a UNESCO(The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialised agency of the United Nations aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture.) -designated area containing one or more sites of particular geological importance, intended to conserve the geological heritage and promote public awareness of it, typically through tourism. A Geopark is about more than rocks. Jersey is a strong contender for this special designation because of our Island’s exceptional geology and our important cultural heritage which forms the outstanding surroundings we enjoy every day. Whether exploring Jersey’s diverse landscapes or seascapes there is lots to discover and inspire
David Hockney is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer. Within his photography he is famous for something he did called ‘joiners’. During the early 80’s Hockney began to create ‘joiners’, now they are photocollages. When he first began to produce these he did them with Polaroid prints and later on he did them with 35mm, commercially processed prints.
Hockney’s work reflects his long running interest in optics and perspective and sees him extend it onto family members and friends as well as landscapes and interiors. We are presented with familiar figures from his prints such as Ann Upton, Celia Birtwell and Gregory Evans as well as familiar settings such as the Grand Canyon and the pool of his home in Los Angeles. Whereas before Hockney had dismissed photography as ‘All right if you don’t mind looking at the world from the point of view of a paralysed cyclops-for a split second,’ here we see him engaged in a new fascination with the medium. After so long challenging himself across the mediums of paint and print it is unsurprising that he would finally come round to the medium that descends is often described as ‘drawing with light’. What he saw as a fixed viewpoint became something fluid and dynamic when doubled endlessly to create a composite image.
Freda bringing Ann & Me a Cup of Tea
With works such as Freda Bringing Ann & Me A Cup Of Tea he pushes the medium even further, allowing the coloured background to add another element to the composition, while details of the scene spiral out from the middle. Meanwhile in George, Blanche, Celia, Albert And Percy, London, January the traditional family portrait is subverted, the many photographs adding layers of time and movement, documenting changes in expression and light, to become a tableau vivant.
One of Hockney’s most famous works in this collection is Walking In The Zen Garden At The Ryoanji Temple, which shows the famous Japanese garden only lightly fragmented, its quiet seriousness lifted by the repetition of the mismatched red and black socks at the bottom of the frame. This way of making prints became a crucial part of Hockney’s work while travelling and there are a number of photo collages from Japan as well as numerous road trips in America, including a composite image of the view from the south rim of the Grand Canyon which adds another layer of complexity to this already unfathomable landscape.
How he created joiners was by taking multiple and varying Polaroid shots or photolab-prints of an individual subject. Then with these shots he would arrange them into what almost looks like a patchwork, to create on overall image. One of Hockney’s first ‘joiners’ was a photomontage of his own mother. Aiming for a Cubist feel, he established this through taking shots at different perspectives and at different times. His work ranges from Landscape, Pearlblossom Highway #2 to portraits, Kasmin 1982, and My Mother, Bolton Abbey, 1982.
This is probably a closer description of how we see the world – from multiple viewpoints that are then pieced together by our mind. In this joiner by David Hockney he has tried to create this effect out of 24 Polaroid prints. He did this because he was interested in how we see and depict space and time. His is interested in how we turn a 3 dimensional world into a 2 dimensional image, how perspective is used in western art and how space is treated differently in non-western art. He did not particularly make joiners because he liked the novel effect of using photographs in this way. However, he did like the way this technique allowed the viewer to read space. He sometimes laid the images out in a neat grid.
IMAGE ANALYSIS
This piece is called Gregory and Shinro on the Train. In this image the focus is primarily on the man in the image, captured looking in different directions whilst the lighting captures different parts of his face. You can also see Hockneys hand in the bottom left hand corner. The lighting is coming from the outer squares and drastically changes depending on where you look. The colours in the image are also mainly quite dull so the red seats catch the viewers eye especially as they’re positioned closer then other aspects of the image. The other subjects in the photo are looking away from the camera, but the main subject is looking towards it although not making eye contact.
After colour coding my images and editing them, I went back and gave starts to all the images I took specifically for the joiners. I then just adjusted some of the images so that they would all be similar.
Settings:
To make an auto joiner in photoshop you’ll need to have the images ready in a folder and then find the photo merge button (file > automate > photomerge). Then there will be an option to open your folder and select your images. This will then take up to 5 minutes to create depending on how many images you have, so if you have a lot then you can just do 10 or 20 at a time.
Final Joiners:
————-Manual———
for this joiner I used 30 images
for this image I used 36 images
————-Auto———
more experiments using less images
————-3D———
For these edits I just used the ‘3D’ tool which is just on the top bar in-between ‘Filter’ and ‘View’. I didn’t enjoy this method because I don’t think they turned out nice and are quite boring. In my opinion they look better as flat images.
For this photoshoot we went on a geo walk around Jersey’s coast line. Our aim was to take photographs of different types of granite. You can tell the difference through the colour of the crystals, size and patterns.
We started at the L’Etacq car park (red) and took pictures of the rocks in that area (took round 20 minutes). I focused on different granite textures by taking close ups and different angled images. When we were done, we moved to the little beach (Le Pulec) that was in the same area (blue) and focused on the same thing. The rocks there were cave like, which looked interesting, so I took multiple images of it in order to create a joiner later on. After an hour , we moved on from L’Etacq and walked up the little hill (pink) all the way to Le Pinacle. Being up there gave us a nice view of the rocks at L’Etacq. We stayed at Le Pinacle for about an hour focusing on the same things.
Contact Sheets:
I took around 460 photographs during my walk.
After flagging I was left with 103 images.
After colour coding I was left with around 25 images.
Here I went through all of my photographs and flagged them using P (images to keep) and X (images I wouldn’t use), did this twice. Then I went through them for a third time and colour coded them in order to get my final selection. (red-no, yellow-maybe, green-yes)
David Hockney was born on July 9th, 1937, in Bradford, UK. He is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century.
“My Parents”
“A Bigger Splash” 1967
“Apple Tree” 2019
mood-board of his paintings
Joiners:
A photo joiner is the process of taking a multiple images of the same subject from different angles and viewpoints. And then putting them all together to create a new and abstract image. Joiners aimed to create an image that was able to show reality how we experience it (in fragments, not as a whole), and to show the passage of time.
David Hockney started creating photo collages in the 1980s and called them ‘joiners’. His earlier collages consisted of grid-like compositions made up of polaroid photographs. Later on he started working with photoprints and overlapping them in order to create a new image. He takes multiple and varying images of just individual subject.
During the work on this collage Hockney made several thousand images, and only about 750 of them were later assembled into a coherent whole, becoming a picture. In total the whole process took nine days. The artist said that the biggest difficulty arose with the sky, which every day and at different times of day change colour and texture, and it was supposed to take about a third of the space. In this case, the maximum Hockney have shown their artistic abilities, literally painting the sky is clear and bright shade of blue from images taken at different times.
The Aspiring Jersey Island Geopark Visitor Centre tells the story of Jersey’s geological heritage, with the aim of encouraging Islanders and visitors to explore Jersey and see first-hand how geology has shaped the Island we know today.
Millie Butel , Jersey Heritage’s Landscape Engagement & Geopark Development Curator, explained that Geoparks celebrate the links between people and the Earth. The Visitor Centre will show people why Jersey’s outstanding landscapes and seascapes could make the Island a candidate for future designation.
She said: ‘Jersey is more than just the rock it is made of – our Island is an incredible combination of natural, built and intangible heritage. A Geopark can tell the whole story and, if Jersey is successful in achieving a designation, it will be a statement of commitment to protect the Island we all love and to promote the landscapes, seascapes and heritage that are important to Islanders.
‘The aim of the centre is to introduce the Aspiring Geopark project and encourage people to explore Jersey and discover its stories along the way. The Island has been shaped by tide and time over millions of years. Jersey’s exceptional geology and important cultural heritage form the outstanding surroundings we enjoy every day.’
David Hockney is one of the most important painters of the 20th century. If you were to Google, famous British painters, there’s a good chance that Hockney’s name will appear. Born in Bradford in 1937, Hockney was one of the big artists involved in the pop art movement in the 1960s. Pop art was a style of art that was bright, full of colour. It was made by lots of young artists who felt that the art they saw in galleries was a little bit boring.
Born with synaesthesia, Hockney sees colours in response to musical stimuli. Although he has never translated this into his painting or photography, it is a common underlying principle in his designs for ballet and opera stage sets – where he bases background colours and lighting on the colours he sees while listening to each musical score.
A visit to California – where he was to live for many years – inspired Hockney to make his iconic series of paintings of swimming pools in the comparatively new medium of acryclic. “I always loved swimming pools, all the wiggly lines they make,” the artist told CNN in 2017. “If you photograph them, it freezes them whereas if you use paint, you can have wiggly lines that wiggle.”
Taking numerous Polaroid or 35mm photographs of a scene from a variety of perspectives, Hockney would then arrange the collection of images into a cohesive body, creating an almost Cubist rendering of visual reality. He called these collages and photo montages joiners.
He took photographs by taking numerous Polaroid or 35mm photographs of a scene from a variety of perspectives, he would then arrange the collection of images into a cohesive body, creating an almost Cubist rendering of visual reality. He called these collages and photo montages joiners.
Cubism dispensed with that idea by depicting space as supported by the flatness of the canvas. A cubist work depicts the subject as viewed from several vantage points simultaneously. This is usually represented by the subject being composed of several different planes. He used painting, print working and photography as his 3 media pieces.
ideas for my type of shoot
Hockney created photographs that were unique and called these collages and photo montages the joiners. This distinctive approach to image making was a reflection of Hockney’s dislike for photographs executed with a wide-angle lens. By creating his joiners, Hockney sought to reflect the process of seeing, creating a narrative based around visual experience.
For my first photoshoot for my new topic ‘Islandness’ we went to the parish of St Ouen and walked around L’Etacq taking photos of interesting rock formations. We walked around the cliff paths trying to capture any rocks that seemed unique to take back to class and edit. Also, I took a lot of images of the same rock formations to try attempt to create David Hockney’s ‘Joiners’. Overall, I managed to take around 200 images when on the St Ouens photography trip.
Contact sheets:
After arranging my images in separate folders/collections I decided to flag the image to further understand which images I would like to improve and develop.
I ended up with 35 images which I think were good enough to further develop in Lightroom. But to narrow down my images more I decided to use the rating tool to rate my 35 images from a scale of 1-5.
