To start editing my images, I started by narrowing my image selection down using the ‘Pick’ and ‘Reject’ tools on Lightroom, which will help me decide which images I think are usable and which are not. Due to a technical mishap during this photoshoot, a lot of images have been rejected due to them being out of focus.
Next I gave each of these images a star rating out of 5, to further narrow my selection down and label which images I will 100% make use of (the strongest images), and others which I may use at some point.
I then used the colour filter tool on Lightroom to further narrow down my selection, making the green images the usable ones.
These are the images I thought were the strongest from this photoshoot. I have 3 images that could be used to create images inspired by Helmer-Petersen. I like the pigeon images as the movement shown by the slow shutter represents life in the otherwise still urban environment.
Final Edited Images
These are the coloured versions of each image, I made these images slightly colder and more green to give them a more industrial and unwelcoming feel. I like the inclusion of pigeons and trees in some of the images as it provides a nice contrast between the organic and urban.
Here I have made some black and white versions of each image, which I think is effective as it mirrors the greys and blacks of a stereotypical urban setting. I think these images will give my photobook a nice contrast as the other images are far more colourful.
These are my Helmer-Petersen inspired versions of the images which include scaffolding, I these turned out to be successful interpretations of his images.
Evaluation
I am happy with the way my final images turned out, I think they are strong images that will be useful and effective in my photobook. However in terms of actually taking the images, this was not a massively successful shoot; a lot of my images were dark/fuzzy as I had a slowed shutter speed, some of the images weren’t too aesthetically pleasing either. If I were to do this photoshoot again, I would take both of these into consideration and hopefully take higher quality images. I think the places I found to take these images are interesting (like the place with the tree and light) and I think it would be interesting to re-visit those at a later date.
What went well:
Some of the images I captured were interesting and unlike other images I have taken during my A-Levels, such as the pigeon images. The black and white images are especially effective within an urban setting, with the Helmer-Petersen images providing a nice contrast with the other images from the shoot.
How I can improve:
As stated earlier, I think my camera handling skills can be greatly improved from this photoshoot. I am now more knowledgeable on how a camera works and I aim to implement that into future shoots. I think a more dynamic time of day could give my images more depth and ‘pop’ such as during sunrise/sunset, unlike this shoot where it was later in the day (dark) with overcast clouds.
The story for my photobook explores youth culture within a small community such as an island, documenting what myself and my friends do in our free time and creating a narrative of life through the eyes of teenagers, aiming to capture the freedom and liberation of youth through a variety of photos taken in both chaotic and quiet atmospheres.
DESIGN & LAYOUT
To provide a better narrative, I have chosen to incorporate writing in my photobook, taken from a sheet of paper i asked my friends to write on, and give their opinion of life in Jersey as a teenager. Taking inspiration from Jim Goldberg and his messy style of photography, overlaying the writing onto my photos i feel will provide the unfiltered atmosphere that i attempt to convey in my images.
The layout for my photobook will feature both single-page portrait images and double page landscape spreads. I want a variety of different orientation in my book to catch the viewers eye and make a more interesting read. Certain sections of my both will contain a double-page feature on my friends, on one page will be an image of them, likely a headshot, and the opposing page will contain images of their possessions. This will allude to the concept of youth culture on an island and give readers a better understanding. I also want to include a variety of media in my book, with photos taken from polaroids, phone and different cameras to show range within my work.
COVER
I want my photobook to be in hardback, with one landscape photo covering both the front cover and blurb. Below are some possible ideas for my cover, taken from my images;
I chose landscape-based images from my cover as they are quite desolate with no background noise and only one main viewpoint, which will help make the title the focus of the cover, which will also be in handwriting to match the aesthetic of my photobook. I am unsure of my title at the moment but i want it to fit the theme of youth culture but be quite simplistic as to not let on too much.
Question: In what ways can photography capture being Portuguese in Jersey and the sense of belonging?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Jersey to me acts like a tutorial level in a video game; a safe, closed off area that allows me to learn and develop skills before I move on to the real world when I am ready. I value this idea as it is quite comforting at times to know that I have a place to explore with all kinds of different people. However, I often find myself feeling quite insignificant due to the isolation that being on an island brings which is sometimes exaggerated due to the fact that I am Portuguese living on in the British Isles. The disconnection from both the Portuguese culture and Jersey’s culture leave me in an awkward position as I find that I am too Portuguese for the English people and too English for the Portuguese people. I would like to explore the Portuguese experience in Jersey as it is something I have first-hand experience of, including both the positive and negatives rather than sugar-coating it. I’d like to specifically explore being Portuguese in Jersey whilst touching on the topic of mental health due to how isolating it can be at times living here.
I’d like to begin by exploring the word ‘belonging’ both what it means and its implications. Belonging is often described as a feeling of security and acceptance, comfortably being able to exist within a space without fearing social rejection or being outcasted.
From a historical perspective I will discussing photography’s relationship with social sciences through early experiments with ethnography and visual anthropology
which I believe links into postmodernist photography due to how the definition of ‘the sense of belonging’ is subjective. Various individuals can have different ideas and interpretations of the phrase which can include both positive and negative connotations, making it an interesting feeling to explore, especially photographically as it has no limits, allowing for a more experimental approach to taking images. Postmodernism came about in the 1960s and was considered controversial at the time for its pessimism, the style itself was created as a response to modernism, allowing room for references outside of the artwork itself [i.e: context from the political world at the time] and combining previous movements [such as surrealism and expressionism] together to create, moving away from traditional rules in favour of being eclectic, creating new concepts rather than making pieces to be taken at face value, rejecting previous movements like those that modernism gave birth to. Postmodernism embraces blurring the lines between high art and popular culture through the use of the mundane and familiar.
For this project, I’ll be referencing within my work how photography embraced postmodern ideas and theories alongside the use of documentary photography. as I believe in order for me to successfully create a project that represents ‘the sense of belonging’ in regard to culture, I’ll need to explore the realistic aspect of my project, capturing images of how life is for Portuguese people – such as my family and I – before being able to delve deeper, adding more postmodern aspects to my work later on through context and referencing art movements, attempting to capture more complex/creative images after fully delving into my work.
I’ll be using a digital camera throughout my project along with a mix of older images from my parents in order to create a point of comparison whilst also experimenting with their images and how their lives in Jersey differ from how they were in Madeira.
It is common knowledge that there are many people of varying cultures living in Jersey, the highest number of non-English migrants being Portuguese/Madeiran, making up 8% of Jersey’s population in 2021, however, this statistic doesn’t include people like me, people who are Portuguese by blood yet English by birth. Us first generation kids often struggle to fit into our cultures as we’re usually separated from one or both, making it difficult to latch onto the feeling of belonging as we aren’t quite sure where ‘home’ is. In most cases, ‘home’ would be where we were born, and although Jersey does present a feeling of familiarity and comfort, I do not find that it feels like home, instead, I see it as something temporary.
With my family being in Madeira, the lack of connection to Jersey can be quite strong as I’ve got no British blood in me, giving me no need to stay in Jersey other than for convenience, however, despite this, the disconnection towards my biological culture is just as strong. The lack of knowledge towards what life is like in Madeira to only being able to speak my first language [Portuguese] due to years of lessons has left me struggling to connect to the rest of my family which is only exaggerated due to the fact that they see me as British.
My parents, despite trying to keep me in touch with our culture, often struggled to communicate with me growing up, despite English being our second language, as I found it to be my preferred language, which eventually led to me forgetting Portuguese altogether at some point. This affected my relationship with both my parents, especially with my dad. His job didn’t require him to speak English as much as my mum’s did, leaving a wall between us as neither knew how to talk to one another, often needing my mum to be present in order to have a decent conversation. Despite the fact that we lived together, we felt like strangers which is similar to American & Russian photographer Diana Markosian’s series ‘Inventing my father’ where she depicts her relationship with her father after not seeing him for almost 20 years, as she left without a goodbye at age 7, and how they view each other as strangers despite being family. She focuses on the awkward tension between them, using text alongside her photos to help express how they tried to rebuild their relationship. Her other series ‘Mornings (With You)’ is a more confrontative series on their relationship as she sets up the camera directly in front of the table both she and her father are seated at and takes raw images of them both together as they both reconnect. I believe her work links into my own due to how she explores her identity in terms of both her family and culture as she actively photographs her life and how the disconnect due to her moving as a child left her confused in her sense of belonging, stating “there was just this real desire, a real passion to expand my own sense of place, where I belonged – I didn’t know where I belonged” in an interview with NOWNESS [2021] which is what I myself aim to capture.
Daniel W. Coburn is an American documentary photographer whom I believe also links into my project as his main focus is family. He uses his photography as a way to document his family which allows him to create a raw set of images rather than a stereotypical/sugar-coated family photo album that only includes the positive aspects of their lives. In his series ‘Next of Kin’, he includes rough, mostly posed, images of his family behind the scenes exploring his family history in “parable of love, reverie, respect and quiet tragedy” [Coburn, D. Next of Kin 2012] which directly links into my project in terms of theme as I would like to take some candid images of both myself and my parents at times where we would not normally pose for images, capturing us in our day to day lives without focusing on positives as most photos do.
For my photoshoots, I began by taking some experimental self-portraits as I knew this project was personal to me and I wanted to start within my comfort zone – in my room. This way, I could explore my own identity without needing to expose my family to the camera before I was ready to. I used different types of lighting, poses, props to accentuate my facial expressions and emotions, trying to portray a sense of solitude. Throughout the shoot, I started to generate more ideas of where my project could go and was quickly ready to move out of my comfort zone and take more day-to-day photographs of my mother, focusing on her as I knew it would be more difficult to capture my dad due to his work hours. This led me to going to my mum’s part-time job and capturing the environment, trying to peak at what part of her life was in providing for our family which was quite interesting, especially as she exposed her distaste for some of the company’s actions. The next shoot involved taking images of my mother at home, contrasting the environment from before.
