Here I have explored certain ideas that relate to the theme of identity, touching on subjects that I found interesting whilst studying the topic of Identity and Community in year 12 and 13. This allowed me to list any sub-topics I could go into within these categories and enabled me to think of ways I could link this to my personal identity. I am particularly interested in developing my knowledge of my family background through photography and collage. With this the subject of lineage or family would work best as it would allow me to explore some elements of childhood and regional backgrounds within it.
This mood board I have compiled includes photographs that relate to the four subjects stated in my mind map, with quite a few using multiple mediums to create one image, something I would like to experiment with and incorporate within my own work. The images I found especially interesting from researching these types of photography, were created by artist Clarissa Sligh who creates collages from her old family photographs to reshape the past in one of her projects, similarly to Carole Benitah.
My projects central focus will be around the complex idea of identity. I want to explore this theme through emotional and aesthetically consistent imagery and videography. I am going to hone in on something close to me to explore the idea of identity. I want to examine the sport of rugby. I have been playing rugby for Jerseys rugby team for a number of years and have been playing the sport since a young child which will give my project the aspect of an insider documentation. I want to explore how a team conducts themselves as a whole and the notion of finding identity within a team.
Jersey Reds mini rugby coaching Sunday session
Picture: MIKE KENEALY
However the main focal point of my project will hone in on one person to explore their identity. In this way I want to focus on the idea of identity in terms of ideologies of masculinity and also the idea of escapism. I believe this is important to explore; growing up rugby has always been a sport that carries with it many stereotypical notions. I believe rugby carries pride, patriotism, brotherhood and endurance within it. It was always a measure of toughness and strength. Two elements that are held in high value. However, these notions can loose their value when seen from the wrong perspective. Often these ideas associated with rugby can mutate into very toxic pressures placed on individual players. Hypermasculinity can have quite a negative effect when talking about identity. With my project I want to explore a rugby player who resembles the stereotypical Viking-like nature of rugby players and strip the ideological walls down and explore a real identity not just the face value aspect of ones identity. I have already began collecting images that represent begin to explore this idea.
To gain insight into the task of creating a personal statement and personal investigation I explored the work of a previous student.
To full understand and ensure I would cover ever aspect of this project I looked at the grading criteria.
This helped me analyse the previous students work and give him a grade which will help me understand how to get into the top grade. To ensure a top grade and achieve all the assessment objectives, ideas need to be developed through sustained and focused investigations which are supported through contextual sources which presents a developed understanding of the project. Appropriate techniques and recourses need to be explored and sustained throughout. Appropriate evidence of recorded ideas need to be included and finally a meaningful response personal to the individual that relies their intentions needs to be made. I also looked at the students work in terms of Concept, Editing, Sequencing, Design, Narrative and Aesthetic. Further criteria to assess the students essay:
Does the essay address its hypothesis?
Does it provide new knowledge and understanding?
Is the essay well structured with a sense of an introduction, paragraphs and a conclusion?
Use and flow of language, prose, punctuation, spelling.
Use of specialist vocabulary relating to art and photography.
Analysis of artist’s oeuvre (body of work) and key work(s).
Evidence of wider reading with reference to art history/ theory, political discourse and/or socio-economical context.
Use of direct quotes, summary or commentary from others to make an informed and critical argument.
Use of referencing system (eg. Harvard) and a bibliography.
Use of illustrations with captions listing name of artist, title of work and year of production.
Considering all this assessment criteria will help me create a well structured and in depth response.
Following on from this I began a reviewing and reflecting process were I looked at an overview of what I have learned so far (both as Yr 12 and Yr 13 student) and how I intend to develop my Personal Study.
The project that has inspired me the most from the what I have explored so far is my work exploring the theme of identity and place through the medium of photography.
Through this project I explored the notion of telling a story in way in which I explored identity in terms of feeling a loss of identity by feeling like an outcast to society but finding identity by fitting into a sub culture. I approached the project through a combination of conceptual
And portraiture style responses
Through this identity project I explored more modern artists such as J grant Brittan who’s work explores the theme of identity through a romanticist style of photography. And more historic representations of Photography such as Claude Cahun, part of the Dadaist movement of photographers exploring surrealism and identity in an innovative contemporary style. Claude is a highly influential artist for me. Claude was able to massively further my knowledge and understanding of contemporary photography as well as give me a perspective on how to approach themes using my creativity through the medium of photography. I therefore also further developed my photographic skills, specifically skills relating how to create narrative with tableaux imagery and draw emotion from the subject I was shooting which has translated to my current work.
I also experimented with more low light photography which was a challenge for me however I learnt from mistakes and fixed them which advanced me as a photographer.
This previous year 12 project is why I want to focus on developing this idea of identity to construct my personal study and investigation.
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.
2. Include examples of both previous and current experiments and imagery to illustrate your thinking.
Albert Ranger-Patzsch | Alfred Stieglitz
The first theme that we explored at the start of year 12 was abstract. We showed this theme through a variety of different forms, such as still life photography, landscape photography, and documentary photography. One of the key artists we studied was Albert Ranger-Patzsch, and his project ‘The World is Beautiful’. We produced a response to this project by photographing normal, mundane objects and turned them into images which were aesthetically pleasing and appealing to the eye. We did this by using a range of techniques on Photoshop, including adjusting the white balance and the contrast on the images. Another artist we studied was Alfred Stieglitz, whose photographs differed from Ranger-Patzsch’s in that they were a lot more organic and soft in form, whereas Ranger-Patzsch often had straight, geometric shapes throughout his images.
William Klein | Arnold Newman
The next theme we looked at was portrait photography. During this topic we began to use the photography studio with a professional setup and proper lighting. I enjoyed this theme the most because I felt that I had more freedom to make the images that I wanted, and I enjoyed using the studio and the lighting. I was able to manipulate the set up of my photographs in order to achieve the look that I was aiming for, and so I liked having more control over the whole process instead of coming across the idea for my image due to chance. One artist that we studied was William Klein and his collection of candid and street photography. We compared Klein to various other photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson and Arnold Newman.
Ansel Adams | Fay Godwin
The next theme we looked at was landscape photography. This involved going out to different locations around the island and taking observational photographs. One key artist we studied was Ansel Adams. We analysed his images in depth in order to understand the best techniques for taking photographs in an outdoor environment, such as the camera settings and the correct lighting. In our response to this theme, we carried out several different photoshoots of various landscapes and compared our images to the artists that we had studied, trying to find any similarities and differences between them.
Our next theme was identity & community. We have carried out several photoshoots throughout this theme; for example, when we took photographs of the old buildings around St Helier and in the French, Portuguese, and Merchant’s Quarters as a group. Additionally, we had to conduct independent photoshoots in small groups as a part of our NFT project, and also produce a 30 second film, complete with sound. We used different skills that we learnt through various workshops about animation and embroidery to produce our final NFT project.
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.
2. Include examples of both previous and current experiments and imagery to illustrate your thinking.
3. Produce a new mind-map and mood-board based around how you interpret one/ or both theme(s) of IDENTITY & COMMUNITY using new artists inspirations and visual references etc. Reflect on the Island Identity project and also consider themes more broadly (see below)
4. Write a Statement of Intent that clearly contextualise; What you want to explore? Why it matters to you? How you wish to develop your project? When and where you intend to begin your study? Make sure you describe your chosen theme (IDENTITY & COMMUNITY), subject-matter (topic, issue), artists (inspirations, references) and final outcome (photobook, film).
5. Plan your first photo-shoot as a response to initial ideas. Must be published on the blog by Wed 2 Dec.
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.
2. Include examples of both previous and current experiments and imagery to illustrate your thinking.
Themes
The theme that has inspired me the most in my Photography A-level course has been the Identity project for the mock last year. The theme allowed me to, “successfully talk… about past experiences in my life and… turn it into art.”
Medium
The medium (photography film) has influenced a lot of my future ideas for this new project on Identity and community. This is because the film my class colleagues and I produced touching on the theme of religion and the LGBTQ+ community, has allowed greater knowledge to flourish into how important it is to have a narrative and sequence in the film you are producing. I know this because the group and I struggled to find the right way to share my story through a film; how can we make a film that isn’t for or against homosexuality or homophobia but still raise awareness in both the communities and their duties. For example, if you’ve got same sex attraction and are Christian, instead of worrying if it is wrong to be in a same sex relationship or not, you should, “…seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” And if you are simply religious and don’t particularly agree with LGBTQ+ lifestyle, instead of spreading hate comments and come across homophobic you should still love these people for Jesus said, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her. ” He said this because, “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you, “Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”” This powerfully shows that instead of accusing people of their sin, Christians should be directing people to God instead of away.
Shwod took the name Claude Cahun in 1917 and have since explored self-portraits, exploring themes such as sex and gender identity in their work. However, their work was largely opposed because homosexuality was seen as shameful and disgraceful in the 20th century and beyond, but their portrayals were powerful, with some people liking it. We can see that in the image above, due to Claude’s reflection in the mirror, we can clearly see that they have seen themselves as a guy/lesbian and are looking at the camera with pride but charm, showing that they know who they are.
Claude Cahun has influenced my ideas for this project as I will be talking about identity and mention sides of homosexuality so Claude Cahun serves as comfort as I know I won’t be the only one talking about this.
Approaches
Documentary Photography has been probably my most liked photography approach as it allowed me to share people my story. Through this I was able to bring into light what struggles I face quite on a daily, the sort of comments one can get. This is really useful because it provides hope to ones going through a similar event and they can look and see that I’m still here showing them that if I can do it so can they. This is professionally shown through my Identity project:
During my NFT project, I have experimented with Adobe Premier; software that allows creation and editing of videos. During it I learned how to properly format a narrative, how different fading animations may portray a thought to the viewer. For example, if we are slowly fading from a portrait scene to a different scene, the viewer may see that as the character’s thoughts and aspirations.
This successful technique can be clearly seen throughout the final film titled ‘Love Thy Neighbour’:
The embroidery also influenced a lot of my ideas for this new Identity & community personal investigation as it allowed me to create a narrative through a variety of images. This can be seen in the following blogpost:
As we can see, the embroidery workshop has allowed me to use “my own struggles and life experiences and implementing them in to a physical art work. For example:
“The words “Je t’ai aim” suggests that an event happened in a love story and all you want to say is “I loved you” but you can’t get yourself to finish the phrase because there are lots of people around, a lot of opinions, thoughts and worries.” This is evidently shown in this embroidery because the word “aim” isn’t grammatically correct in French, it should be “aime”.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I agree to a large extent that my past projects are useful for this project. This is because it has helped me to create new ideas for the Identity project. For example, learning about Premier will be made useful for this project as it allowed me to present and narrate a story using videos, images and music. I will therefore use this knowledge to figure a way of talking about my identity through a combination of videos, images and music.
3. Produce a new mind-map and mood-board based around how you interpret one/ or both theme(s) of IDENTITY & COMMUNITY using new artists inspirations and visual references etc. Reflect on the Island Identity project and also consider themes more broadly (see below)
During my time looking at the topic of Identity and Community in year 12 and year 13 I have learnt various ways in which to produce a final image or piece, in turn discovering what themes, mediums, movements, techniques and methods inspired me the most. With this I mainly focused on the medium of photography, however I have also explored how this form of expression can be elevated by incorporating other mediums such as embroidery and animation into my work. This was evident when looking at the works of Yulia Makeyeva, who adds to her photographic pieces by including textile and needlework in and around her images. We were also given the opportunity to take part in a workshop with her, learning the art of embroidery and experimenting with collage and stop motion animation.
Yulia Makeyeva
I was also fascinated by embroidery artist Billie Zangewa, who relates to the theme of identity and community through her autobiographical portrayals of womanhood and motherhood, using the technique of needlework. Another aspect of Zangewa’s work that interested me was her representation of the importance of women in society and the oppression they suffer coinciding with the feminist movement. In addition, I have also explored the medium of animation and learnt how to use programs such as Adobe After Affects in order to create such pieces, through the workshop with local animator Liam Nunn. With this we experimented with different sequences and movements, ultimately creating a ten second simple animation. This linked with the identity and community of the island due to the fact that Nunn has worked on various projects that showcase our islands unique identity with companies such as Jersey Dairy.
Animation experimentation
During year 12 I also developed my understanding and gained a new appreciation of the original photographic process and pioneers of photography on the island during the late 19th century and early 20th century, such as Emile Guiton who used the Autochrome process invented in 1903 to develop his photographs. This knowledge was gained through class visits to the Jersey Archives, which holds thousands of images that tell stories of the islands evolving identity. With this I found this particularly interesting as by looking at archived images it gave us an insight to the types of people and communities existing in Jersey at the time. We related this to our personal identities by researching our own family archives, and learning more about our lineage and regional backgrounds.
Emile Guiton, Marett Road
Overall however, what inspired me the most was when I had the opportunity to look at the work of Carolle Benitah, and her use of stitching and collage using archived family photographs to display her own personal identity, and how she wants to change it. This work inspired me to create work in a similar style to her, to showcase the identities of different people’s regional backgrounds, experimenting with collage.
Overall, I believe that our final image and film have turned out very successful as they relate strongly to our initial intentions of commemorating the women who have fought for their own rights throughout history. I am really proud of what we have accomplished during this project, learning new skills on different software such as Premier Pro has been really beneficial in discovering the limitless elements of photography and all we can do with it. I believe our final film succeeded greatly due to our setting, lighting, camera angle and casting – using a model who has such a timeless look helped us portray different decades and styles which all together sustained the aesthetic of our film. Additionally changing our idea to using a static camera shot, instead of panning along as the model moved, assisted with the fluidity of each video; we developed our ideas well as a team by working together and listening to each other’s input. I believe that our message comes across clearly in our film through our use of visual imagery and audio, the idea to use clips from historical interviews helped focus on our main objective. Our final image was created by choosing our 4 favourite images from our shoot and editing them together to form a collage as if our model were seeing different versions of herself through a mirror. I believe we really captured a sense of pride in this image, it represents looking back on the empowerment and rights we have been given by our ancestors, feeling confident in oneself of all that has been accomplished. One part of this image that I think works particularly well is its repetition of the colour orange, symbolising strength and confidence being such a bold colour while also keeping a theme of regality throughout. If we were to have more time on this project I would have liked to improve my skills in digital animation using Adobe After Effect, we brainstormed how we could use this software in our final film but couldn’t come up with an idea of the right standard. Nevertheless, I am extremely pleased with how our final film and image have evolved and developed – I believe they represent a fight for gender equality and female empowerment successfully.
Statement
The evolution of women’s rights into the future Metaverse, a time when diversity and equality are the norms, where a woman can choose what she does with her body without the input from the government and society around her. The concept of our NFT film is to explore the three major waves of feminism in the last 100 years and to celebrate the women who have fought for women in the present to have equal rights to men. The name of our film came from a play on words for Mankind, because as a society in general we are referred to regarding men, by switching the prefix Man to Woman we are making a statement on the power of women collectively. We capitalised the K as an ironic reference to the stereotype of women being gentle and sweet-tempered. Conveying ideas about women’s rights throughout the years, suffragettes, protesters and so on, we show the cyclical theme of women standing up for what they believe in and gaining confidence, that we should all have, in themselves.
While on location filming our NFT video, using our plans from the storyboard we created, my group chose three rooms in the house that rightly portrayed our three different eras. The first room shows a rustic, un-modernised kitchen with antique original tiles and cabinets to represent our early 1900’s housewife’s home. The lighting in this room was perfect for filming, with large windows spanning from the ceiling to the floor right in front of where we planned to set up the camera, providing perfect natural light to set the scene and highlight our model’s face. To fit with our idea of showing different decades, we edited this clip with a black and white filter to replicate old silent films. We also really loved the range of geometric shapes in this location as it hinted towards the idea of order and tidiness, stereotypical ‘housewife qualities’ that broke down as our video went on. Our next room we chose was a living area with two red patterned sofas relating to those of the 60’s and 70’s, we loved the minimalistic background of this shot as the blank orange walls provided lots of negative space to draw the observer’s attention towards our models actions. We felt a need to increase the vibrancy of each clip as our film went on, therefore we edited with lower saturation and warmer tones that were more reminiscent of old film camera photographs. However, the one part of this location that could steal the observer’s gaze, for all the right reasons, was the watercolour painting of a woman sat in a field of flowers. We really loved having this painting in the centre of our shot as it conveyed the feminine stereotypes we were highlighting in this whole project, relating back to our embroidery inspiration of ‘The Bugs and the Lovers’ and keeping that motif of flowers flowing throughout our piece. Our final location for representing the modern day woman, confident and assured of herself, was anther living/office area that held a grand mirror that had regal tones of wealth and luxury. As described in our storyboard, we wanted to feature a mirror for our model to admire herself in before leaving frame, and we thought this one was perfect. The golden warm tones from the artificial lighting also helped provide links to happiness and comfort in our final shot.
Audio Editing;
We wanted to create a piece of inspiring audio with links to moments in history that defined waves of the feminist movement to play underneath our film, of course due to copy right we had to find a piece of royalty free music. I researched the free music website Audio Library and found composer Scott Buckley – his instrumental song ‘Luminance’ worked perfectly for our film, with elements of drama, suspense but an overall a calm atmosphere to be juxtaposed with historical audio clips, this piece of music worked well. We also had the idea to find clips from certain women’s rights activists throughout history to layer over the top of this instrumental track. I searched on YouTube to find feminism interviews, our first is taken from Christabel Pankhurst’s 1908 speech recording, protesting for the women’s right to vote, she states ‘the ministers suffragettes, who form the women’s social and political union, are engaged in the attempt to win the parliamentary vote for the women of this century’. Our second historical audio recording is from a NBC news report in the 1970’s on the Women’s rights movement, this woman states ‘we now have ten million women backing this particular measure before congress, that’s ten million women who are united through their organisation.’ Our final audio recording is representing the modern woman of empowerment and self love, it is from Britta Badour’s 2019 poem entitled ‘Dear Young Woman’ where she reads ‘whatever you’re going through as a woman, you have the choice to make for yourself for how gentle and kind you are with yourself’. In Adobe PremierPro, I layered this audio clips over each other to create a piece of sound that told a story throughout our films movement.
Montage Images;
During our video editing process we experimented with how creating a montage for the end of our film would impact the overall message. We wanted to find images from several different decades, highlighting the suffragettes/suffragists as well as present day women fighting for equality and the rights to their own bodies. Each member of our group researched some of the most prominent protests/marches for equality in history, collating a set of images that we wanted to include in our montage. Using a mix of black and white/colour images was something we really wanted to feature. After choosing each photograph we wanted in our montage, we used Adobe Photoshop to create a GIF of our images using the instructions below;
How to make a GIF in Photoshop 1. Create layer for each image 2. Window > timeline 3. Select > Create Frame Animation 4. Drop Menu > Make frames from Layers 5. Timeline > select Forever 6. File > Export > Save for Web Legacy > reduce image size to 720 x 720 pixels
By using a GIF format to create our montage it gave us the ability to speed up the duration of each image, producing a fast paced series of photos that sat in time with the music underscoring our film. We wanted this montage to go at the end of our film to really finalize our message that these issues of inequality are still going on to this day.
Our Title;
As a group we discussed developing a title that summarised our views and message altogether. We came up with the idea of ‘WomenKind’ – a play on words for ‘mankind’, a word that is meant to refer to the whole human race however only refers to the male gender in the process, switching to ‘Woman’ to create a statement on collective women empowerment. We are not suggesting in this pun, or in this entire project, that women are better than men – that idea has been mentioned nowhere – we are simply drawing attention to the fact that for centuries women and men alike have fought for female empowerment and gender equality, we are giving our thanks and telling their stories. Additionally, we decided to capitalise the ‘K’ in kind to hint at the irony surrounding the stereotype of women being weak and submissive, showing kindness to all. This is clearly juxtaposed with our film celebrating the strong powerful women who still continue to fight for equality, our title highlights and challenges the parodic representation of women throughout history.
