To begin creating this photo-zine I needed to take a range of images from one location. I used images from my La Hocq photo shoot to try and keep a similar theme throughout the whole zine. After editing all my images I then needed to decide which images to use in my photo-zine. I wanted to try and make all the images in the zine to be displayed in black and white other than the front and back cover.

Image Selection:

The images below are all the images contained throughout my 16 page photo-zine.

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Photo-zine creation:

For my first zine draft I wanted to present this image in a double page spread.

For the next 2 pages I wanted to display my images of La Hocq with a close-up and a long distance.

I wanted to slightly replicate the previous pages with close up images of rocks by using a similar layout of image placement.

For my next two pages I wanted to keep it basic and use a double page spread for a simple black and white image.

Next, I wanted to include the image of a crab I took because it changes up the theme slightly and include some wildlife next to a close up photo of sand

Then, I wanted to include some photos from La Societe archive of bones and human remains that were discovered on Green Island and around La Hocq

For my final 2 pages, I wanted to include 1 more double page spread of another basic, black and white rock image.

Final photo-zine:

Evaluation:

Overall, I am very happy with how my final zine turned out. I kept a similar theme throughout the pages of the zine with every picture inside being presented in black and white. The name of my zine, La Hocq, is named after the location that all the images included were taken. I really like the layout of the images with some pages having a white border to create more contrast. I used juxtaposition on some pages to change up the style and layout.

My first draft:

I decided not to use this layout because I chose the images pretty randomly so there was not much connection between them and anything else in the zine. I decided to make another zine, focusing on using images to do with nature along Jersey’s coast.

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I prefer this layout a lot more, with a specific focus on nature and rocks, and with a connection through the bright colours overlaid on top of some of the images, creating a much more unified zine. I decided to alternate between images with a white border and ones with a full bleed. There is also a bit of variation between images with low saturation and ones with incredibly high saturation, hopefully creating more visual interest. In both drafts I decided to use edited versions of Emile Guiton’s images from the Société Jersiaise photo-archives, to add some historic value to my zine and to contrast my work with that which belongs to a photographer in history.

I chose the title “Gardín”, which means “Garden” in Jèrriais, because Jersey’s coastline is like a garden to a variety of native plants and animals of all kinds.

1st idea

for my first idea i followed jody powells style model to create layered image

I first printed of my selected images and created a foam board sand for each to be be able to hold them up

Once I done that i started to arrange the images how i wanted and found a good lay out i liked

i was happy with this idea but wanted to experiment further with more ideas

IDEA 2

my second idea was to create a selection of tubes

i used a selection of these photos to try create a new landscape within the tube

i printed these of and started wrapping around the tube

this idea didnt turn out as well as i was thinking but still happy with it so i created a second

after these experiments i decided to stick with my first idea

How are archives a repository of knowledge?

Physical archives aren’t as popular in recent times compared to previous years due to the creation of technology such as phones and computers. This recent technology makes taking photographs accessible and easy for all users. Due to this, photos have become less special and significant nowadays compared to when this technology was not yet created or as accessible, and photographs were seen as very special, important and even expensive to take or own. The Société Jersiaise was founded in 1873 for the study of Jersey archaeology, history, natural history and the ancient language of Jèrriais. The Lord Coutanche Library supports the work of the Société Jersiaise by collecting and preserving material relating to Jersey’s history. Their photo archive contains over 120,000 images ranging from the 1840s to recent day. In recent years, the Societe group has led out an excavation of human and mammoth remains at La Cotte De St Brelade which has helped the population of jersey understand and learn about the heritage of this island and the geographical history. As stated on their website, the Societe main objective 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. This benefits the islands heritage as it holds old documents of a nearly extinct language of Jerrias, meaning this history will not be forgotten. The Societe offer memberships to the community from £12. By applying for the membership you get permission of access to all heritage sites, regular newsletters, and a 10% discount on books. A large and engaged membership has been crucial to the considerable successes of the Société Jersiaise over many years. Membership is open to all and by joining, it means you would be supporting many activities with your subscription. The archive holds images and documents from historic Jersey photographers. Early photographers such as William Collie, Charles Hugo, Thomas Sutton and Henry Mullins. The archive also holds evidence from the 20^th century such as, very valuable images from a rich point of history in Jersey, World War 2.

Final image selection

I chose these images as they all follow a similar theme of texture and patterns.

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I have created 2 possible layouts for my zine in order to change, compare and get the best results.

First zine draft

my first zine follows a pattern of having a white boarder around all the images, I like this style as it looks very clean. However, it lacks difference throughout the zine and makes it quite boring.

My second zine draft

for my second draft, i have decided on a pattern of having some with a border, and some without to create difference and fluidity throughout the zine.

Within my zine I will be including an image from Guiton to link to our study.

Final product

Evaluation

I named by zine ‘Waters Edge’ it tells the story of the different textures, patterns and general things you would see next to the sea. Within my zine, I follow the black and white style similar to Emile F Guiton to relate to our theme of ‘my rock’. I love my use of textures and patterns which highlight the imperfect natural formations of the earth, and juxtaposing those images with different images, some of which are from different beaches across the island. For example, pages 6 and 7, the ripples of water juxtaposes with the sand ripples of the slip. In my printed zine, some of the pages are slightly wonky and slightly shows the white boarder where it isn’t meant to be, to improve this next time, I would thoroughly check that all my pages are lined up straight before folding and stapling.

Archives are defined as “a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.“, are incredibly important as a way of preserving parts of the past for the sake of education and research, serving as a way for people from the present to learn from aspects of the past in order to move forward and progress society in a multitude of ways. The Société Jersiaise is a local charity and archive, founded in 1873, preserving a multitude of different parts of the islands traditional culture, language and history, as well as information regarding the island’s natural history, such as the documentation of flora and fauna native to the island of Jersey. The Société Jersiaise‘s goals included the construction of the museum and library and soon also established the goal of permanently recording specific sections of the island’s history, specifically prehistoric monuments, buildings and ruins, through the use of photography. Images were also taken at archaeological dig sites, both in order to capture any artefacts found, as well as to document the processes and techniques to find, obtain and store anything discovered. As time has progressed and some of these important sites and objects have withered and eroded, it is important to look back at the images stored in the archive to see how much the progression of time and society has impacted them. The Société Jersiaise have placed a large amount of their archive online and easily accessible to the public free of charge, showing how dedicated they are to their goal of encouraging citizens to learn about how important the past is in moving forward.

SJ Photographic Archive

Emile Guiton, born 1879 was an important figure in the history of photography in Jersey, taking many images of key sites and events, and donating them to the Société Jersiaise photo archive, 781 of which can be viewed online, before his death in 1972. His images explored a variety of subjects, shifting from the documentation of agriculture, to recording excavations and historical sites, to even taking pictures during the island’s occupation by the Nazis, which lasted from June 1940 until May 1945, a time of great change for islanders as German forces built concrete bunkers into the island’s, once peaceful, natural landscape. During the occupation, Guiton was one of the few islanders even allowed to take pictures, further showing his significance in Jersey’s history. He experimented with colour images towards the beginning of the 20th century, however seemed to shift back to black and white images for the majority of his work. This great array of material in time, place and subject, makes him a crucial part of the Société Jersiaise‘s photo archive alongside the island’s history itself. Looking at his work shows a modern viewer appreciate the progression of camera technology, as well as the beauty and importance of the Jersey’s natural and manmade past.

This is one of the images Guiton took during an excavation of La Motte, also known as Green Island, between 1911 and 1914, on this excavation eighteen cists were a found, a type of small prehistoric coffin made of stone that would hold the dead and an array of worldly possessions implying their wealth and power during their life. The image was taken using a film camera, and despite his colour experiments earlier in the century, is in black and white. The photo was likely taken in order to document the dig alongside anything found at the site, which includes flint flakes, bowls, hammers and vases, alongside several skeletons. The image is sharp and focused and has good exposure levels allowing the viewer to analyse each part of the image in detail. Despite its attempt to quietly immortalise the excavation, it feels somewhat eerie as many of the people in the image have turned to face the camera, it is likely that the majority of the people in the picture have now died due to how long ago it was taken, Guiton capturing the ghosts of the past on film, as they all surround the ancient skeleton of someone who had been in that very place thousands of years ago.

In conclusion, looking back at images from the past, particularly from places like photo archives where they would have been preserved for up to centuries, is crucial in growing as a photographer as well as progressing the island as a whole. By referencing these, people from the modern day can learn more about the past, potentially relearning lost knowledge as well as using it as a reference to predict aspects of the future. Guiton’s work is not only documentative, but also has artistic merit, able to express concepts that could then be explored by future generations looking back, even if it was not his intention at the time. Described as a collective memory, archives can hold many different voices and viewpoints for future historians, researchers and even just normal people to analyse and understand context regarding how the world truly works and how things can move towards a better one for everyone.

Moodboard

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Ideas

In my zine, I am showing images from my Oregon trip. After some thinking, I have decided to do multiple zines, with one showing more objective, ‘touristy’ type images, mainly of landscapes and architecture. I then plan to do one or two other zines with my more personal photos, which document a more personal journey through Oregon and reflect my experience more intimately. If I was to do a third zine, it would include mostly portraits, but at the moment I am just planning to do two.

Story and Narrative

What is your story? Describe in 3 words:

New, isolated, connected

A sentence:

My experience of an entirely different culture for the first time as a teenager.

A paragraph:

My story is that of an 18 year old navigating a new country for the first time, experiencing culture shock, meeting new people and visiting new places. My story documents my personal experiences of my trip to the USA, but also more common, touristic images. My story features different ideas, such as life in rural America, documenting cliques, landscapes, and as well as more personal portraits and other images which tell a story of my own experience.

Narrative: How will you tell your story?

I will tell my story through two zines, each with different sides to my trip. Firstly, I will use first zine to tell my personal experiences of the more typical American experiences, for example the landscapes and citizens. I will also tell the story of some societal issues I saw for myself on my trip, such as the mistreatment of Nstive Amercians. These aspects are not necessarily directly linked to my personal experiences as much, but things linked directly to the America which I experienced, and its issues.

After experiencing these things, I decided to do my own research on the issues that I saw, to ensure I knew more about what I was documenting. Even though this research was not carried out before I took my images, I think it informs the making of my zines. My interest in societal issues in America was also sparked by a book I read in my English class in the US, which is mostly the reason I decided to include my images documenting native american culture in my zine. This book taught me about the experiences of teenagers of a completely different culture to my own, which I didn’t have much idea of before I came to the USA. This book influened my choice to make a second zine, of my more personal, teenage experiences of my trip. I like how I have decided t do this, as it means I can produce a more personal and thoughtful outcome. There is a memory attached to each one of my pictures from my zines, and I like this. After carrying out my photoshoots, and editing my images using Lightroom, I will make collections of my images ready for the two different zines. From there, I will place my images into the zine, experimenting with different placement ideas and layouts.

Selection process

After importing my images into lightroom, I separated all my images into subfolders of my Oregon trip for each photoshoot. It was important to organise my images like this as I had a lot of pictures – they were all very different photoshoots and having them separated made my selection process much easier.

Best images selection

After sorting out my contact sheets and categories for each set of images, I began to filter my images for each photoshoot to pick my best images. In lightroom I used the P and X tools for my best images and images I did not want to keep. I then went through them again, making a new subfolder for my best images, with colour coding, and a star rating: 4 stars (good image, one of my best) and 5 stars (one of my best images, important to include in my final outcome). I used different colour coding to filter different kinds of best images: green for rural landscapes, red for urban landscapes, and purple for portraits.

Urban Landscapes

Examples of my editing

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Rural Landscapes

Examples of my editing

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Portrait images

Examples of my editing

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Evaluation

Overall I think my editing was quite successful. I tried to show a range of different edits, both B and W and colour. My editing was made more successful by the light in some of my shoots. Particularly, in my urban shoot, the light was great which made my editing easier – I shot during the start of golden hour, which helped to create a softer light with less glare and overexposure.

In my shoot from the parade I dealt with a bit of overexposure which I think I managed to correct quite well using lightroom. I also found cropping a very useful tool, as quite a lot of my images needed compisitionally changing. Using the cropping tool as well as the rule of thirds helped me to make a lot of my images much more compositionally balanced. In a lot of my images, I tried to create edits with vibrant and rich colours. I normally like to edit with lots of grain and a faded look, but for these images I wanted to try a different look, more vibrant and saturated. I think I acheived this quite well, but some of my images were too oversaturated at first – I edited some of my images, particularly the ones from the parade, twice or three times to make sure I was happy with the overall image.

A photography zine, for example, is a tool that photographers can use to tell a visual story, to inform an audience about a specific topic or issue, to showcase and advertise a new idea or simply create a preview of an ongoing project. – Google

Photo zines are a method photographers use to convey information to their viewers in a simple and easy to understand way. They can me constructed with photographs and typography or just photographs. Personally i think that photo zines without writing make a more interesting zine as more is left to the imagination of the viewer.

There are many ways to create a photo zine however the most efficient way is using Adobe InDesign. The software makes it very simple to construct the zine while still having almost every feature a professional photographer would need.

There are many aspects required to make a zine a quality product that people want to look at. The front cover is the most important part as it must be designed to grab the viewers attention. this means it must have the best image displayed to cover the whole front page. There are multiple ways to lay out the images within the zine. Firstly where is a double page spread there the image will cover both pages going all the way to the corners. This is where the photographer would place their best images as it shows off the detail and colour the best. Second is a sing page spread, this is where the photographer would place one image covering just one page of the zine. this means that two images will be next to each other which means the designer must ensure that they go together well and do not contrast too much. Lastly is a framed image. this is when the photographer makes the images smaller than the page so that a boarder whichever colour the print paper will be will appear around the edge. This can show some of the best details in an image as the colours in the photo can be made to contrast the boarder.

we walked from le Hocq along the coats line to green island along this walk I positioned my lens onto the coast line, rocks and out to see. from this trip i took 464 images. after I went through all my images and rated them i ended up with 102 mgood image that i felt was worth editing i then edited them and continued to work my way through refining them down every star level.

the day we went out it was very over cast so I used the graduate filter tool on almost all of them to reduce the exposure in the sky portion of the images, so that the image is not over exposed.

whilst we where walking around i was experimenting with a lot of very low perspectives which made the rest of the landscape seem more impressive.

I found some graffiti on the sea wall at the end of green island.

I created many virtual copy’s of this image and continued to manipulate them to appear in different colours, using the different hues in the image and saturations levels. I then had the idea to juxtapose four of them in different colours.

these show all my best images from this shoot that I have rated to 5 stars.

when I found these stairs going on to the beach I went over because I liked the interesting wear that has been put on these stairs from rocks bashing against them in the waves and the interesting rust colours created by the salt water corroding the metal. I took a few images of these stairs however I liked this image the most because the leading lines of the stairs which lead your eye up and across the image. this image is much more clos up than the other images I took. I then edited it to bring out the shadows to give more depth to the image. I also bring out the highlights on the stones on the floor.

I found a rock pool far down the beach at le Hocq where a very interesting pattern was formed by moving water sand on top of a rock which created this very organic intricate pattern. I positioned my lens straight above it to give a deadpan aesthetic.

I then edited it to bring out the pattern as much as possible by increasing the contrast and vibrance. I decreased the exposure to darken the image because it was a very over cast day that i felt didn’t work with this image.

I took this image from the top of green island I tried to position some of the sea wall on the back side of the island to give contrast to the rest of the very natural environment. I used the graduate filter tool to reduce the exposure of the sky so that there is better balance to the image I also reduced the highlights in the sky to give depth and bring out definition in the clouds.