STORY: What is your story?

What is a story?

A story is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether non-fictional or fictional. Narratives can be presented through a sequence of written or spoken words, through still or moving images, or through any combination of these.

Stories can be described in:

• 3 words
• A sentence:
• A paragraph

NARRATIVE: How will you tell your story?

• Images > new photographic responses, photo-shoots
• Archives > old photos from family albums, iPhone 
• Texts > letters, documents, poems, text messages

What does narrative mean?

Narrative is essentially the way a story is told. For example you can tell different narratives of the same story. It is a very subjective process and there is no right or wrong. Whether or not your photographic story is any good is another matter. 

Narrative is constructed when you begin to create relationships between images and present more than two images together. Your selection of images (editing) and the order of how these images appear on the pages (sequencing) contributes significantly to the construction of the narrative. So too, does the structure and design of the photo-zine or photobook.

It is also essential that you identity what your story is first before considering how you wish to tell it. Planning and research are also essential to understanding your subject and there are steps you can take in order to make it successful.

There are many different types of narratives such as:

• Linear Narrative = A linear narrative presents the events of the story in the order in which they actually happened.
• Non-linear Narrative = presents the events of the story out of order, employing flashbacks and other literary devices to shift the chronology of a story.
• Quest Narrative = a story in which the protagonist works tirelessly toward a goal.
•  Viewpoint Narrative = designed to express the points of view or subjective personal experience of the main character or other fictional characters in the story.

Other examples of narratives:

• Descriptive narrative = Descriptive narrative connects imagery, ideas, and details to convey a sense of time and place. They are used to create a sense of setting, of time and place and convey the mood and tone of said time and place (e.g. threatening, peaceful, cheerful, chaotic).
• Viewpoint narrative = Viewpoint narrative presents events or scenes to us so that we see understand them through narrators’ feelings, desires, beliefs or values.
• Historical narrative = Narration shows sequence of past events, cause and effect.

AUDIENCE: Who is it for?

Most image makers tend to overlook the experience of the viewer. Considering who your audience is and how they may engage with your photo-zine is important factor when you are designing/ making it.

• Reflect and comment on this in your specification (age group, demographic, social/ cultural background etc.)

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STILL LIFE HISTORY

There are various types of still life paintings, which are referred to as “pieces” and fall within the following categories: “flowers”, “banquet or breakfast”, “animal”, and “symbolic”. Within the symbolic category, we also see the popular Vanitas Still Life, which made use of various objects to convey a deeper message about life and death.

Modern Still Life prevailed during art movements like Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Notably, during Post-Impressionism, Vincent van Gogh brought Still Life painting to life with his expressive and flower and vase paintings. An example of this includes his piece, Sunflowers (1889).

A French artist from Post-Impressionism, Paul Cézanne, painted Still Life’s with fruit, bread, bottles, and baskets atop a seemingly toppling table, as in The Basket of Apples (c. 1895). The difference between these paintings and the more realistic Dutch Still Life paintings was that these modern artists used more expressive brushstrokes, colours, and different perspectives.

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Still life derives from the Dutch word stilleven, coined in the 17th century when paintings of objects enjoyed immense popularity throughout Europe. The impetus for this term came as artists created compositions of greater complexity, bringing together a wider variety of objects to communicate allegorical meanings.

Still life has come to serve, like landscape or portraiture, as a category within art. Although it typically refers to depictions of inanimate things, because it incorporates a vast array of influences from different cultures and periods in history, it has always resisted precise definition.

Still life featured prominently in the experiments of photography inventors Jacques-Louis-Mandé Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot. They did this in part, for practical reasons: the exceptionally long exposure times of their processes precluded the use of living models.

Several decades into the twentieth-century, the American artist Man Ray emerged as a pioneer of two European art movements, Dada and Surrealism, in which the element of surprise figured prominently. This image seems both unusual for Man Ray in its apparent straight-forward approach, but also typical in its somewhat dark emotional tone.

Still life

Still life, as a particular genre, began with Netherlandish painting of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the English term still life derives from the Dutch word still even. Early still-life paintings, particularly before 1700, often contained religious and allegorical symbolism relating to the objects depicted.

Still life has captured the imagination of photographers from the early 19th century to the present day. It is a tradition full of lavish, exotic and sometimes dark arrangements, rich with symbolic depth and meaning. One of the main preoccupations among those living in the 16th and 17th centuries was the brevity of life and its fragility. Still life paintings of this period are more commonly referred to as ‘vanitas’.

History

Still life has captured the imagination of photographers from the early 19th century to the present day. It is a tradition full of lavish, the first still life work was by the Italian painter Jacopo de’Barbari painted in 1504.

Still life, as a particular genre, began with Netherlandish painting of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the English term still life derives from the Dutch word still even. Early still-life paintings, particularly before 1700, often contained religious and allegorical symbolism relating to the objects depicted. In the early days of photography long exposures were required to take a picture. Still life made an ideal subject because the inanimate objects did not move during the process. 

Analysis

The vocal point for this image is the skull leaning on the piano notes, the image then leads towards the left leading your eyes around the painting analysing the small aspects and details. You can depict this painting with the historical background, the 15th century being a very controversial century with many historical artefacts.

Still life is viewed as a historic art form in the world of contemporary painting, has been kept very much alive in historic and contemporary.

A Still Life image is an art form that involves using an arrangement of inanimate objects as its primary subject matter. Traditionally, Still Life images typically include household objects (likely due to their popular use as a home decoration), primarily fruits and objects such as glasses, bowls and flowers (all due to their colourful appearance). Still life images tend to range from simple, mundane compositions, to lavish/extravagant ones to represent wealth.

A Vanitas image is a form of Still Life that focuses on heavier macabre and morbid themes, such as the inevitability of death and the mortal state of life. Unlike general Still Life images, Vanitas images use objects to symbolise time (such as a candle or hourglass) or mortality, as such these images tend to garner a more thoughtful audience. These images tend to be less colourful, however, they still include colourful objects such as flowers and fruits due to their symbolic link to life, death and decay.

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Examples of Still Life/Vanitas Images (Paintings and Photographs)

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History

Some of the earliest instances of Still Life art comes in the form of Ancient Roman floor mosaics and paintings, Ancient Greek paintings and vase-paintings and Ancient Egyptian paintings found on tombs (as it was believed that the food and drink in the paintings would manifest for the deceased in the afterlife), all depicting everyday food, objects, animals and flowers. It was the Romans who started using a human skull to represent human mortality.

Considered the first Still Life painting, Italian Painter Jacopo de’Barbari painted this image in 1504. It clearly links to the main aesthetics of a still life image, with the quarry and items used to hunt it (gauntlets and what seems to be a bolt of sorts) arranged in a way that binds them together seems to represent the daily life of a person of the time. It could be argued that this image has themes of a Vanitas artwork as well, with its more morbid subject matter that represents death.

As photography became more accessible as an art form, photographers leaned towards Still Life images due to the subject matter being still, inanimate objects which made it far easier to photograph, due to the long exposures of old photographic techniques. In a similar way to vanitas images, William Talbot mentioned that, like the use of flowers, fruits and skulls, the process of making the photograph itself links to the idea of longevity and mortality as one mistake in the process will cause the images to fade or ‘decay’. Early Still Life photographs obviously lacked the colouring of painted Still Life’s due to their inability to capture it with the methods of the time.

As the medium of photography developed over time, Still Life photographs became more detailed not only in shape and form, but with colour also, allowing the photographs to take on a form similar to the older paintings. Some more modern Still Life images take the genre more seriously, with more traditional themes of time and mortality, while others experiment with arrangement of the subject matter (and the subject matter itself), colour and the overall tone of the scene.

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Image Analysis

This image is made up of many different types of flowers, which gives the composition a variety of colour and shapes. It seems that the flowers themselves are made brighter in order to contrast with the dark background, while their leaves are made into a darker tone, almost fading into the dark background. The colour palette of this image mainly consists of pinks, reds, oranges and yellows, with darker green and blue tones seen around the collection of flowers. The focal point of the image is in the centre, being the brightest part of the image, while the lines created by the other flowers, stems and leaves lead the viewer upwards towards the large sunflower at the top of the group.

While this painting may not seem exactly like a Vanitas in terms of aesthetics, the image does include a small butterfly dangling from a leaf underneath all of the flowers. In a Vanitas artwork, butterflies tend to symbolise death and rebirth, as well as time as a result of those two. This lends a more macabre tone to the image. Furthermore, the flowers themselves could also represent the mortality of humans as well as nature as a whole (especially with the lone petals seen at the bottom of the plant pot).

Inspirations:

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Artists:

Robert Heinecken

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Letha Wilson

Letha Wilson is a mixed media artist who works in photography and sculpture. She was born in 1976, in Honolulu, Hawaii, raised in Colorado, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.  She received her BFA from Syracuse University and her MFA from Hunter College, she also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2009.

I chose Letha Wilson because I like how she uses layers in her work and makes the final product look almost like an abstract puzzle. I like the contrast between her images and I want to achieve something like that by piecing my images in a similar way as her.

What is a photo-sculpture?

A photo-sculpture is the reproduction of 3D humans, animals and things the process o taking a series of images and using the to create a sculpture. There’s multiple ways, simple and complex, in which a person can create a photo sculpture. One simple way would be printing an image and scrunching it up, that was the image becomes 3D making it a sculpture.

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History:

The 3D sculpture photographique (photographing sculpture) process was invented and patented by French artist (painter, sculptor and photographer) François Willème in 1860 using synchronized photo projections.

He took a series of photographs from around a subject and used them to carve a likeness of the figure. To create a photo sculpture Willème would arrange the subject on a circular platform in his rotunda laboratory, surrounded by 24 cameras (one every 15 degrees). He would then photograph his silhouette simultaneously with each camera. This set of photographic profiles contained the data for a complete representation of his subject in 3 dimensions.

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To create a 3D image of the subject he needed to make the information in each layer accessible by projecting each image onto a screen. Next, he translated each image into the movements required to fabricate each layer. This he accomplished using a pantograph (seen at the right side of the upper image) attached to a cutter. Willème traced each profile with one end of the pantograph while the other end cut a sheet of wood with the exact same movement. The pantograph allowed the cuts to be smaller, larger, or the same size as the original projection. The layers of wood were then assembled to create the photosculpture rough armature which he would fill in with clay (or other suitable material) and then perhaps cast or paint it, to make it look like a traditional sculpture.

The term “still life” describes a work of art that shows inanimate objects from the natural or man-made world, such as fruit, flowers, dead game, and/or vessels like baskets or bowls. Looked at another way: still life’s depict things that are “still” and don’t move. Still life is a genre that spans art history. Most still life’s can be placed into one of four categories: flowers, banquet or breakfast, animal(s), and symbolic

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Now usually, when fresh food is used, the still life symbolism signifies abundance, riches, and the bounty of the upper class. When the food was depicted as decaying, it serves to show us our own mortality and eventual death. Still life drawing is a great way to build essential drawing skills like hand-eye coordination, creating shadow and perspective, and noticing finer details. If you know a creative mind who wants to start learning art, a drawing class experience gift may be perfect for them.

Renaissance Still Life

During the Middle Ages and into the Early Renaissance period, Still Life painting accompanied religious artworks as supplementary stylistic elements with symbolic meanings. These were usually painted in the backgrounds of religious paintings as well as on other artistic works like illuminated manuscripts, which were seen in Northern Renaissance and Early Netherlandish paintings.

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Other artists like Leonardo da Vinci and the German painter Albrecht Dürer painted Still Life’s without religious symbolism. For example, Still Life paintings were done of various natural objects of fauna and flora.

Dutch Still Life

Still Life painting started as a genre in the Netherlands, or what was termed as the Low Countries, which comprised of Belgica, Flanders, and the Netherlands. The Dutch Golden Age was a result of Dutch independence from Spain, which led to the Dutch Republic being born. Still Life was especially prominent as a painting style during this time, especially paintings of flowers.

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The Protestant Revolution also minimized the production of religious artworks, which led the way for other types of genres of painting to be explored. Still Life paintings were favoured because they depicted the everyday scenes of people and their lives and had inherent symbolic meanings from various objects. This branched into what was called “Dutch Realism”.

Modern Still Life

Modern Still Life prevailed during art movements like Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Notably, during Post-Impressionism, Vincent van Gogh brought Still Life painting to life with his expressive and flower and vase paintings. An example of this includes his piece, Sunflowers (1889).

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During the Cubist art movement, popular artists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque created Still Life paintings in their characteristic abstract and cubic style. An example of this is in Picasso’s Large Still Life (1881 to 1973) and Braque’s Still Life with Metronome (1909).

Still Life Photography

A still life is a work of art that focuses on inanimate subjects. Usually, the subjects are commonplace objects. That can include both manmade objects (such as vases, items of clothing, and consumer products) and natural objects (like plants, food, rocks, and shells).

Still life photography makes it easy to experiment. In contrast to portrait and landscape photography, you don’t have to deal with live models, and you don’t have to search out an interesting location or photo opportunity. Instead, you can create your own interesting composition using common objects you have or find nearby.

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It gives you the opportunity to experiment with light, materials, textures and subjects in a controlled setting. Whatever your creative vision and artistic goals, still life is a great place to start. Still life photography essentially comes down to the study of lighting, the way rays of it interact with your object, create or eliminate shadows, and help you tell its story. Depending on your object’s surface, shape and size, the light can have different effects on it, so the best way to start is to just experiment with it all.

What to focus on when making a still life image:

• Different Lighting
• Camera angles
• Focus and Depth of field
• Adding motion
• Good set up
• Clarity of images

Image Analysis

This image is filled with many different aspects, the best being the composition of this photograph, with there not being many different objects in the image, they are all the same yet look very different, with the many different forms of oranges it shows how creative you can be with just one material. Furthermore, I think that the blue background really makes the oranges stand out, as they are opposing colours on the colour wheel meaning that it creates lots of contrast within the photograph. Additionally, I think that the fact that the oranges have been created into a shape of many balloons, shows that when it comes to still life photography any material can be adapted and this created an interesting and unique focal point for the photograph. However, I think this image could be seen as too vibrant, despite this being eye-catching I think that the composition could have been better if it was filled with many smaller balloons.

What is the Societe Jersiaise Photographic Archive?

The Societe Jersiaise Photographic Archive contains over 100,000 items dating from the mid-1840s to the present day and is the principal Jersey collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century photograph. Archives can be a rich source for finding starting points on your creative journey. This will strengthen your research and lead towards discoveries about the past that will inform the way you interpret the present and anticipate the future.

“Our mission is to produce and facilitate research on the Island’s history, culture, language and environment; and to share that knowledge with the widest possible audience for the benefit of our island community.” – The Societe Jersiaise

They achieve their aims through their active Sections, research collections, community outreach and collaboration with local and international heritage partners.

The Société’s Sections specialise in various fields of study, from archaeology to zoology. These volunteer sections produce the raw data and research which make long-term studies possible, and at the Société they’ve been doing it since 1873. The Société holds extensive bibliographic, cartographic, photographic and research collections which act as our long-term memory. These collections provide a vital resource informing contemporary study and value for the community through a greater understanding of our shared heritage, identity and environment

History behind the Societe Jersiaise

The Société Jersiaise was founded in January 1873 by a small number of prominent Islanders who were interested in the study of the history, the language and the antiquities of Jersey.  Membership grew quickly and the aims of the new society soon widened to include the publication of historical documents, the founding of a Museum, and the study of the Island’s natural history. 

They have, over the years, purchased archaeological sites in Jersey for preservation and presentation. Their two most important sites are La Hougue Bie, purchased in 1919, and La Cotte de Saint-Brélade, purchased in 1955. They have carried out extensive excavations at both sites.

In 1913 the Société’s activities as a learned society were organised into ‘Sections’ for the study of different aspects of the island.  These Sections, now 14 in number continue to be the backbone of our activities.

—- Emile F Guiton —-

Emile F Guiton was born in Jersey in 1879 and he had a keen interest in history. He was a member of La Société Jersiaise and served on its executive committee as joint honorary secretary, and was curator of the Museum and editor of the Annual Bulletin.

He also realised that history was being made during his own lifetime and he recorded the development of his native island from the turn of the century until his death in 1972. He was a keen amateur photographer and practised throughout his long life. He experimented with colour at the beginning of the twentieth century in “Autochromes”.

His subjects include the recording of archaeological excavations and he was one of the few people in Jersey permitted to take photographs during the German Occupation of 1940 – 1945. Emile Guiton also recognised very early on the importance of collecting photographs, both as a valuable social historic resource and as interesting artefacts – examples of developments in science and technology. He donated many images to the Société Jersiaise. 

Image analysis

I particularly like this photograph taken by Guiton as it showcases a very high exposure which lights up the entire image, making it appear very heavenly. The main focal point of the image is clearly the bright opening in the centre which allows for a teeming amount of white light to seep through. The rocks presented within a greyscale photograph and provide many different textures captured within the area.

—- My rock gallery —-

The Societe Jersiaise Photographic Archive allowed us to compose our own gallery at the institution surrounding the aspect of ‘islandness’ and what it means to be among Jersey’s geological background. This gallery contains many Year 13’s joiners alongside normal photographs of the islands rock formations, and also many other experiments to present the importance of the island’s structures.

— My images within the gallery —

Here I have two images up on display in the gallery which I particularly liked out of the entire selection I had produced. Everyone got a chance to submit their favourite photographs from the project and these two I believed were two of my strongest joiners that I had taken.

Process of editing my images

Image Edit 1:

Here with this image, I decided to convert it into a black and white image like I have been doing with my previous images from past photoshoots such as the L’Etacq one and the Devil’s Hole one. I wanted to showcase a sense of importance by making this rock central to the image.

Image Edit 2:

I decided to edit this photo by choosing one of the creative presets and adjusting it to my liking. I wanted to experiment with colour this time rather than strictly black and white, just to enhance Jersey’s beauty within it geology.

Image Edit 3:

For this image, once again I have chosen to edit the original image with a much warmer preset within the creative filters. I wanted to create a warmer image as a contrast from my usual black and white ones, just to see how it would present. I wanted to display warmth within the image so that Jersey’s colours would shine and showcase what the islands beauty is really all about. Both images have quite a drastic colour difference, one being a lot cooler with black and whites, and the other being much warmer with browns and beige tones.

Image Edit 4:

Here I have followed the same editing method for my first editing example, but the only difference is that this image is taken as a portrait photograph whilst the other image is taken as a landscape photograph. I tried to capture once again the true essence of Jersey’s geology by presenting a large rock as the central focal point for the photograph. I once again chose the approach of editing it in black and white as to capture a more dramatic interpretation of the islands formations and rock shapes.

—- Best images —-

Coloured images:

Black and white images:

—- Plan for the Photoshoot —-

We ended up going on a photography field trip down to Green Island to capture the many different types of rock formations that would be present along the coastline.

We split up into two groups and I was placed among the group that would venture along to Green Island. We started at the car park where La Hocq is and began to walk along the beach towards where Green Island was. During the walk, we were advised to capture images of the many different types of rocks that were spread out among the beach and also running just along the sides of it. There were many photo opportunities for us as the beach was completely covered in many different types of geological interests.

Contact sheets

—- Flagged and rejected —-

—- Colour coded and star rated —-

Green – Images I’m going to use:

Yellow – Images I might be using:

Red – Images I won’t be using:

—- Final outcomes from the shoot —-

I ended up taking a vast amount of good images that I would like to continue editing until they are to my liking. The rock formations along Green Island were incredibly interesting to look at as every single piece was completely different from one another. Every rock was different and unique with its own textures and structures.

These singular rock images I believe were strong together as they both display one rock, taken at a portrait viewpoint, and make that the sole focal point of the piece. The large rock stands out from the many small and extra ones around it which makes it seem like a more intimidating structure compared to what lies around it.

I enjoy how these images look together as they all share a similar colour scheme and pattern on them. They are of the same rock but taken at different angles and perspectives just to make it seem like they’re completely separate rocks.

I quite liked how these two photos together as they create quite a nice colour contrast. The image on the left, containing mustard yellows and green pigments, has a few more bright colours than the image on the right does, that image containing a lot of grey and brown tints of colour.

Series of other final outcome

These photographs I believed were also quite strong so I decided to put this as well among my successful outcomes during the photoshoot.

Image analysis and Critique

What I liked about the photograph: I was particularly happy with this photograph that I took as it gave off the importance of Jersey’s geology by focusing on a singular version of the many rocks the island has to offer. Photographing the rock on its own, gives off a better sense of uniqueness because this is the main focal point and is central to the photograph.

What I would do different next time: Next time I would possibly take a few more close ups of the rock just to display its textures a bit more, maybe even getting closer to the rock and photographing it fully central would have been a good idea as well. The rock is central, but there seems to be other rocks in front of it which may diminish the true importance of the larger rock.