Here is an online link to my photobook ‘Manufactured Memories’.

IDENTITY & COMMUNITY Newspaper

The images seen on the pages of this newspaper supplement are extracted from a variety of projects and final outcomes produced over a two-year academic programme of study by a group of A-Level photography students at Hautlieu School. In their final year the themes of Identity and Community offered a specific focus and through a series of creative challenges students developed a body of work that were inspired, partly from visiting heritage institutions to learn about aspects of Jersey’s unique history of immigration and exploring migrant communities and neighbourhoods in St Helier in a series of photo-walks. In the classroom additional inspiration was provided from workshops on NFTs (non-fungible token) and digital art, embroidery and textile art, animation and film-making, zine and photobook design led by professional artists, designers and teachers.

As part of the research and contextual studies students were asked to engage with some of the key questions raised by the Government of Jersey’s Island Identity project and explore through their own photographic studies how they interpret and identify distinctive qualities of island life. What can we learn from looking at a set of photographs produced by young islanders? At first sight they show us a seemingly random set of images of places, people and objects – some familiar, others surprising. On closer inspection each image is a visual sign and also a conundrum. For example, a fish stuffed in a plastic bottle may ask us to consider more closely our marine environment, commercial fishing or food consumption. As a combined sequence of images they represent different views that in many ways comment on a wider discussion on some of the primary objectives explored in the Island Identity project, such as ‘how we see ourselves’ and ‘how others see us.’

The newspaper was kindly sponsored by Deputy Carolyn Labey, Minister for International Development and Assistant Chief Minister who in her foreword shares her personal thoughts on what makes Jersey special to her in context of the Island Identity project led by her department. She says, ‘identity involves searching our soul, engaging with difficult issues, and asking not only who we are, but how others see us and what a vision for the future might look like. The perspective of students and young people in this debate is critical. Identity is a broad and far-reaching concept, one unique to all of us. This collection of images recognises both our differences and our commonalties. These times may be uncertain, but in my view the topic – ‘what Jersey means to you’ – is a fundamentally optimistic and forward-looking one.’

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The Identity and Community newspaper is the fourth supplement produced in collaboration between Hautlieu School Photography Department and Jersey Evening Post. In 2018 the first issue was The Future of St Helier and last year the themes of Love & Rebellion explored experiences of isolation and lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic. Photographer and teacher Martin Toft, comments: ‘The question of ‘what makes Jersey special’ matters a great deal to every islander and as visual signs, the images printed on these pages are an attempt – not so much to provide answers – but rather asking questions about the essence of this island we call home, and how it actively will overcome current challenges in shaping a prosperous future for all.’

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Evaluation

My Images

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I found the experience of being a part of this newspaper very interesting, with being able to figure out which of my images would look best and experimenting with the layout, and which photographs look best as a small series. The images of mine that have been displayed in the newspaper include the small image on the bottom left, which displays a landscape that shows industrial structures edited into St. Ouens sand dunes, from my Anthropocene project. As well as this a full bleed image of my grandparents hands taken from my personal study project is featured as well as a double page spread of stitched photographs from the same project. It was a really exciting opportunity having my images displayed in a public place and having more people view my work. I think that the series of stitched images work best in the newspaper as it links to island identity in the sense that it touches on how my family moved to Jersey from England, which is similar to many other people who live on the island. Overall, I am very proud of the outcome of this newspaper.

Digital Edits

When creating digital edits of my images to go into my photo book, I first used Adobe Lightroom to adjust the image qualities such as the contrast, exposure, tone, shadows and highlights. After doing this, I then exported my images out of Lightroom, making sure they had a large image size, and then used photoshop to rework them. I altered these images in a style similar to Carole Benitah, although making sure that the adjustments I made made sense and improved my photo book narrative in particular. I did this using both newly produced photographs as well as archival material. On photoshop I edited the images in order to make products such as photo montages, as well as using ideas from my experimentation with this style to create pieces that I believed would appear better if altered digitally opposed to stitching or other handmade alterations.

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Using Photoshop, I digitally altered the images using different techniques to create singular edits. For example, in one edit I made multiple, red hexagonal shapes around an archival image of my grandparents. I then traced over an image of the Manchester worker bee, making it into a PNG, and then placed these around the photograph as well. I chose to do this as my family is from Manchester and the worker bee is one of the best known symbols for Manchester, representing the population’s hard work ethic and the city being a hive of activity. This symbol is often seen in mosaics around the city, which I believe the broken apart hexagons help represent also. In another edit I used Photoshop to erase sections of my great-grandparents. I did this by using samples of the gold-leaf texture from Carolle Benitah’s work, in order to create this appearance digitally without the material. To copy this texture digitally I used the clone stamp tool to create a silhouette of their upper halves. I believe that this texture adds to my narrative as it resembles a faded image and can be said to represent a faded memory of the people in the image, unable to fully recall their character. This also applies to my personal connection with them as I never met them however know of their memory through photographs.

Handmade Edits

When creating edits of my images by hand I first printed off images that had been slightly edited in Lightroom, with qualities such as contrast, exposure, tone, shadows and highlights. Here I used a mixture of both archival material as well as my newly produced photographs. With these, I decided that the method of stitching would work best to improve the narrative function of the images. To ensure that when stitching into the photographs that they didn’t rip I printed them off on card, providing a sturdier material than paper but still containing the levels of detail and saturation that may not have appeared if transferred onto fabric. When stitching, I stuck to the colour scheme of red, white and black thread, with red being the main colour used to symbolise blood lines and family. I used larger needles and thread to create the more basic patterns and create bolder shapes, and used a smaller needle and thread for the more intricate and smaller patterns, using a back stitch to achieve all of these pieces.

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With this method, I made similar designs to my digital edits making sure they were coherent. For example, for one of the images I stitched into I created red hexagonal shapes and embroidered bees around the image, resembling the digital edit displayed above. I did this using a medium size needle for the hexagons and a small needle with smaller thread for the bees, as they were smaller and harder to stitch. I also used patterns to alter my photographs, such as using an arch template to plan my stitches, allowing them to be uniform and neat. For all of my stitched images, I first punctured holes into the card for where I would embroider. This ensured that the stitches were similar lengths.

As well as using new photographic images of my own, I will also be using old archival images from my family photo albums. For these photos in particular I took images from albums created by my grandparents revolving around their time moving houses and their jobs. As these were all physical copies, I had to re-photograph these images to allow me to edit them on Lightroom and Photoshop. I did this by placing the photographs on a white paper background, making it easier for me to cut out the background, with lots of light so there would be no visible shadows. I also took photographs of the documents that were in these albums, such as certificates, ID, work emails and advertisements for houses which my family moved into. These documents will add to the sense of of a family photo album that I am trying to create with my photo book as well as being useful in creating digital photomontages that replicate this appearance.

With these images I will rework them both digitally and manually, by hand, creating new meanings to these old photographs. This will also help these images to fit in with my new images I have made as part of the series, making them coherent as a set of photographs, as some of the images from the new photoshoots will be reworked also. Examples of ways I will use this archival material to produce images for my photobook include embroidered pieces as well as digital photomontages.

Once photographing all of my archival material, I then uploaded them to Adobe Lightroom. Here, I went through the photographs flagging the images I thought would best aid my photo book narrative. I then rated the flagged images out of 5, to further refine my selection. Once I had done this, I colour coded the images I had rated 4 or 5, with green being my best quality and most useful pieces of material and yellow being of lower quality but not useless however, as some may be useful for photo montages. From this selection process I decided which images I was going to edit and rework, these being the green images.

In order to edit my archival material digitally or print them out to be reworked, I had to use the perspective warp tool on Photoshop to make sure the photograph’s dimensions were straight and not stretched out. This allowed me to make the archival material the same image size as my newly produced images.

Experimenting With Layout

Montage

These montages I have created showcases various images of my grandad and grandma along with some pieces of text that contextualise their lives and work throughout the years. I created this using Photoshop, cutting out sections of some images, as well as tracing over images of my grandma’s handwriting to create the text. These pieces will also feature in my photobook as part of my personal study project. I have also laid them out on the page to be a full bleed, meaning the image will go to the edge of the page with minimal borders.

Juxtaposition

Here I have used again images from my personal study project and photobook to create a juxtaposing spread. Here, these two images contrast with each other due to the left image being in colour whilst the right is in black and white, excluding the stitching. However they are still relating in the way that they both part of the same project and feature my grandparents in different forms. The photograph on the left displays the hands of my grandma and grandad, showing a ring my grandad gave my grandma many years ago. On the right is also features both grandparents although with embroidery using white thread to highlight their strong relationship with each other and red thread to represent the bloodlines and family they have created.

Here I tried using images from my Anthropocene project that show contrast through one image being in black and white and one being a colour image with a bold orange hue. These link together as well, due to them both displaying what St. Ouens bay would look like if it was not a protected piece of land.

Sequence

This sequence showcases various digital edits I have made using archival images of my grandparents. These display the story of my grandparents hard work ethic that my personal study is based on, touching on subjects such as my grandads job and my grandma’s caregiving nature.

I have also created another spread of sequential images instead featuring reworked pieces I have created by hand, using techniques such as embroidery. These images in particular are taken from recent photoshoots also made for my personal study project.

Full bleed

In addition to potentially having one of my montage pieces I could also use the embroidered pieces from my personal study project.

Narrative – What is your story?

3 words – Grandparent’s work ethic

A sentence – This photobook will depict how my grandparents worked hard to make a better life for themselves and their family.

A paragraph – My photobook narrative will present the story of how my grandparents put their family first and worked hard to provide them with a comfortable life. This photobook will use both old and new photographic images to retell the stories that are often not mentioned in my family, such as the dedication of my grandma to help bring up my grandad’s siblings after their parents moved away, as well as my grandad’s tireless work ethic that persisted through various economic struggles. It will also touch on my family’s Mancunian roots and their move from there, for my grandad’s job. In essence, this photobook is a form of appreciation to the older generations in my family for the comfortable life and opportunities they have proved me with, as well as celebrating our strong bond and love for each other.

Design

How you want your book to look and feel – I would like the book to feel as if it were a family photo album compiled of both photographs and documents of the time.

Paper and ink – I will use the standard, classic paper for my photobook as I believe it will reflect the standard prints seen in normal family photo albums.

Format, size and orientation – My photobook will be a standard landscape size of 25×20 cm. This is as I think it will best accommodate the format of my images as well as being the same size as a normal photo album, in which many photos are attempted to feature over a single landscape page.

Binding and cover – I think that the best option for the cover of my photobook would be to make it as a hardcover, as it would produce a sturdy and professional appearance to the outside of the book, that could stand the test of time and be passed down through generations. For the binding of the photobook, I think that a standard binding would suit my layout best.

Design and layout – For the layout of my photobook I will place at least one image per page, with the exception of a few double page spreads. I would like my photobook to have a similar layout to that of a family photo album with some pages having two or more images on them, in a disjointed and collage like manner.

Editing and sequencing – The sequencing of my images will not be placed in chronological order due to the old photographs, but will instead be mixed together showing the contrast in my family then and now, showcasing how it came to be through my grandparents hard work.

Images and text – My images will be a combination of reworked archival photographs and new photographs featuring my family. With this, in my photobook I think it would aid the narrative to include small sections of writing next to some of the images, providing more context and in turn meaning to my work.

Mood Board

Here I created a mood board compiled of images showing different photographic books as well as some family photo albums. This will give me inspiration on how to layout my photobook, creating a strong narrative. In particular, I found that through producing this mood board, that I would like to incorporate sepia tones in my photobook, potentially through the colour of the pages to make the book feel as if it is more of a personal family album.

For my third photoshoot in response to my personal study, I once again chose my whole family to be the subjects. Although for this shoot I took the photographs in a staged manner of family portraits. I chose two locations for this shoot to provide myself with a variety of images that somewhat resembled several archived family portraits I had viewed. These included an inside domestic setting, taken in the living room, and an outside pastoral setting, which was taken in the dunes near St. Ouens beach. For the inside portion of the shoot I used both natural and artificial lighting to capture these images, as there was not enough natural light to allow all members to be seen clearly. With this I used a both a medium shutter speed and ISO, as well as a small aperture. After moving outside to take pictures, I used only natural light as it was within the golden hour, providing large amounts of warm lighting to the portraits. Due to this, I used a fast shutter speed, mid to low ISO and a mid to small aperture, for these outdoor images.

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Image Selection

Here I started selecting and narrowing down the images I wish to edit by first flagging the images I believe are of good quality, using the ‘P’ key to do this, as well as flagging the images I don’t wish to develop, using the ‘X’ key. With this I discounted images that were perhaps too dark or out of focus, as well as photographs in which my family did not all have similar facial expressions.

After I had gone through the 170 photographs that this shoot was comprised of, I then filtered out all the images I do not want to edit and went through the ‘P’ flagged images rating them out of 5. With this I found that the photographs I had taken outside were my strongest due to the warm glow of the golden hour.

Once I had done this, I filtered through my photographs again this time choosing to look at the ‘P’ Flagged images rates 4 and above only. Here I was able to view the best products of this shoot. Finally, I narrowed down the best of my images by colour coding them, with green being my strongest photographs and yellow as the weaker ones. This allowed me to determine which of the photographs that were of high quality but too similar to each other, were the best out of them.

Editing

Initial Edits

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