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Independent, Reading, Task

Design and Layout

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Mood Board

What is a Zine?

A zine is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very small group, and are popularly photocopied into physical prints for circulation.

Zine - Wikipedia

Why Photographers Should Create Zines

Digital marketing isn’t always the most effective method of marketing your photography. That’s why photographers have been creating zines for years.

James Moreton is a photographer who is experienced in the art of zine making.

James Moreton

He is an artist who enjoys the tactile approach to photography. “I believe the photographic book is the best medium for photography. The ability to create impact by pairing, juxtaposing and sorting pictures into a flow in order to tell a story or instil an emotion in the viewer is unsurpassed by any other photographic medium” This is why zine making is an important element of a narrative project, therefore, I will incorporate it in mine.

More of James’ work here.

Craig Atkinson: Café Royal Books

Craig Atkinson is the founder of weekly publications, focussing on post-war documentary photography linked to Britain and Ireland called Café Royal Books.

This is an example of valuable photographic works being collected into the tactile and aesthetically sequential format of a zine. “The publications are bought as gifts, as nostalgic reminders. They’re used as reference for film makers, producers, screen writers and costumes designers. Universities collect the books to allow students access to the large collected history of this genre of photography, which hasn’t existed to this extent, in print, before Café Royal Books.” This shows the importance of having a tactile form of work to inspire and reference, which zines seem to capture very well.

Atkinsons zines have an aesthetic formality and consistency which I want to replicate in my zine in some form.

This video by an independent artist encapsulates the zine making process

I want my design to look like a romantisized interpretation of the buildings and communities in St Helier, I want the viewer to feel like they are walking through the town and meeting the people in my compositions when they flip through the zine.

My Format, size and orientation will be as follows:

width: 148mm
height: 210
pages: 16
orientation: portrait
columns:2
column gutter: 5mm
margins: top, bottom, inside, outside: 10mm
bleed: top, bottom, inside, outside: 3mm

The Title for my project is ‘Rank’. This plays on the difference in class the migrants withhold, it also plays on the common feature of most towns – a taxi rank, finally it plays on the slang word for something that is disgusting – this disgust refers to the vast difference in class. I also want to caption each image with a vague subtitle allowing the viewer to think about the images in different ways.

I began by setting up my page colour to be a grey shade. I made sure I added this colour all the way to the bleed line to make sure it printed in full grey without a border. I made my page colour grey to add additional dark colour to the urbanism in my images.

During experimenting, I decided that to enhance my narrative sequence I would rather have a different page colour for each page to enhance and compliment the aesthetic of each image individually. Following on from this I decided that every two parallel pages will have correlation and therefore share the same themes including page colour.

I then decided I want a more abstract look to my front cover as I wanted my zine to entice the viewer and have a more experimental theme. I did this by using the scissors tool to displace images and create different proportions and borders.

I then started adding a theme to each spread. As you can see below I introduced visual elements from my images into the rest of the spread to further develop the narrative and aesthetic of the zine.

I did this by using the eyedropper tool to select a colour from the image to use as the page colour of the spread.

I also decided to experiment with how the page splits my images over the spread by applying some images over two pages like the image below.

I then designed a back page that correlated with the front page by using the same colours and themes.

I then scrolled through my zine adding vague image captions to further the narrative and encourage more thought about the purpose of the project.

Final Evaluation

Throughout the project I was able to endeavour into a pit of knowledge with two territories. The first being the historical and cultural contexts of Jersey and learning more about the rich cultural history the island holds. This led to understanding more about migrant communities which was the predominant theme I was exploring. The second territory of knowledge I gained was that of myself awareness. I was able to learn more about my position in Jersey’s community and my similarities and differences to others in my communities. This identity discovery waws fuelled by experiencing new people and cultures while exploring this topic and learning about the history of the place I call home. I also gained insight into an entirely different scope of art, this being the history of architecture in St Helier. I gained knowledge from an experienced historian and architect from a walk examining the wealth of historic buildings and attractive townscapes that characterise Jersey’s capital. He walked through the history of specific areas through archival records. I was also able to explore the beautifully restored Victorian House and enter the drama of a Victorian family in crisis which developed my insight into the history of how Jersey’s economy and infrastructure came to be.

I was additionally able to apply and channel my knowledge of zine making into a tangible project. I learnt about new software – Adobe InDesign and its useful qualities in terms of creating professional print works. I learnt about other significant zine publishers in Jersey – ED.EM. and others like Café Royal Books and apply them to my project. I was able to turn an idea into a tangible and aesthetically planned narrative which matched my intentions of this project sufficiently.

Independent, Reading, Task

Narrative and Sequencing

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STORY: What is your migrant community story?
Describe in:

  1. Scenario, connection, diversity
  2. Depictions of the everyday lives of migrants and their communities in St Helier.
  3. Capturing everyday lives of the vast range of people that have migrated to St Helier. The way these people have formed communities and how the different communities differ in various elements but mainly their aesthetic differences. The different social and historic contexts that have defined these people.
  1. A migrant community

NARRATIVE: How will you tell your story

I will use a sequence of deliberately positioned images which capture the essence of the story in an aesthetic way and also act on the narrative. They are positioned in a way were the images trigger questions and ideas about the subjects photographed and the narrative is told through how the images are sequenced and how the reader is guided from one image to the next.

AUDIENCE: Who is it for?

Most image makers tend to overlook the experience of the viewer. Considering who your audience is and how they may engage with your photo-zine is important factor when you are designing/ making it.

I want to lure in a wide audience who live in Jersey. My project highlights the fact that everyone in Jersey is essentially an immigrant and it is important to learn about the social and historic context regarding how and why these communities have formed. Therefore, I want to specifically target an audience that is lives in Jersey but is not essentially from jersey. I also want to target a specific ‘young adult audience’; 15 -25. This is so that the younger generation of big thinkers can start to ask questions about their heritage and educate themselves about the Island and its cultures and bands of people.

Editing

Edits from all shoots:

I believe that during the editing process I was able to dramatize and romanticise the locations and people of St Helier proficiently. I used a series of dramatic contrasting and aesthetic composition to begin telling the story of migrant communities in St Helier. I believe in order to start composing an effective narrative I needed to start categorizing and grouping images. This leads on to the next step in the process, sequencing.

Sequencing

I began narrowing my image range down from about 100 images to only 18 images.

I then began a tactile process of printing my images out and, by hand organizing them into a sequence. This is so that I could move them around quickly to experiment different combinations with ease and visually connect and sequence the images. This allowed me to notice that my combination of architectural images of different styles of buildings in St Helier had correlation, visually and culturally, with the portraits of individuals in the communities. There were also a few images where I felt certain characters in them had interconnections with others, I therefore chose to position these images together in the sequence. I began to connect and contrast these together until I found a perfect sequence that told the story of St Helier’s migrant communities. This sequence is seen below in order. The

Reading, Resource, Task

Archives – Essay

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Societe Jersiaise is home to a photographic archive holding 100 000 images. It is the primary collection of images in the nineteenth and twentieth century in Jersey. The archive contains images dating back to the mid-1840s. England and France are two nations who were highly innovative in developing the practice of photography from its early stages. Jersey, being sandwiched right between these gave it a rich history of photography that the archive stores away safely. This was also because when photography arrived at the Island 9 months after its discovery in 1840, it was practiced without the worry of patents restricting the medium. The archive came to be in 1873. Included in its creation were a museum and a library. The society immediately realised the importance of recording photographic history as well as buildings, monuments, and ruins. With passion for documenting through the medium of photography consistently developing for over 140 years the archive has resultantly gathered an immense record of Jersey’s history and, consequently, an amazing capsule of the history of the art of photography. By the boom of photography and its technological developments in the 1860s, the number of photography studios in St Helier has increased drastically. The archive is located in St Helier, on Pier Road which is right beside where the bustling Jersey merchant traders used to operate. Merchant trading and ship trading were huge markets in Jersey, this makes the location of Societe Jersiaise quite appropriate. The archive holds works from many photographers that operated in these locations during the boom. Early photographers such as William Collie, Charles Hugo, Thomas Sutton and Henry Mullins. Included as well are later nineteenth century photographers such as Clarence Ouless, Ernest Baudoux and Albert Smith. To follow in the 20th century the archive holds very value images from a rich point in history in Jersey. This being WWII; specifically, images from the German occupation and the liberation of the island. This proves the idea that we can learn about the different people and communities that developed through history by looking at Jerseys past. We get a direct link between what the photographers experienced and the image they took. This correlates with the idea that most people in modern times exercise some form of archiving. Archives such as family albums are common medium found in many homes. Family albums are an example of photos taken over a period and preserved within a family. They hold a special importance for many families. Just by opening it every once in a while, memories are reminisced on, evoking strong emotions and nostalgia. These archives are normally in physical form, normally a little photobook stored away in a cupboard or on the coffee table. These have tangibility about them, and a person can connect with the archive by physically picking up the album and flicking through the pages. However, some everyday archives are kept in digital format. As we move to a more digital age, almost everyone alive has a mobile phone stuck to their hand. This means that almost everyone is some form of archivist. Most of us have vast albums of photos on our mobile devices. Newer phones are always coming out with larger amounts of storage to facilitate these images. This means most of us are carrying around a rich archive of images we have created and preserved on our mobile devices. We carry around affluent history on our phones. Even the text messages we have accumulated over years and years can be seen as a form of an archive. These archives can immediately tell a comprehensive story about one’s personality and history. Detailed insight into a person’s life and their experiences, their relationships, their interests, where they live, their career and everything in between just by looking at their camera album on their phone. This further gives understanding of society and its technological development along with its cultural development and history.

William Collie was a Jersey photographer from the 19th century. Some of Colliers previously unpublished photographs featured in an exhibition at the Musée Dorsay in Paris in 2008. This exhibition boasted some of the first photographs taken on paper in Britain from 1840 to 1860. Below is one of those photographs. It was taken in 1847. It is of Jersey Market women.

This photograph leads onto the next interesting element to note about Williams work. Williams works capturing these portrait style images was one of the earliest signs of tableau photography recorded. Tableau photography is an intentional form of photographing characters who are arranged for picturesque or dramatic effect and appear absorbed and completely unaware of the existence of the photographer/viewer. His work is featured at Societe Jersiaise’s archive. The archive further gives us knowledge of some of the first photos ever taken. William’s contribution is highly valuable. This is not just because he was one of the first to bring photography to the island but because we start to see the contribution of artistic entries into the archive as apposed to just documentative entries. The archive can provide an archaeological view into when photography started to shift from a documentative process to a more artistic one; all due to Williams early tableau works.  

The above photograph is part of Williams ‘Market Women’ collection. The image is of a professionally composed tableau portrait where a young lady is dressed as a Jersey market woman. She is wearing what would be working class clothing of the time. The mise en scene of the image tells the story of a market environment with the hanging basket and what seems to be produced on the ground. The subject has been directed to look away from the lens. This enforces a notion that the subject is absorbed and used to create a dramatic effect; this almost gives the character a sense of elegance but also sovereignty. This sense of emotion the lady is portraying could give us an understanding of the historical context of the image as in the 19th century Jersey saw massive changes in society. A large influx of immigrants from England made Jersey a more connected island than ever before and brought with it cultural changes and the desire for political reform. During this period, the States reformed to become more representative of the population and the Jersey culture became more anglicised and less religious. The island also grew economically, and the built-up areas of the island expanded, especially St Helier, with the development of public transport on the island. This lady could have been represented as a part of this powerful time in St Helier as she is portrayed as a market woman, aiding in the growth of the town. William Collie was probably the first photographer to use the calotype process in Jersey. This is a technique, were a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride was exposed to light in a camera obscura; those areas hit by light became dark in tone, yielding a negative image. The image has an artistic contrast created by the calotype method of photography that Collier was renowned for. The negative light gives a wide tonal range from dark tones in the subject’s hair to a pure white tone just an inch down on her collar. This contrast also gives the background a grainy texture as the shadows on the bricks are accentuated. I believe this allows the viewer to focus on the structure of the image and creates a clear contrast which builds the foundation of the image and shines focus on the features of the character being shot.

In conclusion a lot can be gained from archives in terms of physical, political and social contexts in our society by looking at history in a sensory fashion; looking at images gives us a way to see through the eyes of people living different lives before us. We learn about the different emotions of each social structures at different times by interpreting the photographers’ emotions that get portrayed into an image. This will be the fashion I approach documenting communities in St Helier. I want to be able to capture detailed history of the communities at the time but at the same time interpreting William Collies artistic approach to capture the emotion of the social structures through my images.

Independent, Reading, Task

Identity and Community – Artist Inspirations

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William Collie

William Collie was a Jersey photographer from the 19th century. He was introduced to me at the societe jersiaise photo archive.

https://societe-jersiaise.org/photographic-archive

William Collie was probably the first photographer to use the calotype process in Jersey. This is a technique, were a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride was exposed to light in a camera obscura; those areas hit by light became dark in tone, yielding a negative image.

An oak tree in winter – William Henry Fox – 1842

The first pioneer of calotypes was a photographer called Willam Henry Fox.

Some of Colliers previously unpublished photographs featured alongside those of Fox in an exhibition at the Musée Dorsay in Paris in 2008. This exhibition boasted some of the first photographs taken on paper in Britain from 1840 to 1860. Below is one of those photographs. It was taken in 1847. It is of Jersey Market women.

This photograph leads onto the next interesting element to note about Williams work. Williams work capturing these portrait style images was one of the earliest signs of tableau photography recorded. Tableau photography is an intentional form of photographing characters whom are arranged for picturesque or dramatic effect and appear absorbed and completely unaware of the existence of the photographer/viewer.

Marin Toft – from Tableaux Vivants

William shot a series of photographs, some of the oldest in Jersey, of Jersey market women. They were tableau photographs were the women were dressed up to look like market women.

I believe this was a huge step into the progress of photography, specifically photography as an artform. Photography during Colliers era was mainly focused on documentative intentions, photos were mainly used to record events, document, log and report. William was part of the early photographers who brought an essence of art and creativity to photography and these early tableau’s support this notion.

The above photograph is part of Williams ‘Market Women’ collection. The image is of a professionally composed tableau portrait where a young lady is dressed as a Jersey market woman. She is wearing what would be working class clothing of the time. The mise en scene of the image tells the story of a market environment with the hanging basket and what seems to be produce on the ground. The subject has been directed to look away from the lens. This enforces a notion that the subject is absorbed and used to create a dramatic effect; this almost gives the character a sense of elegance but also sovereignty . This sense of emotion the lady is portraying could give us an understanding of the historical context of the image as in the 19th century Jersey saw massive changes in society. A large influx of immigrants from England made Jersey a more connected island than ever before, and brought with it cultural changes and the desire for political reform. During this period, the States reformed to become more representative of the population and the Jersey culture became more anglicised and less religious. The island also grew economically and the built-up areas of the island expanded, especially St Helier, with the development of public transport on the island. This lady could have been represented as a part of this powerful time in St Helier as she is portrayed as a market woman, aiding in the growth of the town. The image has an artistic contrast created by the calotype method of photography that Collier was renowned for. The negative light give a wide tonal range from dark tones in the subjects hair to a pure white tone just an inch down on her collar. This contrast also gives the background a grainy texture as the shadows on the bricks are accentuated.

Dana Lixenberg
Dana Lixenberg is a Dutch photographer and filmmaker. She lives and works in New York and Amsterdam. Lixenberg pursues long-term projects on individuals and communities on the margins of society.

(self portrait)

Her work strips down her subjects to their fundamental characteristics. Her photographs allow the viewer to interoperate every element of the characters identity and essence.

Dana uses a large format field camera which are completely mechanical sheet film photography cameras. The process is highly meticulous, none the less Dana sacrifices convenience for high quality negatives. I believe that Danas use of these cameras is also a way of making the photography process a more meaningful tangible affair. This sentimental process is also probably a method of connecting with the subject she is shooting more, as her passion is contagious and will leak into the subject she shoots.

It makes the process what Dana calls a ‘slow dance’ with her subjects.

Dana pursues long-term projects with a primary focus on marginalized communities. One of these projects being Imperial Courts 1993 -2015.  It is Lixenberg’s most extensive body of work to date. The project took inspiration directly after the 1992 Rodney King riots. Spanning 22 years, the project tracks the shifting configuration of an underserved community in Watts, Los Angeles. In contrast to the often one dimensional, sensationalized media coverage of this neighborhood, Lixenberg employs a more unobtrusive and community driven photographic approach. Like her other projects, Imperial Courts consists of a series of photographs and a publication. Exploring other media for the first time, Lixenberg also included audio recordings and created a three-channel video installation. The project was awarded the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 2017 and continues to be exhibited internationally.

http://www.imperialcourtsproject.com/

She manages to give us such an in depth look into the residents of this neighbourhood with just street portraiture.

The above is a comparison between William Collie’s image on the left with Dana Lixenberg’s image on the right. Both these photographers are highly evolutionary with the art of photography and telling a story; they both strived to get the most out of their subject. William is pioneering new photographic technology and new styles of shooting portraiture in an artistic way. Dana is evolutionary in the opposite way. She did not try and implement the newest technologies but rather stepped away from the mainstream digital boom of photography she was born into and used older equipment to make her photography a connecting process with her subjects.

Both images are negatives and feature a black and white colour scheme. I believe this allows the viewer to focus on the structure of the image and creates a clear contrast which builds the foundation of the image and shines focus on the features of the character being shot. Both images are composed in a similar way with their subject sat down in a similar way with similar body language. The way their body’s are at a tilt and their hands are together allows both photographers to capture the subjects sense of innocence. The main difference with how the subjects have been composed is that Dana’s is engaging with the camera by looking directly into it; whilst Williams’ subject is pretending the camera isn’t there. Danas portrait makes the viewer feel as if they are engaging with the subject in a personal way whilst William’s is more tableau, making the viewer feel like they are ‘standing on the side-lines’ watching a natural scene take place.

Dana uses a very narrow aperture lens. This gives her image a shallow depth of field and a lot of bokeh. This isolates the subject and creates a neat visual aesthetic with not too many elements clashing. On the other hand William has everything in focus in his portrait. This intentionally allows the viewer to interoperate what environment the woman is in, thus giving her the identity of a market woman.

Independent, Reading, Task

Identity and Community – Photo Walks

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With this series of images I attempt to tell a story about an area of St Helier with historical or contemporary links with migrant communities.

My work will focus on three main elements to capture the historical context of the theme of identity and community in St Helier:

A sense of place – for example; location, site, environment, residential area, communal park, architecture and details, Interior of church, community centre, house or home.

Character of community – for example; street scene, decisive moment, staging or performing for the camera.

People and portraiture – For example, a resident outside his/her house/apartment block, shop/ business owner, street portrait/ passer-by.

I focused on three contrasting areas of St Helier:

Route 1: Merchant quarter – This area of town was once where the core community of merchants were located. It was once located right on the waters edge in the 1800s but now boarders the marina – this gives merchants easy access to their ships and therefore gives insight into why this area is dubbed the merchant quarter. I enjoyed photographing the character of community in this area as people fused with their environment and seemed to interact with it well.

Route 2: French/ Portuguese quarters – This area of town is where most of the European migrant such as the large number of French and Portuguese people that began settling. This area features a diverse range of neighbourly people who form a lively community. This is why I found this area was most interesting to shoot in terms of people and portraiture.

Route 3: British expats/ wealthy residents (Rouge Boullion) – The United Kingdom is Jersey’s closest international partner. Deep social, cultural, economic and constitutional links between us have been built up and maintained over hundreds of years. This area is where most of the wealthy residents and British expats began to settle. The rich architecture in this area is what I found most interesting to shoot. The wealthy British would bring their builders over from the UK to build the magnificent houses. Shooting a sense of place in this area was what I focused on.

Mood Boards

Sense of Place

Character of Community

People and Portraiture

Contact Sheets

Shoot 1 – a sense of place

During this shoot I focused on capturing St Helier’s buildings and homes in a manner that encapsulated the social and historical contexts of Jersey. I did this by shooting different styles of buildings – Portuguese, British, houses, shops, offices. I also shot structures which had different ages; I shot newer office blocks and also old houses that had been around since St Helier’s birth.

During my editing I focused on aesthetic composition; I therefore made sure to frame everything in a symmetrical or artistic manner.

I also focused on dramatizing the buildings using deep colour schemes and contrast.

Final Images:

The image above presents a pleasing visual aesthetic as the images share a consistency. They are consistent with framing and composition with the two doors and stairs framed identically. This image tells a story of community and their connection through identical housing, but also shining focus on unique identity shown by the different colour choices of the doors. These images are also effective at referencing a sense of place A few other images that achieve this message in one composition are shown below.

The below images share warm tones and a ‘lens flare’ in the top of the composition that give the images a sense of prosperity that suggests the buildings have been stood happily looking down on the community for a long time.

Shoot 2 – Sense of Character

For this shoot I shot people of St Helier interacting with their environment and each other. This produced a wide range of emphatic images expressing emotion and telling a story about the area they are in and about what type of people they are.

I also shot images where there was a lack of people in the shot in a physical sense. I instead shot urban landscapes where there was a setting created by people and shaped by the community but lacked the physical presence of people. For example this image of a food stall tells a story about the community and their everyday lives without anyone actually being present in the image.

The following images are of scenes composing of characters of the community. I like the way they are composed in a way were they blend in with their environment, and all look to be living the hustle and bustle of St Helier, just like their migrant fisherman, merchant ancestors.

Shoot 3 – People and Portraiture

For this shoot I focused on capturing the emotion of the people I shot. I also focused on shooting people who were busy going about their day in a variety of different ways, weather that be playing guitar on the pavement or taking a smoke break; the images tell a story of identity.

Independent, Reading, Task

Identity And Community – Shoot 1

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After our tour of the museum we were able to explore the beautifully restored Victorian House and enter the drama of a Victorian family in crisis. Thereafter, we were taken on a tour on the streets near the museum by a passionate historical architecture expert Stuart Fell.

https://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/2021/03/25/our-aim-should-be-to-make-the-place-beautiful-again/

I documented the tours keeping migration and communities in mind and shot it in a fashion that focused on

– a sense of place
– character of community
– people, portraiture

I began my editing process by using the software Adobe Lightroom Classic to start identifying my most powerful and useful images. I did this by working in the Library window and implementing LR’s features that help organise and rank photos. I gave a series of images a ‘flag’ which indicates if I picked them or not. I then gave each image a star rating which narrows down how much I like the image even more and therefore makes the displaying and selecting of my images an easier process. Finally I colour coded images that I believed would work well presented together

I then used the compare views feature to make comparisons between the same photo edited in deferent ways and to reflect on the before and after of my images to experiment how they could be tweaked differently and what works well to emphasise the emotion in my photographs.

The above is an example of this feature being used where I compare two different images edited in two different fashions. The feature makes it easy to see which image works better at one quick glance.

The above is an example of a before and after comparison where the image is split in half and an easy examination into what editing took place can be made.

When editing my images the first element of the image I pay attention to before I start tweaking anything else is composition. I adjust the image using the crop overlay tool to frame and compose the image artistically.

After this I experiment with the colour elements of the image

I do the same but, experiment with a completely desaturated monochrome version of an image.

Below are the final edits of the museum and architecture walk grouped into two collages.

Independent, Reading, Task

Identity and Community – Research

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My visit to the Jersey Museum began with a dive into an exhibition room with multitudes of well designed walls detailing Jerseys lengthily history which began almost 250,000 years ago when the first people arrived in Jersey and continues through the centuries to explore the factors that have shaped this unique Island and the people who live here. This intrigued my interest in immigration and specifically how people from all over the globe come together in an inspiring feat of unity. This interest can be sourced from the fact that I am an immigrant in many forms as I have lived in a few countries and all of them have been extensively culturally diverse such as the place I call my home; South Africa. Which is just like Jersey in terms of its diversity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_nation#:~:text=Rainbow%20Nation%20is%20a%20term,fully%20democratic%20election%20in%201994.

I moved to the island just 3 years ago. The exhibition states; ‘Every Jersey resident has an immigration story – whether their family came here 500 years or five years ago. This exhibition explores some of these stories and the ways in which immigration has shaped and influenced the Island we know today.’ This statement immediately creates an a sense of belonging and inclusivity for me being a recent immigrant to the island considering that everyone has a story they can share and relate to one another with, even the most local islanders.

The section of the museum we visited first focused on immigration to jersey and tells the story about why people have moved here over the centuries.

https://www.facebook.com/JerseyHeritage/videos/735935120595905/

One of the areas of the exhibition I was most interested in was the section on tourism to jersey. Jersey saw a boom in tourism in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

https://www.theislandwiki.org/index.php/Photographs_of_Jersey_in_the_%2760s_and_%2770s_by_Pierre_Mette

It was nicknamed honeymoon island as it was a favourite location for newlyweds. Jersey attracted this boom of people as it had everything people wanted when they started looking to holiday in the post WWII years. Jersey was an escape from life on the mainland and it had better weather and better beaches.

Jersey's rich immigrants 'contribute lots to the community' | Jersey Evening Post

Everything in jersey at the time was also much cheaper which attracted even more holiday goers.

This boom in travel to Jersey changed the island in many ways. Just one example being the fact that aeroplanes used to land on the beach at low tide in jersey but due to the boom they built an airport. This segment of the exhibition took my attention due to the fascinating and aesthetic vintage travel posters used by British and Irish airlines and French railway lines to advertise travel to the island

This part of the exhibition also rang bells in another personal way for me. It relates to another South Africa to Jersey migration story. The story begins with a pair of South African surfers in the 60s got fired from the Umhlanga Hotel for swinging on the chandeliers. I grew up surfing in this area and this is a hotel I have stayed in many times so this story has many personal connections with my life and to learn about these migration stories is incredibly compelling and fulfilling. The surfers then decided to hop on a boat to the UK after getting fired from their job to look for greater opportunities. While working in the UK they realised that the cold, rainy weather and being far from the ocean was not for them. One evening they spotted perfect curling waves and blue skies on a Jersey tourism ad during the time of the tourism boom and hopped on the next boat over. They built their own boards and began surfing down at St Ouen’s Bay. The owner of the Watersplash restaurant and night club at the time noticed the lads and due to the increased number of ocean related deaths happening outside the restaurant, he decided to hire them as head lifeguards. The South African lifeguards continued to surf outside the Watersplash and this grabbed the attention of the local islanders as surfing had not yet arrived on the island. The two men had created a surge in popularity for surfing in Jersey and are responsible for bringing one of Jerseys most popular sports to the island.

ANTHROPOCENE, Controlled Conditions, Independent, Reading, Task

Anthropecene Evaluation

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My original intentions where to shoot more landscape images with a wider perspective. Although I did manage to complete this for a few images, my focus shifted more towards a more close up look at Anthropocene landscapes and more abstract methods of capturing the argument between man and nature.

I believe the process of researching and reacting to Anthropocene in a creative and technical manner as a whole was sacksful as I gained a lot of knowledge about the topic and developed my skills in terms of how to react to it. I believe I gathered and edited a successful range of images which react to the topic well.

ANTHROPOCENE, Controlled Conditions, Independent, Reading, Task

Anthropocene Final Display

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A3

I chose the above three images as they link really well with Anthropocene.

The owl sleeping in the barn window fits really well as the natural lighting beaming through the window romanticises the creature and the leaves behind it and the bubble wrap floating in front of its face represents man’s impact on wildlife. The owl is also framed really well in the window.

I chose the other two images because of how they represent ideas of industrialism and how their colour scheme reacts well to George Marazakis’ work.

A4

The above three images relate well with this project. The deralict land rover with the trees growing around it reacts well to Camilo Jose Vergara’s work and it features the idea of nature fighting back against man.

The two other images relate well to George’s work as they feature a vast landscape with subtle clues of man’s ‘disease’ on the natural environment.

A5

I chose the above three images as they all represent Anthropocene well. The second image is framed well and has a lot of leading lines which makes it an impactful image to represent the idea of deforestation.

The graveyard represents the death of humanity and the idea that nature will always flourish with the vibrant leaves enveloping the bleak gravestones.

Framing and Manipulation

I chose to form a triptych out of the images above as they all present the same theme of man’s destruction and all have a similar colour basis of a greyscale juxtaposing with a deep, vibrant green/emerald colour.