separation between the right and the left in modern politics. The fact that right-wing and left-wing parties are pulling further apart from each other, also resulting in centrist parties moving further to the right all over the world, negatively impacts minority groups and causes confusion in ordinary people, who may not be able to identify so strongly with the identity groups on either side.
@Pew Research Centre
The rise of identity politics and the subsequent increase in Western right-wing party voters being more likely to be white, conservative, religious/evangelical and rural and left-wing party voters being more likely to be non-white, liberal, and non-religious has caused a massive divide in society, to the point where, depending on the party you voted on, your very identity may be threatened by their policies.
Claude Cahun was a French, Jewish, queer photographer active between the 1920s-40s, often described as a pioneer in Surrealism and with the main body of her work comprising of self-portraits that questioned gender-roles and political identity. Cahun’s work was often personal and questioning her own identity, and she said in their autobiography that she didn’t identify as a single traditional gender:
“Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me.”
– ‘Disavowals : or cancelled confessions‘, by Claude Cahun
Cahun’s work can be described as revolving heavily around gender and sexuality, presenting as surrealism and the abstract, and mainly in the form of a self-portrait. Cahun often dressed up in various different outfits to make herself look like different people; a sailor, a doll, and angel, a devil, as well as both male and female. However, Cahun’s shaved head helped her to look androgynous and surreal throughout all her work.
“I is another…and always multiple”
Claude Cahun, The Art Story
During the Second World War, Cahun was living in Jersey with her romantic and professional partner, Marcel Moore, and during the Island’s occupation by the Nazis they were both very active as resistance fighters. They made propaganda leaflets out of cut-out BBC transcripts of the atrocities the Nazis were committing and left them in the occupying soldiers’ pockets, cars, chairs and even in their cigarette packs, attempting to undermine the Nazi’s authority and criticise their oppressive fascist regime. In this way, Cahun used her own artistic talents to fight an authority figure, much like she was doing in her photography, just with a different authority. They were both sentenced to death in 1945, but the island was liberated before this could happen, and Claude Cahun died in Jersey in 1954 and is buried in St Brelade’s church alongside Marcel Moore, who committed suicide several years after Cahun’s death.
IMAGE ANALYSIS-
The image above is bold in multiple ways: technically it has a lot of different textures (the checkered jacket, the ornate frame of the mirror, Claude’s short and highlighted hair), but it is also conceptually bold. Cahun presents as incredibly androgynous in a way that was almost completely unheard of in that era, but is staring directly and confidently down the lens of the camera, almost challenging the viewer. Cahun’s eyes stand out particularly stronglyas well, because they are quite a lot darker than the rest of the image. Historically the mirror is used in art and photography to present two different viewpoints of a person or situation, and this is no different in this images. Cahun’s jacket collar is up in the “real” version we can see, and in the mirrored version the collar is down, exposing much more skin. This could also been seen as a bold challenge to society at the time, as their would not have been any expectations of Cahun and other people like them to be so fiercely confident with their own sexualities and comfortable in their own bodies, as is shown in the image.
Shannon O’Donnell is a contemporary photographer who’s work also revolves around the themes of gender identity, gender roles and challenging gender as a social construct, as well as questioning various authority figures in her own individual way. She does a lot of research and theory work before each project in order to gain more knowledge and add context to her work.
Similarly to Cahun, much of Shannon O’Donnell’s work focuses on gender roles, including a project called “Cat and Mouse” on the suffragette movement and “That’s Not The Way The River Flows”, which is a more personal study on O’Donnell’s own gender identity and gender expression. She has done a lot of work in Cardiff and also with the Jersey Archives.
O’Donnell’s work is similar to Cahun’s in that it features quite a bit of black and white imagery, although she does work in colour as well. She also plays on themes of gender roles, self-expression and challenging authority, much like Cahun’s work. She also works a lot in self-portraiture, also similar to Cahun.
IMAGE ANALYSIS-
This image is part of O’Donnell’s “That’s Not The Way The River Flows” series, which highlights her internal thoughts about her own gender identity and expression. Here the image itself is quite light and bright, with the most eye-catching feature possibly being the light reflecting off her ring. She is dressed in a white collared-shirt, similar to what a man might wear to work or as part of a suit. The signet ring is also a fairly masculine element, but this is all contrasted by the white veil over O’Donnell’s face and hands, resembling a bride’s wedding veil. Her hands are also placed near to her face in a traditionally feminine and dainty way. There are quite a few different textures in this image; the mesh of the veil, the cotton of the shirt, the smooth shiny ring, and her skin, all of which make it more visually bold and interesting. O’Donnell’s downturned mouth contextually represents how she is in a state of internal turmoil and self-questioning. O’Donnell’s work has quite a few similarities to Cahun’s, due to the fact that Cahun is one of O’Donnell’s main influences, and this is quite evident in her work.
historical context, deconstructing gender binary, gender theory, gender as a constructed concept, questioning authority roles and the roles of the oppressed classes/social groups from many different viewpoints, extensive theory work/research beforehand, current work in jersey in the archives, digitisation of film negatives and archival analogue images
INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS + THEORISTS-
Claude Cahun– politically motivated, often bends or swaps traditional gender roles, use of the abstract and surrealism, lived in Jersey during the Occupation but being Jewish Cahun was a target and was sentenced to death during the Occupation but this was never carried out, attempted to incite rebellion against the occupying forces with her partner Marcel Moore, very influential artist on the theme of gender, androgyny and self-identity, their main body of work is self-portraits
Duane Michals- innovative but simplistic work, black and white, uses photo-series and sequences to convey his messages, his photography has addressed some lgbtq+ issues, often incorporates text/handwriting alongside his images to add elements of emotional context and philosophy
Casa Susanna- found at a flea market in the early 2000s, this photo series was shot in the 60s by men and trans women while they were at a hotel/resort called Casa Susanna, run by a trans woman and her wife (Susanna and Marie Valenti), it was used as an escape to express their own identity without fear of judgement, intimate and private images,
Walter Pfeiffer- lgbtq+ issues, poeticism in imagery, features the subject taking back some control, subject was a young gay man
Adi Nes- features soldiers, links to the islraeli-palestine war, questioning of masculinity and traditional gender roles in society
Judith Butler- American philosophical theorist who focuses on gender as a social construct, personal identity, influenced fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, literary theory as well as philosophy and ethics, speaks about how prescribed gender roles are passed down through generations and is more of a performance than anything else
June Singer- androgyny and gender theorist
O’DONNELL’S OWN WORK-
shrinking violet- Hautlieu A-level project, based on motherly roles in family and career, gently mocking women’s traditional roles during the 60s, 2nd wave feminism, domestic household setting
abort mission- project at uni, anti-abortion protesters vs pro-choice protesters, ideological beliefs and links to religion (specifically Christianity), the subjects were fully aware that they were being photographed, links to govmt and the justice system as well as the Church and sexuality/morality, controlling women’s bodies
by your bedside- relationship with her mother, she was in an induced coma due to breathing problems, links to family relationships, medical trauma + personal trauma, hospitalisation, personal impact, interviews with family members to gain outside first-hand viewpoints, art/photography as a form of therapy and closure, the film features the use of sound; layering music with interviews and background noise
cat and mice- in Cardiff, focuses on Suffragette movement in Wales, difference between suffragettes (militant activist) and the suffragists (political and pacifist), contextual links between the past and the present with reference to locations and the changes over time, historical police brutality
that’s not the way the river flows- gender identity, mocking the traditional concepts of femininity and masculinity, questioning the self and own self expression, short film, “moving still”, own poem and personal viewpoint on subject, questioning the binary of male and female, cutting stills from film camera, use of traditionally gendered clothing and manipulation of the expectations.
The women’s suffrage movement was a women’s organisation in the early 20th century who’s main goal was to gain the right to vote for all women and to have more equality between the sexes. Women in this activist group were either called suffragettes or suffragists; suffragists were more pacifist and focused on getting their right to vote through legal campaigning, and the suffragettes were more intent to using direct action and more militant civil disobedience (which ended up working more).
Police lead away a few Suffragettes, arrested for chaining themselves to the railings of Buckingham Palace, to draw attention to their cause, 21st May 1914
Well-known suffragettes include Emmeline Pankhurst, who founded and organised the main women’s suffrage group in Great Britain. She introduced the phrase “deeds not words” which became one of the most iconic phrases of the movement. She and her group (the Women’s Social and Political Union, later the Women’s Party) became known for their physical confrontations- smashing windows and burning buildings, assaulting police officers, chaining themselves to railings, and when they were imprisoned they went on hunger strike so often and to such an extreme that the government passed a law allowing prison officers to force-feed them, often in such a violent manner that the women suffered broken teeth, bleeding, choking, vomiting and other serious and permanent conditions as a result.
After the women’s right to vote was granted in 1918 (only for those over the age of 30 who were householders, the wives of householders, occupiers of property with an annual rent of £5, or graduates of British universities), she changed her organisation’s name to the Women’s Party and focused on equal marriage laws, equal pay for equal work, equal job opportunities and a more equal right to vote, as men could vote from the age of 21 and without the need to own property at this time.
Emmeline Pankhurst
Emily Davison
Emily Davison was another well-known suffragette, but she is known for a more tragic reason. Throughout the course of her time as part of the women’s suffrage movement, specifically the WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union), she was arrested nine times, went on hunger strike seven times, and was force-fed in jail forty-nine times. She was known in the movement for her strong militant actions, such as throwing stones, breaking windows, setting fire to postboxes, and even hiding overnight in the Palace of Westminster, but she is most known for the way she died.
During the Derby race is 1913 she ran onto the course, right before the final stretch, and collided with the King’s horse, Anmer, and knocked unconscious. Both Davison and the jockey, Herbert Jones, were rushed to hospital. Jones suffered a concussion and few other injuries, and was released from hospital within a couple weeks to race at the Ascot, but Davison died of her injuries on the 8th June 1913. There is speculation as to why she ran onto the racetrack in the first place: some say it was suicide (although there is little to no evidence of this), others use camera footage from the event to say that she was trying to attach a suffragette flag to the horse, but either way, Emily Davison was the most notable martyr for the women’s suffrage movement.
The women used propaganda to their advantage, publishing postcards and posters with simple illustrations showing their ideals, message and general encouragement to other women to join the cause. There was also a lot of propaganda use by the government and other independent groups against them, portraying them all as ugly, old, and stupid, and stating that if women got the vote men would be forced to stay at home and do all of the household tasks that women were traditionally expected to do.
Many anti-suffragette propaganda posters and postcards also called men who supported the movement weak, cowardly pushovers who were controlled by their wives, and generally just ridicules the legitimacy of the movement. This was mainly done through illustrations, as the only images readily available were in the newspapers, and were often of arrests and protests.
Dadaism is an avant-garde art movement originating in Europe after the First World War, directly and explicitly opposing the senseless war and the attitudes that led to it. It can be described as “anti-art” and is linked to absurdism, ironic humour, randomness and general nonsense. Dadaist artists often rejected the traditional, capitalist and logical values of society at the time, and instead had far more left-leaning political messages and used irrationality and anti-bourgeois ideas.
It crossed many different art styles, including collage, sound poetry, cut-up writing, and sculpture. Notable artists in the movement included Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Hoch, Man Ray, Tristan Tzara and many more.
IMAGE ANALYSIS-
This image was created by Hannah Hoch through the medium of photomontage, or collage. She cut up images from various different publications and stuck them together in a way that often seemed nonsensical (and sometimes probably was) but which also portrayed strong messages of anti-authority, rebellion against traditional society including men and women’s perceived roles, and anti-war sentiment. For example, in the image above she features a man holding a baby wearing women’s heels, which was a rejection of the common idea at the time that women should be the main homemakers and caregivers and that men weren’t to be involved in raising children. Around the centre of the image are figures leaping and dancing, which adds an even greater sense of nonsense and ridiculousness, almost mocking even. Hoch was a German artist living during the time of the Weimar Republic, and later, Nazi Germany, so much of her work was mocking both the Weimar and the Nazi government’s failures and ideologies. She often ridiculed the Nazi idea of racial purity as well as just general western standards of beauty, femininity and masculinity.
Born in 1953, Carrie Mae Weems is an American photographer who mainly focuses on the issues facing African-Americans in society (like sexism, racism and struggle with own personal identity) but also deals with presenting the complexity of the human experience. Her work has been exhibited over 50 times around the world.
“Let me say that my primary concern in art, as in politics, is with the status and place of Afro-Americans in the country.”
-Carrie Mae Weems, 2007
She was born in Oregon into a large family, being one of seven children, and had a child of her own at a very early age before moving across the States to California to study dance. While still in her early twenties, she became more politically active and got involved in the labour movement, and she completed her first photographic series in 1983 about the experience of her family and the movement of black families from the South to the North of the U.S.
“…from the very beginning, I’ve been interested in the idea of power and the consequences of power; relationships are made and articulated through power. Another thing that’s interesting about the early work is that even though I’ve been engaged in the idea of autobiography, other ideas have been more important: the role of narrative, the social levels of humor, the deconstruction of documentary, the construction of history, the use of text, storytelling, performance, and the role of memory….”
-Carrie Mae Weems, 2011
She has won at least 18 awards for her work over the years and has 8 publications to her name, including the one showcased below, called “A Kitchen Series” .
A Kitchen Series, 1990
IMAGE ANALYSIS–
A Kitchen Series, 1990
I chose this image out of the whole series because I fell it stands out more symbolically. The series tells the story of a woman’s life as she falls in love with a man, they separate, and her life with her child and her friends around her, but this image is one of the few where Carrie Mae Weems is alone at the table. Her pose is very striking and bold, and it appears as though she has regained her power and sense of self again. The direct eye contact with the camera is daring and almost challenging, portraying the idea that she is whole and independent without the need for anyone else, that she has become her full self and has gone through a personal change that left her as strong and bold as her stance suggests. she is also standing up, in contrast to the majority of the rest of the series where she and the other participants were seated at the table; this also seems to represent her independence and freedom from her past. Visually, the image is quite pleasing as the bright white light above makes her face stand out against the grey background and her black clothing, so her expression and emotion is very clear. The table in the foreground of the image leads the eye into the centre-background, where she is standing, and adds some structure and symmetry to the whole photograph, which in itself is fairly simple and relies mainly on the context of the rest of the series to be as striking as it is.
Racism is defined in the dictionary as discrimination or hostility directed towards a person or group of people based on their ethnicity or race, believing that certain races or ethnicities are superior or inferior to one another. It can manifest itself in many different ways, such as outright violence and abuse towards certain ethnic minorities, or in the form of subtle microaggressions and minor discrimination.
Black Lives Matter protest in London, 2020
Institutional racism has been the subject of recent investigation, especially how it is allowed to continue unpunished. It is defined as:
“racial discrimination that has been established as normal behaviour within a society or organisation”
-Oxford English Dictionary
There have been several major movements to combat racism over the decades, the most notable being the Civil Rights movement in the 1950-60s, and the more recent Black Lives Matter movement. The goals of both are relatively similar, however the Civil Rights movement focused mainly on ending segregation, eradicating racial discrimination, and dismantling institutionalised racism within the government. The Black Lives Matter movement also focuses on ending racial discrimination and institutionlised racism, but also focuses on police brutality and all racially-motivated violence, specifically against black people.
BLM protest in Portland USA, 2020
COLONIALISM-
GLOBAL HISTORY OF COLONIALISM-
Colonialism is the practice of a country extending its authority over other territories, usually aiming for economic supremacy. The process may involve a (possibly forced) imposition of the colonisers’ religion, language, social structures and other cultural practices on the indigenous/native people. The colonisers rule their “claimed” territory with the intent to benefit off the region’s people and resources for their own country’s gain. A clear example of this would be the British Empire, which existed between the 17th century until just after the Second World War.
The transatlantic slave trade was a massive economic factor in empowering colonialism, laying the foundations for modern capitalism, and generating massive amounts of wealth for America and Western Europe from forced labour on sugar, tobacco, coffee and cotton plantations. It was often referred to as the “Triangular Trade”, so called because of the three-part journey the trade ships took: European ships would carry manufactured goods to Western Africa, then transport African men, women and children to the Americas to sell as slaves, and on the third leg they would export to Europe the sugar, rum, tobacco and cotton that was produced by the enslaved labour force.
Statistics can’t convey the horrors of this trade route, as conditions were so terrible and the sailors were so brutal that more than 20% of the captured Africans died during the voyage.
The dreadful Middle Passage could last from one to three months and although the regulations stated that ships could only transport about 350 people, some carried more than 800 men, women, and children. Branded, stripped naked for the duration of the voyage, living in filth, enduring almost unbearable heat, all captives went through a frightening, incredibly brutal and dehumanizing experience…Some people tried to starve themselves to death, but the crew forced them to take food by whipping them, torturing them with hot coal, or forcing their mouths open by using special instruments or by breaking their teeth…Mortality brought about by malnutrition, dysentery, smallpox, and other diseases was very high.
– taken from records during the time period
The Transatlantic slave trade and the ensuing rise in colonialism and imperialism left the entire continent of Africa underdeveloped, disorganised, and vulnerable, with the effects still being felt to this day.
JERSEY’S COLONIALIST PAST-
Jersey also has both indirect and direct links to colonialism, as we have a strong maritime history and several Jersey merchants were involved in the supply of goods through the Triangle Trade. The prominent Jersey historical figure, George Carteret, was a senior investor and consultant in a company that trafficked slaves, gold and ivory from Africa. There was a recent controversy about him regarding whether the statue depicting him should be removed or not, due to his history with this awful trade. The people saying the statue should stay have several arguments: he was an important part of boosting Jersey’s economy and helped foster a good relationship with the mainland, the slave trade was normalised in those times so he might have thought he wasn’t doing anything wrong, or even the argument that he knew what he was doing but the fact remains that it’s all in the past and so doesn’t really matter.
George Carteret’s statue in St Peter
However the people advocating for the statue’s removal have many counterpoints to all of these arguments. While he did help boost Jersey’s economy, so did many other people without resorting to the slave trade; the slave trade is a morally reprehensible product of racism and colonialism and it was wrong even back in those times and people definitely knew it; and most importantly the fact that it is common knowledge that this man participated in the forced removal, enslavement and cruelty against hundreds of thousands of people, and he still has a statue commemorating his other achievements is sending the wrong message and is in a way excusing and ignoring what he did.
BLM protest in Jersey, photo taken by George Marriot
To begin with, I think the zine as a whole was a success and I am happy with the way it turned out. The narrative of a group of friends going out and enjoying their youth/adolescence together worked well with the mainly-candid nature of my images, and the black and white added a more classic and timeless aspect to the whole thing, making the narrative more lasting and ageless. The narrative itself wasn’t planned to be particularly structured or distinct, rather it’s fairly ambiguous and left up to whoever is reading the zine to decide exactly how they interpret the series of images, within the theme of a love story of friendship and youth.
I am pleased with the way the handwritten element added some character and originality to the zine and in my opinion made it feel more personal and intimate. I am also satisfied with the photographs themselves: I think I selected the right ones, I like their compositions and general visual qualities, I think they all worked out very well in the switch from colour to black and white, they all could do well as individual images if they weren’t part of a zine, and most of all I think they work nicely when conveying my narrative.
If I were to re-do this project, I might try and incorporate more portrait images, as many of them are landscape, as well as possibly include more of the handwritten components. I could think about doing the project in colour instead of black and white and think about what sort of effect that would have on the “look” as a whole, or possibly even just do another photoshoot and add more images to make a longer zine. Many of the images were candid and unplanned, so I wonder what sort of outcome adding more posed photos would have, whether that would help to create a more structured and clear narrative. They were also mainly taken outside or in public settings, so possibly doing some in a photo studio or inside someone’s house would have a different effect as well.
The narrative I had chosen to portray through these images was one of a group of friends going about their normal lives together. Most of the images are shots of individuals, which represents how they each have their own lives separate from their friendship group, but how they all work well together and care about each other as a group. With the individual shots, many of them have the person clearly facing and looking in one direction away from the camera lens, and the sequencing of the images makes it so that they are looking at another person, which forms more of the “togetherness” in the narrative. The “love story” aspect is shown in the way that they all have platonic love for each other, which is obvious in the group images, but also all of the individual photos were taken while in a group setting, therefore the expression of happiness, or possibly not-happiness, as clear representations of the love story within the friendship group. The “love story” could also be related to their own individual love of their home where they grew up and their youth altogether.
I had a couple of different versions of the sequence of images, but here I’ll show to actual process of how I did the best one, in InDesign.
To begin with, I skipped making a front cover or title until the rest had been done, to save me having to change it halfway through, and because I needed more time to work on an appropriate title. So, I started placing my images into the zine in the sequence I had worked out before. I started off by placing them directly next to each other, like this.
However I quickly realised how much more interesting it would be if I had the pairs of images in different positions on the page as you flipped through the book, so I experimented with this on each page until I got a pattern I liked.
Most of my images are landscape, but I knew I wanted this one to be a standalone image and I placed it in the centre of the zine, so that it could have the full advantage of a two-page spread. This is one of two images that I had as standalone in the zine, because I felt they work work to full effect if they were the main focus.
I continued with this pattern of placing the pairs of images in a frame in InDesign, sizing them and cropping them where necessary, then adjusting their position on each page, re-evaluating as I went along, until I’d put all my images in the zine. I scrolled through a couple times, just to check I still liked the sequence and the narrative it shows, then went to the next stage.
I had all of my friends who featured in the zine to write their own names on a sheet of paper beforehand, which I then took a picture of, uploaded to my laptop, cropped and fixed so that only the writing was visible and not the paper, then placed them all on the first page of the zine, opposite the other standalone image, which I decided to have like that because it was the only portrait image in the series and it worked best just individually, instead of next to a landscape photo.
Next I added this title because it reminded me of the beginning credits scene in a movie, and I think it did well to make the zine a little more personal and fun, because the black and white of the photos could make it seem quite formal when that’s not the tone I was intending. As the title states, I placed the signatures in the order that their corresponding people first appear in the zine, and I resized and reshuffled them about a couple times before deciding on the way they are presented in the screenshot.
Then, I cropped the signatures to only the first initial of each name, made that a new image, and placed the initials near to their people each time they featured in the zine (except in the one big group image in the middle). I wanted this to have the effect of making it a little less plain and simple, but not distracting too much from the images, as well as making it more personal and distinctive. There are many studies that show how people’s handwriting may reflect their personality, and whether you believe in this or not I think it is a good way to add a bit more character to each unique photo.
I also added this to the centre image, because I thought it was a little odd that all the other pages had handwritten elements except this one. It’s a quote from on of my friend’s favourite books that she wrote down, and it works very well with my narrative and corresponds perfectly to this particular image, I feel. I was debating whether to put it over the actual image itself or not, but in the end I decided that it looked more natural to have it on the border, as though she had written it it the margins of an actual book.
Finally, I went back to the front cover and used a spare image from my first shoot that I liked but couldn’t fit into the actual zine, edited it in the same way as the others so that they all worked together visually, and chose a title that I felt represented my narrative well and conveyed the sort of tone I was going for. It’s the French word for “together”, which was one of the things my friends wrote down on the sheet of paper form before, and so I repeated the process as I did for the signatures and added the actual English handwritten word onto the back cover, as shown below. I kept the font the same as the title in the first page with all the signatures, and kept it relatively small and simple so as not to make it too overbearing or distracting, and try and keep the same minimalistic classic vibe throughout the whole zine.
I went for a plain black background to stick to the black and white theme, but I was conflicted on where to place the word for a while. I tried a couple of different sizes and positions on the [age before just settling on the simplest : small enough to be legible but not too big and in the centre of the page.
I then went through all of my pages, made any final adjustments to placing or size, double-checked that I was still happy with the sequence and my narrative, and then I was finished.
To begin with, I took all the images I had already and pasted a screenshot of them all together into PowerPoint, so that I was able to write notes all around them and colour code them in a way that made sense to me. At this point I’m simply trying to see if I can categorise the images into clear groups, as my plan for the sequencing is to have my images group into “stages/chapters”.
As can clearly be seen, I started by noting down any differences between them; whether they were of a group or an individual, whether the image felt happy or not, etc. , then I labelled where each image was taken. At this point, I was intending to group the images based on whether they portrayed happiness or not, or quite possibly the location where they were taken.
However, after experimenting with some different combinations in Lightroom and using my notes from PowerPoint, I decided that it would work best if I just paired images up with whichever they looked visually best with, based on composition, black and white balance and general shape and form of the image. I am also paying attention to what direction the people in each image are facing, to see if I can use that to my advantage in the zine.
After I made this decision, I went through all the images and, through the process of trial and error, found which images paired well with each other and which would do best as individuals, this didn’t take too long because I already had notes on each photo from before and I could use that to evaluate how successful each pairing was.
Next, I used the same process of visualising and trial and error to come up with several possible sequences of all the images in InDesign, before deciding on my favourite to focus all my attention on (A5 V).
I’m now able to make any final edits and complete my zine, ready for printing.
Now that I have my selection of images that I’ve gone through to double check and am happy with, I can move on to developing them in the same style as the others. They don’t require much work at this stage, only switching them to black and white and slightly adjusting them so that they are the most visually pleasing that they can be.
I chose this image because it was a nice portrait and I knew I didn’t already have any portraits of this person in the zine, I like the fact that it’s his profile instead of face on; I think that makes it more interesting. I think the lighting makes his earring stand out and the light coming in from the windows makes for a nice backdrop. It’s also quite clear that it’s a coffee shop, because of the writing in the windows, which adds to the narrative.
This is a posed portrait instead of a candid like most of the rest of my images, and I especially like how the brickwork comes through quite strongly in the background because it adds some character. I think the way that her eyes are very clear draws the onlooker’s eyes into the centre of the image, and I also think her facial expression is fairly enigmatic/neutral.
I quite like the framing of this image and how the main subject isn’t entirely centre-frame and that it’s at a slight angle ; it’s clear she’s looking at someone else which makes this photo feel slightly intrusive and as though we’re disturbing a private conversation. This image turned out darker than the rest of them, but I think that works because it shows a different viewpoint of the shop and adds some differentiation between the images.
I especially like this image because, unlike the others, it isn’t an individual portrait and shows a more candid and natural interaction between friends. The body language shows intimacy and how they’re comfortable around each other, and I believe it worked particularly well in black and white as well.
Overall, I think the final selection of images are going to work quite well with the others, and with the narrative as a whole that I’m planning. If I had to change anything, I would maybe try for some more images from different angles, like form behind or from above/below, but I also think that the images I actually have are a success. Below are all of the images in their finished state :
