Photography: Personal Study Essay 

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 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 a British island. The disconnection from both the Portuguese culture and Jersey’s culture leaves 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 whilst touching on the topic of mental health as it is something I have first-hand experience in and feel as though I could fully delve into, including both the positive and negatives rather than sugar-coating it, which is why I’ll be exploring Daniel W. Coburn and Dianna Markosian’s work on their experiences with family.  

For this project, I’ll be using a mix of snapshot and documentary photography including some postmodern approaches to image making 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 myself and my family in our day to day lives. I’ll be rejecting the idea of an objective cultural experience through the use of text – collaborating with my parents to get in depth details on their experiences in Jersey and attempting to capture more complex and creative images exploring stereotypes that people often use against Portuguese people. Alongside that, I’ll be looking at photography through a historical perspective and its important links to social sciences, specifically anthropology and ethnography. I’ll be using a digital camera throughout my project along with a mix of older images from my parents in order to help me achieve my goals which will create a point of comparison between what their lives were like pre-Jersey up until today. 

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 which I believe links with 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.  

Photography, historically, has links to various racist and sexist ideologies such as believing that the white man is the ‘ideal’ and ‘most true’ form of human due to colonisation, Peter Hamilton uses the Darwinist evolutionary theory to explain this as ‘what was considered “superior” the look and shape of the Western European face and body] was compared with what was considered ‘inferior’ [the look and shape of any other type of face and body]” (2001: 84-93). The book ‘Decolonising the camera’ by Mark Sealy [2019] examines how ‘Western photographic practise has been used as a tool for creating Eurocentric and violent visual regimes’ throughout the past, asking if the camera has been used as a “liberating device” or as an “oppressive weapon”. This is due to how photography ‘began to be used as the West explored and documented “the rest of the world”’ (Hamilton 2001: 85), dehumanising groups of people through images that have been described as ‘remarkably similar to those that Tagg identifies within a medical, educational and legal institutions’ (Sealy 2019:106). It has been noted that within these images the people are ‘photographed one by one, isolated in bright lighting and evenly lit shallow spaces’ [Edwards 1997: 56], implying through the use of the visuals that these people are being viewed as subhuman, which can be further seen through Huxley’s ‘recommended use of measuring rods which subjects were positioned’ (Edwards 1997; Hamilton 2001).  

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 by the time I was 5. 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’s presence in order to have a coherent 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. Throughout her series, she addresses how they viewed each other as strangers despite being family, focusing on the awkward tension between her 23-year-old self and her father and uses 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’ (Markosian in an interview with NOWNESS 2021) which is what I myself aimed to capture within my project. 

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 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 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 creating the typical family photo album which Martha Langford argues is a performance, presenting a constructed version of the identity of its participants (Bull 2009). 

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 day-to-day photographs of my mother 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, which allowed me to have some images of moments that wouldn’t typically be seen by others as they’re not classes as ‘special’ enough to capture. Next, I rephotographed some old images of my parents and other family members from when they lived in Madeira from a photo album that my parents had created as I knew I wanted to use them to create contrast within my project. I ended the photographing process by taking one final photoshoot of objects/areas around our flat in order to have proof that we’re people living our lives, adding a sense of normality to the project which I think helps to tie it together. 

In conclusion, Markosian and Coburn’s work used their own families to create their series’, emphasising the personal aspect of their images which in turn also helps to portray their feelings towards their cultures. Markosian’s work specifically focused on her father and how she lacked a sense of belonging due to her experiences within her culture and family which links into my work as I also used the lives of my parents alongside my own in order to portray the sense of belonging in regard to culture. Coburn, on the other hand, used his images to reject the idea of a typical family photo album, his work differing from Markosian’s as he embraced the idea of capturing the negative aspects of his family, going against the idea of performativity in terms of photography in favour of a more raw and realistic set of images. I also think Coburns work is similar to my own, despite the fact that his work doesn’t link into the sense of belonging, due to how he used rough images of his family like I did, exploring his family at different moments throughout out their lives which is what I did within my own project in order to create an unfiltered view into our family life. Although my work doesn’t represent everyone’s cultural experiences, I believe I’ve managed to capture how the sense of belonging can differ between individuals and help outsiders to understand how isolating it can be at times. 

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Bibliography: 

Bull, S. (2010) Photography. Abingdon: Routledge, pp105-106 

Coburn, D. [2014] Next of Kin URL: https://www.danielwcoburn.com/next-of-kin Accessed on 08/02/23 

Edwards, E. [1997] Ordering Others: Photography, Anthropology and Taxonomies Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, pp.56 

Gov.je [2021] Population characteristics URL: https://www.gov.je/government/jerseyinfigures/population/pages/populationstatistics.aspx Accessed on 01/02/23 

Hamilton, P. [2001] Policing the Face Humphries/London: National Portrait Gallery, pp84-93 

Langford, M. [2001] Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press 

Markosian, D. [2013] Inventing my father URL: https://www.dianamarkosian.com/father Accessed on 08/02/23 

Markosian, D. [2016] Mornings (With You) URL: https://www.dianamarkosian.com/mornings Accessed on 08/02/23 

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

Sealy, M. [2019] Decolonising the camera: Photography in Racial Time London: Lawrence & Wishart