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.

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.

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Bibliography: 

Coburn, D. [2014] Next of Kin  

Gov.je [2021] Population characteristics 

Markosian, D. [2013] Inventing my father 

Markosian, D. [2016] Mornings (With You) 

Markosian, D. [2021] NOWNESS interview URL: Photographers in Focus: Diana Markosian on turning her family story into a soap opera accessed 29/01/23