Island Identity

The Island Identity project has produced a website and a report that has identified distinctive ‘qualities’ of island life in Jersey. ( https://islandidentity.je/report/heritage-culture-and-the-arts ). We were asked to produce a poster based on one of the following themes : Constitution and Citizenship, Communities, International, Economy, Education and Sports, Heritage, Culture and the arts, or the Environment.

What makes Jersey special and why does it matter to you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pictorial artists take photography as an art form and reshape it into an art form putting beauty tone and composition above the creation of an accurate visual record. Through their creation this movement tried to elevate photography to the same status as canvas and was considered similar y galleries and other art institutions. Photography was created in the late 1830s and was initially considered a way of producing purely scientific and representative images. This situation began to change in the 1850s when a lawyer similar to the British painter William John Newton suggested that photography can also e artistic. Although
can e traced ack to these early ideas the pictorial movement was most active from 1885 to 1915. In its heyday its influence spread internationally with centres in the United Kingdom France and the United States. Followers used a variety of darkroom methods to create images that would allow them to express their creativity train it to tell stories recreate mythical or biblical scenes and create dreamlike landscapes. There is no simple description of the cliché of image journalists but it usually means that an image has been manipulated in some way to increase its artistic impact. Common themes in this style are the use of soft focus tints and rendering operations similar to emulsions or adding brushstrokes.

Photorealism also known as Metaliterary was an American art movement that began in the 1960s that took photography to its end. Editorial realists created most illusions that were not natural but reconstructed. Artists such as Richard Estes Ralph Goings Audrey Flack Robert Bechtel and Chuck Close have attempted to recreate what a camera can record. Several sculptors including Americans Duane Hanson and John De Andrea were also associated with the movement. Like painters who rely on prints sculptors rely on living models and thus arrive at a simulated reality.

Publishing agency was born from the Pop and Minimalism movements that preceded it. Like pop artists the Pulishingists were interested in breaking down the scale of applicable subjects y including everyday scenes from the merchants life – cars shops. and signs for illustration. Like them publishers have tapped into marketable advertising and images. The practice y advertisers of using artificial fashion or machinery similar to photography as the foundation of their work to create detached and non-personalized effects is also linked to both ethnocentrism. Mass and minimalism. However countless aphorisms proclaimed the resurgence of representational illusionism as a challenge to clean minimalism and countless people saw the movement as an attack on the interests of clean minimalism. Significant benefits have been realized y the modern abstract we.
Realistic publishers often project a hacked image onto canvas and also use airbrush to reproduce the effect of a print published on glossy paper. Estes stated that the idea of ​​this painting was mainly about something quick and that the drawing was just a fad to complete it. He chose to disguise the character in his New York street scenes with the look of his photography. Goings and Bechtel also sought to capture a crisp plank using gas mixing in their numerous images of popular us culture in America. Flack projects opulent still-life slides onto canvases rationalizing the 17th-century theme of vanity and reminding viewers of the transitory nature of material possessions. Almost completely converting his friends prints into a giant film before that first in lack and white and also in morning colour in 1970. He first put a grid of light pencils for evaluation. footage and also sketch images with airbrush; He completed the picture by drawing in detail.

The birth of Ultramodern Photography heralded a significant aesthetic change in photographic affair as well as a shift in the way in which photography was produced, employed and appreciated. Ultramodern Photography encompassed trends in the medium from the early 1900s through to the 1960s. The move from early photography to Ultramodern Photography is distinguished by a departure from the language and constraints of traditional art, similar as oil, and this change in station was imaged by changes in practice. Shutterbugs started using the camera as a direct tool rather than manipulating images to conform to traditional sundries of cultural beauty (a custom particularly associated with Pictorialism). In introducing this move, ultra modernist shutterbugs ultimately disintegrated the wider conventions of the art world by expanding both what was considered art and what was supposed an respectable subject matter for it.
Although Ultramodern Photography doesn’t start until the morning of the 20th century, before photographic inventions give a technological and contextual frame for after developments and are important in understanding the stylistic changes of the period. Some of the crucial approaches of Ultramodern Photography are unique to the medium whilst others align with wider art movements similar as Dada and Surrealism. In discrepancy to earlier connections between photography and cultural groups, which tended to be imitative, Ultramodern Photography came completely bedded in these movements and handed a new and important medium for trial and expression.

In addition to this I will also re-photograph and scan old, archived family images that focus on the lives of my grandparents on my mother’s side. These will include photographs that show their socio-economic status at different times, as well as images relating to the jobs they had.

Shoot 1

This photoshoot will be focused on my grandparents only and will consist of staged portraits taken in and around the house. I will take these photographs at midday allowing natural light to be used through the windows as well as the above head home lighting, making these staged photographs feel natural also as well as homely and familiar.

Shoot 2

This photoshoot will be focused around my family on my mother’s side and will be composed of staged portraits first, with the whole family and then in different groups of generations and partners. These will be taken first inside in the living room then outside in a rural setting at golden hour.

Shoot 3

This photoshoot will be focused again on my whole family, however this time in a candid manner, consisting of photographs of Christmas day that will posses a joyous tone. These will bring a sense a sense of authenticity to the project.

Family research

As I wanted my photo book to be based on my personal life and my family, I looked more in depth to my family history. I asked my dad about Fletcher Christian, who was a mutineer on the HMS Bounty and a relative on my grandmother’s side. Christian and other mutineers rebelled against the captain’s orders and arrested him. The crew mates who were loyal to the captain and the captain himself were forced to board the Bounty’s 7 metre launch whilst the other crew mates on the side of Christian remained aboard and sailed to the volcanic Island of Tofua, around 2700 kilometres from Tahiti, where Fletcher, along with 8 others and some Tahitian men and women sailed off and were never heard of again. The exact date or way in which Fletcher died is still rumoured.

I also researched Lillie Langtry (maiden name Le Breton). Lillie was a famous actress and producer in the late 1800’s, but later was seen in the eye of the media as the ‘Royal Mistress’. Langtry was heard to have an affair with the Prince of Wales at the time, Albert Edward, despite them both being married. Langtry had a successful acting career throughout this affair whilst acting in plays in both The United Kingdom and The United States, such as ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ and ‘As You Like It’ and eventually began running her own production company.

I think incorporating these famous figures in my photo book could be an interesting and unique way of developing my photo book, although I am not too sure on how I can introduce these ideas. I may create a mind map on how to further develop these ideas and how I can make them relevant to my personal identity.

Fixing the Shadows

Photography was invented in 1839, which as the year a frenchman, Louis Daguerre, and an Englishman, Henry Fox Talbot, announced processes that would ‘fix the shadows’.

Camera Obscura

‘Camera Obscura’ is an optical phenomenon that is easy to create and hard to believe. It is a blacked-out room with a small hole in a wall that allows a tight beam of light to enter, projecting an upside-down image of the outside world.

It had been known for centuries what camera obscura could do, the breakthrough came with the observation that certain chemicals were light-sensitive. Talbot experimented using paper coated with silver salts and shoebox-sized cameras which were nicknamed ‘mousetraps’. This first created negative images which were laterally reversed, which represented the breakthrough in which modern photography would be founded.

In 1839 Louis Daguerre had news that he had his own method of ‘fixing the shadows’, and this method was very different from what Talbot had discovered. instead of a paper-based process, he fixed his images on a mirrored metal plate, which were one-off images like a polaroid, creating a unique visual experience, these were known as a Daguerreotype. The silver grains of the image sit on top of the image, what you see on a Daguerreotype is light reflected back through an image. But one downfall of this method is that only one image could be created through this process, whereas Talbots method could create multiple.

Nadar was a photographer who took natural-looking portraits. His portraits of artists are unrivalled because he photographs them as equals. He doesn’t have to dress them up or tell them to act a certain way, he photographs them just standing in his studio making them authentic and unique to other portraits at the time.

George Eastman revolutionised photography in many ways, firstly by creating the first rolls of film, and by creating the Kodak camera. This was originally a handheld, moderately expensive camera for people to have at home and to be able to take photos without being a photographer. “You press the button, we do the rest”

These film rolls would be sent to Kodak and would be printed and sent back to the user so they don’t have to develop the film themselves.

To reduce the price of cameras and promote it, Eastman came up with The Brownie Camera. It was cheaper to make, develop and buy film for. It was initially intended to be a child’s camera, costing $1 with a roll of film only being 15¢ and processing costing 40¢.

Kodak didn’t just change what was happening behind the camera, but also what was in front of it, it changed how people reacted to a photo being taken of them, for more or less the first time people looked at the camera in the eye and smiled.

Vernacular Photography

The amateur snapshot is a small sub-category of vernacular photography. Vernacular photography were everyday photos, photos that had no artistic value. It contained some of the world most naturally occurring images.

Digital Photography

The digital camera revolutionised photography as a whole. The digital camera was invented in 1975 by Steven Sasson, an engineer with Eastman Kodak. The loss of film and the use of electrical signals to create and store images.