From your Personal Investigation based on IDENTITY & COMMUNITY write an overview of what you learned so far (both as Yr 12 and Yr 13 student) and how you intend to develop your Personal Study.

1. Describe which themes, medium (photography, film), approaches (documentary, tableaux, conceptual), artists (incl contextual references to art history, movements and isms) and photographic skills, processes, techniques and methods (incl learning new software) inspired you the most and why.

During my investigation of Identity and Community I feel as if my skills and efficiency has successfully developed. In the last project which was completed in groups, I found that I preferred the medium of still photography than film material, I felt more confident in the collage created as that form of presentation is my favourite to do. However, the film within our group still had an amazing concept that I feel was well executed by whom was delegated to edit and film our materials. Our group took the choice to push the mediums of the project and to use embroidery, using very useful skills that were taught to us by Yulia M , on our still photography. In the next year, I wish to continue prioritising photography over filming as that is what I feel the most comfortable and confident

One approach I would like to explore is the documentary some time this year. I feel like a real, raw in look at someone’s identity, capturing the genuine essence of how a person may express themselves.

My favourite artist in which I have studied so far is Carolle Benitah, using her work as a reference in two of my projects. I always come back to her work due to how strong Benitah has been influencing my initial ideas, weather that is connected to the literal physical embroidery she presents or how her work gives a sense of ambition to think ‘outside the box’ and try a new, different approach to my final pieces.

Over the course of the year, I can see through revisiting old blog posts that my skills and understanding of writing an image analysis has improved greatly as having more experience with the subject makes it easier to analyse and critique other work. When starting the subject, I found photo analysis the hardest part of the projects, although I still am not the best, I feel a personal accomplishment

Over the last year or so, in photography, I have explored a wide range of different topics, themes and skills such as formal elements, surface and colour, a variety of portraiture, studio photography with different lighting techniques, landscapes, themes such as Anthropocene, identity and community and experimenting with film making and digital images (NFT).

FORMAL ELEMENTS

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I really enjoyed the formal elements project where we folded paper in different ways to create different patterns, folds and marks on the paper, the folds helped to create deep shadows to contrast against bright highlights. Two-point lighting was also used to create the 2 images above, there is a contrast between the warm and cool tones of red and green.

HEADSHOTS

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One project I particularly liked was headshots. I enjoyed experimenting with lighting e.g. one-point and two-point lighting to create different shadows and highlights. I loved experimenting with coloured lighting, for example on either side of the face, using colours that contrasted with one and other. Lighting is a key factor in creating a successful image. It determines not only brightness and darkness, but also tone, mood and the atmosphere. I also liked layering headshots and changing the opacity.

PORTRAITS

A portrait photograph may be important for historic preservation, personal branding or for personal pleasure,  it is a type of photography aimed toward capturing the personality of a person or group of people by using effective lighting, backdrops, and poses.

Examining photographic portraits has been a way we practice critical thinking about identities, how images relate to social, historical and cultural contexts and how ideas, feelings and meanings are portrayed through portrait photography and ultimately how they shape our history.

IDENTITY

The distinguishing character or personality of an individual defines identity.  Identity is who you are, the way you think about yourself, the way you are viewed by the world and the characteristics that define you. How we define ourselves is a self-representation of our culture, interests, relationships and efficacy in doing the things that matter to us.

I enjoyed the identity project, particularly the artists I researched and my final images. One artist I looked at was Carolle Benitah, she explores memory, family and the passage of time. Often pairing old family snapshots with handmade accents, such as embroidery, beading and ink drawings, Bénitah seeks to reinterpret her own history as daughter, wife, and mother.

Benitah created a project called ‘Jamais je ne T’oublierai‘ which translates to I Will Never Forget You.

This project of hers was about how families identities change after someone in the family passes away. I recreated her projects with images of my own…

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I enjoyed the process of editing these images and how the images have a strong sense of narrative, which was ‘all family members lost their identities when someone significant in the family died’.

Exploring Identity Portraits Further…

What I like most about portraiture is the narrative. The emotions on each individuals face tells a story, but just enough so the viewers mind creates its own story about the individual in the photograph. However, its not just emotion in portraiture that can tell a story about a person, its also their culture, what they wear and how they present themselves that really gives us a sense of who they are.

ANNIMATION + DIGITAL IMAGE – EXPLORING FASHION

Within the NFT project, as a group, I was able to produce a project on the generational difference in fashion trends. When developing my personal study, I would like to explore this fashion topic further and involve the theme of identity and how what we wear and how we look portrays a part of our identity in one simple glance from a stranger, they already begin to get to know us. Fashion plays a large part in who we are and I would like to go further into depth in my personal study with fashion, identity and portraiture.

First I created a collection set and then imported all my images into my identity and community folder.
Then I went through my images and flagged (white flag) all the best images I want to use and aimed to half the amount of images I took. The white flag made it easier in the editing process to be able to quickly identify the images I chose as my best ones.

I then went through and started to edit all the flagged images from my first and second shoot. I played around with many different editing tools and adjusted the colour , brightness and shadows on my images to create the perfect lighting and an image that I was happy with. I decided to put some of my images into black and white to create extra effect on those images. I mainly used black and white on the portrait images from shoot 1 as I felt it drew more attention to the emotions on the models face and more emphasise to the image.

For shoot 2 I had less images however I feel my images in shoot 2 replicated different cultures and communities within Jersey that aren’t just Jersey born communities.

During our first year of photography, we were given many different tasks and projects as a way to explore types of photography. It also gave us the chance to discover our strong points and weaker points within the subject as well as what we enjoyed. Personally, I would say that both my strong point and what I enjoy are both portraiture. What I like about it is being able to manipulate the appearance of someone, I think its very interesting that you can completely change the way someone is perceived by changing a setting in your camera, changing lights and changing colours. Of course this can be done with anything- objects, landscapes, however it being another human being creates a different connection to an audience. Recently we were given the opportunity to explore new things such as Animation, Film-making and embroidery. Animation and film making are a good stem from photography and were fun and interesting to look at, it allowed us to stake a step into those worlds to see if thats what we enjoyed- which is just how school should be. However, i personally enjoyed embroidery the most. As an art student, being able to physically alter imagery and making it 3D to the touch can bring life to a simple photograph. It can bring meaning, colour, and it can create a stronger tie between you and your photography turning it from digital to a physical piece of work.

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Below is what I think was a few of my best works over the year (not in any order and chosen at random from different projects). After placing them onto this blog post I noticed the pattern of black and white. Although coloured images can creating meaning and hold just as much significance, I feel that black and white can allow photographs to focus on the subject of them, becoming less about aesthetic and more about context and although taking pictures purely as a way to please the eye is a huge part of photography, taking pictures with deeper meanings is powerful and that is what I love.

Of the many photographers I have looked at or studied, one of my favorites and most intriguing to me would be Wynn Bullock, specifically this image:

This image caught by Wynn was the one that caught my eye. When looking at this image what I saw was a cliff on a foggy day, taken from a distance, but after researching I realised that it wasn’t a cliff at all, the ‘trees’ are actually a form of seaweed that grow on grouped rocks that you find on the beach. So this image is actually a close up of some rocks, taken with a slow shutter-speed as the water flows and crashes on them. The reason why I liked this image so much is not only because I found so much to write about, but also because it shows how misleading photography can be, how well you can hide true meaning from an audience. I also looked a lot deeper into the image which you can look in the link below.

Rural Landscapes Case Study

For my personal investigation on identity and community, my initial idea is to focus on myself and my identity. Its something I’ve never really done as I prefer telling other peoples stories rather than my own. As an overall ‘final’ project before I finish school I thought it would be something interesting and different to do- including different forms of photography such as studio images, lanscapes, portraits, whatever comes to mind when I’ve decided fully what id like to do.

I wanted to make a gif of my process of creating my embroidery stitch. I took multiple images of my stages as I went along with my stitching.

How I made the GIF

Firstly I created a folder containing all the images I took during my stitch up until the finish product.

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Then I opened up my first image in Adobe photoshop and dragged my other images, in order, over the top of the original image which created 4 layers.
After all my images were layered I went onto windows on the top of the screen and clicked on ‘Timeline’ which then showed me all my images. I then had to click on the drop down and select ‘Create frame animation’ which brought me to the image below.

Then I clicked on the small lines in the right hand corner and chose ‘Make frames from layers’ which then created and brought together the GIF.

I found the images were going to fast on the setting Adobe chose so I changed the seconds to 0.2 seconds to create my final outcome which I was happy with.

Inspired by the island identity project we paired off in groups to create seven posters exploring the seven key aspects of the project. We were randomly assigned to topic economy which, as an island with a booming financial industry, was pretty easy to do.

Jersey is a wealthy island with a GDP of £4.89 billion. Traditionally our main industry has been farming with our exports of Jersey royal potatoes and creamy jersey milk being famed for their delicious taste and decadence. In the 20th century Jersey saw a boom in tourism, cashing in by building expansive holiday camps like Plemont resort, however the 1980s saw a decline in Jerseys’ popularity as a holiday destination due to the new availability of much more tropical holiday retreats further from home such as Benidorm. Since then, the finance industry has dominated Jersey’s industry as 21.7% of Jersey residence work in the sector. Many students are pushed into the industry straight after A-levels while others go to university to get an unrelated degree and the return to the island to pursue a career in finance.

Jersey is recognised as a large offshore finance centre and controls an estimated £1 trillion in assets. Due to the islands 0% corporation tax,, many wealthy individuals either settle in the island or shift their wealth here in order to avoid heavy taxation they would receive elsewhere, leading to jersey gaining the infamous reputation as a tax haven. Many well known celebrities including footballer Cristiano Ronaldo have taken advantage of this. In 2021 a new minimum tax rate if 15% was set to prevent this abuse of the economy.

During this project I became much more educated on the wealth gap in jersey and how despite it’s image of an affluent island perpetuated by reality television shows such as the real housewives of jersey there are increasing levels of poverty that are ignored by the media as one in ten households are in severe material deprivation.

The ISLAND IDENTITY project has produced a website and a report that has identified distinctive ‘qualities’ of island life in Jersey. ( https://islandidentity.je/report/heritage-culture-and-the-arts ). We were asked to produce a poster based on one of the following themes :

1. Constitution & Citizenship
2. Communities
3. International
4. Economy
5. Education & Sport
6. Heritage, Culture & the Arts
7. Environment

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What makes jersey environment special and why does it matter to you?

Jersey has several unique reasons to why its special, these vary from different aspects of life jersey has to offer. One reason why Jersey is special is the weather this is due to the fact that it has several positive impacts on the environment as well as the community. The climate in which jersey has is highly suitable for the large farming industry in which jersey has.  This matters to us because without our farming industry we would have to import more products from elsewhere causing an increase in pollution within the ozone layer. Alternatively another positive impact is that jersey has a wide range of historical sights. It has several coastal fortifications (bunkers) from several different periods of time such as the English Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, and Nazi Germany’s occupation of the Channel Islands.

What does it mean to be ‘Jersey’, now and in the future?

I feel that living in jersey feels very compact, one may describe jersey as claustrophobic due to the fact that we live on such a small island which is 198 km². Additionally I also feel that as we are such a small island we have a small community with several; different backgrounds which creates a strong and powerful community. Furthermore in the near future I would like to see a more diverse community. Due to the old generations there’s still a lot of stigma around having a equal and diversity community.

What can we all do to solidify a cohesive and positive Island identity?

I believe that we should all be very welcoming to all backgrounds and accepting of one another even if we come from different places as we all live on the same small Island. This will therefore lead to a decrease in island problems overall due to the fact that people will be more willing to help people with problems such as a language barrier because people will be more understanding of this. Additionally this will lead to people becoming more confident in sharing their views on the island as well as making sure there’s next to no discrimination.

Are there barriers to a positive and inclusive Island identity? (What requires a greater focus and what is being missed?)

I believe that its highly likely that there will always be multiple positive barriers to and inclusive island. These consist of things such as when it comes to different cultures, some people may have certain issues or may not be as accepting as others. This can lead to problems as it would be holding back the progress of Jersey being an accepting community.  Additionally another barrier is that people from different cultures may not want to learn about jersey heritage due to the fact that they weren’t born in the island.

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Shilpa Grupta

Grupta traced individuals who changed their last names either to succeed, or to survive to create this exhibition. 

Photos from Altered Inheritances- 100 (Last Name) Stories:

I like the way that the images have been split in half and stuck back together again in a mix match way and how this represents how the names were shed and then split apart as they needed to change them.

For my own project I would like to take the style Gupta has used and split my images where possible because I think it adds another layer of story to the final product. I plan to look at my own identity and take pictures of objects from my childhood and use old photos to create a snapshot of my life.

Freya Dumasia

 I was born in Dubai, a country rich in religion that intrigued my interest in the Islamic culture. I am interested in using photography as a tool to reframe perspectives and emphasis the way in which a cultural image within society has been constructed through the media. I want to raise awareness within the viewer of the way newspaper coverage and online access to current events manipulates our views and opinions of Islamic culture. My photography aims to express the way the media distorts, blurs and shows a selected view, and to explore the way this process can result in the loss of individual identity.

-Freya Dumasia

Photos from Freya Dumasia’s A level Photography portfolio:

I like the style of Dumasia’s digital photos and would like to try and use it in my own work by perhaps layering a digital overlay over images or using a low shutter speed and taking blurry self portraits or object photos.

Umberto Verdoliva

Photos from What is a dream?:

Two real moments captured over time, merged to create something meaningful, balanced, and unique. Recreating a scene, an atmosphere, an ephemeral reality from something that existed in different times and places has been the leitmotif of my work.

-Umberto Verdoliva

I like the story in these images and how Verdoliva has used photomontage to blend two images together and create a narrative. I plan to mix my photos from the past (from my childhood) and present self portraits or pictures I take that relate to my identity.

Photos from Procida:

Why the island? Because it is the point where I isolate myself, where I am alone: it is a point that is separate from the rest of the world, not because it really is, but because in my state of mind I can separate myself from it.

-Giuseppe Ungaretti

I also like the way that Verdoliva has captured his life and made it personal to him as it is his surroundings. I would take photos inspired by these of places on the island which relate to me or perhaps get images from our family archives of where my parents are from and their hometowns because these are also my ‘homes’ and where the rest of my family lives.

Jocelyn Calac

Photos from Centrevilliens – Dontown citizens:

Last year was special for everyone, I focused on the citizens of my little town of Rodez in the south of France as we was living between the multiple levels of lockdown. I was participating for the Ricoh GR challenge with all the finalists of the Spi awards 2020 and I have to say that it was a special moment with a lot of luck and good energy. This kind of times when things happen with an idea in it, I feel I just have to capture them in the timing. I selected this ten photos because of the short period in witch I did them and it seems to me that they fit well with each others and making a good series of how I saw my city and the ones who was living it with me in this hard cover situation, maybe I needed to put more creativity into my work to balance. I only used the Ricoh GR3 for this series.

-Jocelyn Calac

If I was to focus on community I would take photos like these where Calac has caught people in the moment and they are living their own lives but part of the community where he lives.