With the prints I had from the Anthropocene project I decided to use an innovative and more original way of framing than just a boring white foamboard as I felt the colours of the photos needed something more create to stand out. I mounted the photos in a clockwise rotation on foam board and then cut around so that no board was visible to create an interesting display. I really like how the display turned out as it was intriguing to see how every time the frame was turned a photograph would be upright.
I arranged the images in accordance with rainbow colour theory in order to maintain a visually pleasing set up to allow the colours to compliment each other
The last prints I needed to frame were of teacups I took when experimenting abstract photography and new objectivity, exploring artists such as Albert Renger-Patszch, Keld Helmer-Petersen and Jaromir Funke.
Albert Renger-Patszch
Jaromir Funke
Keld Helmer-Petersen
I used adhesive spray to stick the three main photographs in a diagonal line but was disappointed at how boring and bare the piece looked when put together. I was stuck with inspiration when looking at the smaller prints that I had intended on throwing away and decided to turn the piece into a montage. I crumpled the photos to create a more dated- vintage feel, and ripped them into smaller pieces to cover more surface area. After sticking them down I noticed an improvement however there still was a lot missing. Upon finding an old encyclopaedia I decided to use the photographs and illustrations from the book to complete my montage. Initially I only used photographs of pottery from the book to link with my original photos however I moved away from that by using a general theme of advancement of human culture which connects with the projects I have been undertaking throughout my A-level course of identity, community and culture. Instead of cutting, I gently ripped the illustrations to make them look distressed and on theme connecting to the vintage book. The encyclopaedia, which appears to be from the early 20th century, is very colonial in nature and is accordingly racist with photographs of African ‘Primitive’ ‘Savages’ and Eurocentric praise of the Aryan race. Using this I created a paradoxical message to look at the end result with a post-colonial lens.
sections of the montage containing colonial outlooks on race, innovations and artifacts
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.’
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.’
Various workshops and school trips for inspirations, recording and experimenting with new images and ideas of making
Here is the spread that features one of my images of my grandad preparing shellfish for a family dinner. The photo is juxtaposed by an image of a fish in a plastic bottle stuffed with plastic straws to create a message showing the devastating effects of pollution on sea life. The sterile plastic filled fish makes the seafood look unappetising and creates a guilty lens view that uses audience positioning to make readers reconsider the correlation between their consumption of seafood and the impact on life below the sea. Having my work displayed in a newspaper was a really interesting experience and it was nice to see my photos in a public place which was a good conclusion to my photography course.
How do archives function as repositories of knowledge?
Archives are fundamental to humans’ culture as a connection to past, present and future. As philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it!” They are repositories of knowledge historic documents and photographs which are stored in archives are, themselves, knowledge.
In the modern day, pretty much everyone has an archive available to them in the form of a phone. These phones have made photography incredibly accessible for the ordinary person. By doing this, photographs have become less permanent and significant in contrast to photos from 100 years ago when barely any were taken, and they were treated as irreplaceable and treasured by those who kept them. In the digital age photos are just not seen as important, and often are not kept very long, deleted soon after being taken. In an era of cancel culture, social media has become an archive filled with images and messages that could, with a little digging, make or break a person’s career. The Société Jersiaise, founded in 1873 is a learned society with a focus on archaeology, providing efforts to preserve the islands heritage and identity. Their archives contain over 125,000 photographic images ranging as far back as the beginning of modern photographic history in the 1840s. In recent years, the group has led the excavation of early human and mammoth remains at la Cotte de st brelade which has allowed a greater understanding of the islands geographical past as well as its previous proximity to France 250,000 years ago. This archive is beneficial to the islands cultural heritage as the archive holds many jèrriais language documents, a language that is quickly becoming extinct. It could be argued that the elitist nature of membership only clubs such as The Société Jersiaise inhibit the sharing of knowledge and disregard the working class as the cost of membership to the club for an ordinary applicant is an annual fee of £60 which many everyday people cannot afford. In comparison the British government in a move to increase education made virtually all museum entry free, relying on donations and merchandise sales but mainly their government funding to stay active. This instance illustrates the detriment of privatisation of educative resources.
The oldest physical archive in human history is the Library of Ashurbanipal which was built in the 7th century BC and contains over 30,000 clay tablets, which includes the Epic of Gilgamesh, a historically significant poem from ancient Mesopotamia which is regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature and later influenced Homer’s own epics. Both the library and poem help to educate contemporary society, as The Epic of Gilgamesh is though to prove the great flood recorded in the book of Genesis. The oldest artefact discovered are the Lomekwi stone tools from Kenya which are 3.3 million years old and teach us the culture and lifestyle of our early ancestors.
Time capsules have been a means for depositing knowledge to share with the future for hundreds of years, being some of the most basic and rudimentary archives, available to all sorts of people. In 1977 Voyager 1 was sent on a never-ending mission to outer space with an phonographic record dubbed the ‘Golden Record’ which was inscription with diagrams to help extra-terrestrial lifeforms decipher it. The record contains a range of images, music, sounds and greetings to educate space farers about the humble human. Another example of time capsules and their use as archives is the Crypt of Civilisation which was built between 1937-40. The Crypt contains seeds, a typewriter and children’s toys as well as a toy gollywog among other objects to act as a microcosm for the 20th century. The brains behind the project were university founder Thornwell Jacobs who was inspired by the excavation of ancient Egyptian tombs and wanted to create a similar experience for future generations to help them understand society in the 1900s. The crypt is impenetrable and is set to open in the year 8113 A.D, 6000 years after it was built. It could be argued that ventures like this are pointless and that the funds dedicated to them would be better off helping people, especially in America where healthcare is a privilege and not a right however projects such as the ones mentions throughout this essay are vital to the ontogeny of the human race. Through the documentation of the past we learn from mistakes and successes which allow us to advance as a society.
In the end I had two zines focusing on similar themes of family. Some images were shared by both zines as they followed the same central device of community but both end results being very different.
This was the first zine I made. Although I liked how the candid photos provided an intimate insight into family dynamics at family gatherings and dinners, I felt that they seemed to clumsy and not as put together as I would have liked as I also refrained from editing them too much which made the photos seem too amateur, which perhaps considering the nature and context of the concept of the zine is on brand. To amend this I remade the zine with more polished images and more of a plan on how to layout the images to create better syntagma.
Out of both zines this is my favourite. It is more polished than the first and is realistically better for a newspaper than a zine which is why I used it as my draft for our class island identity newspaper project. This project has been beneficial in educating me on my own family’s history, as well as teaching me new skills on media software such as InDesign.
After putting together these photos I decided that there was not enough variety and although I really wanted to include the archival documents and photographs, they did not seem to fit in. To combat this issue I created a montage based on the portrait of my grandmother with a bricolage of her family photos and her own grandmothers immigration papers and documents.
the archival images I wanted to include
Using photoshop and the object selection tool I took key components from the archival subjects and pasted them over the initial portrait of my grandmother which I edited into black and white with a sepia wash to fit within the zeitgeist of the time period the other images came from. I replaced my grandmothers’ head with her grandmothers and scattered images from family weddings to create an image of unity and fit the prompt of identity as family is an important aspect of identity. To further stick to this identity prompt I used the typography from my great-great grandmothers certificate of registration that was taken from her alien identity card on her arrival from France to Jersey. The letters were severely damaged sue to being over a century old so I had to fix them on photoshop using the spot healing brush as well as redrawing some of the letters utilising the eyedropper and brush tool.
corrective editing of the letters from the identity card
To re-establish the connection between family I pasted in the signature from the identity card. I intended to make the writing lighter and have it blend in more but was unable to do so, instead keeping it bold to make the family connection stronger. To create a link between the old and young identities of my grandmother, I included a photo of her as a child on her shoulder to show the importance of sticking to your roots, this is a very important message for my grandmother who grew up in abstract poverty raising her younger siblings and still works hard to take care of her family
As many of my projects are connected with the subtopic of food I decided to continue that topic of study for my segment in the newspaper using a collection of photographs taken for previous projects. To achieve this I used InDesign, which I had previously used in my Zine project and set to work curating my favourite images to present my work over the last year. I used a mix of full bleed spreads as well as juxtaposition sots which include my great great grandmothers alien identity card contrasted by a portrait of my grandmother. I edited my photos on light room with a range of black and white and others with cinematic and vintage filters to create deep meaningful colours and imagery relating to vintage cookery books. Initially, when searching for my photos I realised that a vast majority were compressed low quality images so had to do further searching to find the raw images on my SD card to ensure the photos would be high quality with minimum pixilation and blurriness.
After putting together these photos I decided that there was not enough variety and although I really wanted to include the archival documents and photographs, they did not seem to fit in. To combat this issue I created a montage based on the portrait of my grandmother with a bricolage of her family photos and her own grandmothers immigration papers and documents.
I designed the layout for my first zine by matching silhouetted shapes unconventionally, The photos contrasting between portraits and landscapes taken in town between candid’s taken at a family dinner. With the second zine I followed a less conceptual idea with all photos being centred around the family and the only photographs not on a family member being archival documents of family members and a platter of seafood which I used to represent the central theme of food that brought my family together.
Zine (short for magazine/fanzine) is a self published type of print media which expedites the process for young amateur creatives to spread their work and gain traction. The format begin in 1940 with the publication of a science fiction fanzine by Russ Chauvenent but is perhaps most recognised for its ability to spread political opinion and the phenomenon of 3rd wave feminism, seen specifically in the feminism subgroup of the riot grrrl movement in the early 1990s.
The punk-rock girls group bikini kill published their second zine which included their riot grrrl manifesto which established the aggressive, confident feminist movement which eventually inspired prominant groups such as the spice girls with their iconic slogan of girl power being directly influenced by the trend.
For my own zine I chose to explore the topic of identity and culture focusing through the lens of food and how it brings together families.
