LaToya Ruby Frazier:

Context:

In The Notion of Family (her first book), LaToya Ruby Frazier offers an incisive exploration of the legacy of racism and economic decline in America’s small towns, as embodied by Braddock, Pennsylvania, Frazier’s hometown. The work also considers the impact of that decline on the community and on her family, creating a statement both personal and truly political–an intervention in the histories and narratives of the region that are dominated by stories of Andrew Carnegie and Pittsburgh’s industrial past, but largely ignore those of black families and the working classes. Frazier has set her story of three generations–her Grandma Ruby, her mother and herself–against larger questions of civic belonging and responsibility. The work also documents the demise of Braddock’s only hospital, reinforcing the idea that the history of a place is frequently written on the body as well as the landscape.

Moodboard:

“… photography could liberate a new way of seeing and a radical consciousness”

“At times the text functions as an image and the photograph becomes the visual language that creates tension.”

Analysis:

What you want to explore?

As much as I love Jersey and the people in my life right now, I still feel like I don’t belong here. I’d like to focus on my own culture and family and explore what it’s like being an immigrant. I want to explore why and how my family has migrated from one place to another, as well as explore how it has affected them.

Why it matters to you?

It’s my past and I think that is important because everything that has happened to me and my family is what shaped me into the person I am today. I feel very disconnected from my own culture and I feel like I don’t belong anywhere (could also be because I have moved so much from a young age) and I wish this will help me understand myself better.

How you wish to develop your project?

I wish to develop my project by looking at mum’s private archive and possibly recreating images from her teen years just to see the difference between life in Romania in the 90s and life in Jersey in the 2020s. I will also look for documents that we have from when we first moved to Jersey that show our status. I will mostly focus on self portraits and environmental portraits of my mum (possibly at her work place) as well as maybe other immigrant people. I own a little Sony digital camera that I take with me everywhere I go and document everything, so I think I could also use the pictures on that as they are mostly of me, my mum and my friends (showing my life as an immigrant in Jersey basically). I will present my project in the form of a photo-book.

When and where you intend to begin your study?

I’m thinking of starting my project in the next 2 weeks or so because I still need more ideas. I’ll start by talking to my mum about her experience and look through our photo albums in order to get an idea of the type of shoots I’ll have to plan. Around Christmas time will be the best time to photograph for my project because every year we invite people (Romanian, Polish and Portuguese) over for dinner which shows a sense of community. I could photograph the types of foods we will have, which will also show how we Europeans celebrate Christmas and how that could be different from people that are from Jersey.

Mindmap:

We started this project by making a mindmap of our ideas around the theme of ‘islandness’. After finishing it I decided I wanted to look at migrant families and their families, instead of looking at material things on the island. This is because I believe that the people on Jersey are very important to the island and its history.

Ideas:

• I could look at immigration on the island by photographing Romania/Portuguese/Polish (etc) people and interviewing them about their experience in Jersey. I’d convert those interviews to text and add them t my zine/film. Recording them would work well for a film. Could call it ‘Away from Home’ or something maybe idk.

• Compare the life of English people to the lives of immigrant people in Jersey. Could do this by photographing inside of houses and compare how they differ. Show different cultures. Photograph food, items of clothing etc.

• Look at my own private archive at home. Find pictures of my mum in 90s Romania and recreate them. Compare what life was like back then for her to what life is like for me now in the UK. I can also interview her and ask her about how it was to move so much at such a young age and how it has affected her (Romania > Greece > Jersey). Look at documents and government papers regarding our immigration status.

• Take self-portraits and explore the theme of ‘isolation’ and what being away from your own country is like. Could take pictures of my friends as well.

Rita Puig-Serra [Where Mimosa Bloom]

I decided to look a bit into Rita Puig-Serra because I really liked how personal her work felt and wanted to see if I could create something similar. I also like the simplicity of her photobook layouts and use of juxtapose.

Sam Harris [The Middle of Somewhere]

Sam Harris’ photobook ‘The Middle of Somewhere’ caught my attention very easily. I was not only intrigued by the title but also by the images within the book. This is because he focuses on taking mainly snapshots and doesn’t worry about the images being perfect. The book felt like a personal photo album which I really liked and I’d hope to create something similar if possible.

LaToya Ruby Frazier [The Notion of Family]

I chose to look at Latoya Ruby Fraizer because she focused on immigration and family which is a big part of my project as well. I thought her portraits were very nicely done and framed.

Bogdan Girbovan [10/1]

I also tried looking at photographers from Europe, other than just English and American ones. Bogdan Girbovan is a Romanian photographer that created the project ’10/1′. In this project, he focused on taking pictures of every flat in his old communist-styled apartment building. I found this very interesting because even though all the flats have the same structure, the personality of each individual can be seen through the furniture. I could do something similar by taking pictures of my house (a Romanian) and compare it images of my friends’ houses (English, Portuguese etc)

Iosif Berman

Iosif Berman is another Romanian photographer that I thought was interesting as most of his images consist of either elderly people or people in old traditional clothing. Thought it could help to look at his work as I am focusing on my own family history.

Dragana Jurišić

I really like the way Dragana Jurisic photographs because her images look almost surreal and out of a fairy tale. i think the colours used are really beautiful and calming.

There are three island territories within the British Isles that are known as Crown Dependencies; these are the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey which make up Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man. The Crown Dependencies are not part of the United Kingdom, but are self-governing possessions of the British Crown. They have their own directly elected legislative assemblies, administrative, fiscal and legal systems and their own courts of law, they are also not represented in the UK Parliament. The United Kingdom government is responsible for certain areas of policy such as defence and foreign affairs.

Channel Islands – History and Background

The Channel Islands were part of the Duchy of Normandy when Duke William, following his conquest of England in 1066, became William I.

In 1106, William’s youngest son Henry I seized the Duchy of Normandy from his brother Robert; since that time, the English and subsequently British Sovereign has held the title Duke of Normandy.

By 1205, England had lost most of its French lands, including Normandy. However, the Channel Islands, part of the lost Duchy, remained a self-governing possession of the English Crown.

While the islands today retain autonomy in government, they owe allegiance to The Queen in her role as Duke of Normandy.

How did Jersey become self-governing?

In 1204 King John lost the Battle of Rouen against the French King Philippe-Auguste. The defeat signalled the loss of continental Normandy, united with the English Crown since the invasion of England by William the Conqueror in 1066. The Channel Islands, part of the Duchy of Normandy for more than a hundred years at that point, might have been expected to align themselves with the French King in 1204 but they were persuaded by a combination of reward and punishment to side with King John instead.

Among the privileges which the King granted Islanders was the right to be governed by their own laws and he instructed them to select their 12 best men as Jurats who, sitting with the Bailiff, became the Island’s Royal Court.  A warden, later to become governor, was appointed by the King to organise the defence of the Island.

Link to the whole photobook

Does the essay address its hypothesis?

“The male gaze: How are women represented in photography?”

It does as it explores what the male gaze actually is and how Cindy Sherman and Kourtney Roy present women in their work. These pieces of work are heavily edited and show women as being very innocent and obedient, in the sense that they do all the house work and care for the children.

Does it provide new knowledge and understanding?

Yes

Is the essay well structured with a sense of an introduction, paragraphs and a conclusion?

Use and flow of language, prose, punctuation, spelling.

She did this, but there are some spelling mistakes through out the essay.

Use of specialist vocabulary relating to art and photography.

Yes

Analysis of artist’s oeuvre (body of work) and key work(s)

She didn’t analyse any particular body of work, but she did look at two artists and gave us information about their work. To improve she should include at least one analysis.

Evidence of wider reading with reference to art history/ theory, political discourse and/or socio-economical context.

There ae references to wider reading in this essay. She uses quite a few quotes from other pieces of work that are listed in her bibliography.

Use of direct quotes, summary or commentary from others to make an informed and critical argument.

These were used and sourced at the end of the essay.

Use of referencing system (eg. Harvard) and a bibliography.

In this essay, Stephens attempted a bibliography and a referencing system at the end of essay. Through out her essay the quotes are identified with numbers which are then put into bibliography so that they’re easier to identify. I would’ve personally made the bibliography and quotes two separate things.

Use of illustrations with captions listing name of artist, title of work and year of production.

She used illustrations, however, they were not captioned with name of artist, title of work and year of production. Some had the name of the artist and the name of the collections the pictures are from, and other had the year of production and name of collection.

In this blog post I will be looking at all of my past projects from year 12 and year 13. I will be starting with the ‘Heritage’ project, as it’s the first one we did at the beginning of the year 12. I will then look at the ‘Identity’ and ‘Anthropocene’ projects, they were also part of our first year course. Lastly, I will look at the ‘My Rock’ project, which is the most recent project and the first project of year 13.

Heritage – pg2

Environmental Portraits – pg3

Identity – pg4

Anthropocene – pg5

My Rock – pg6

Best and Worst work – pg7

For my final mounts, I decided to put my images in a digital gallery and get an idea of how I want to frame them when I print them out. I will frame my images individually just like I did with my gallery because I want them to be displayed separately as I think they look nicer. I will have two sets, one for my monochrome images and one for my in-colour images. Overall, I think the photographs and editing turned out really well and that the images work well together.

Overall, I think the process of making my zine was quite successful. I really enjoyed using InDesign and putting everything together as it was easy to use and had plenty of layout options. I had a good range of photographs, which made my selection process much easier and less stressful. I really like the layout of the photobook because I think I managed to create a simple and consistent theme through the zine that is not too confusing. I have learned a lot when making this zine and I hope to be able to use my skills further in my next projects.

However, I wish I would’ve been able to use more images from the photo archive and compared them to my ones, but I didn’t have many options. I do think that I incorporated the archive images that I used nicely.

InDesign Settings for the Zine:
Create new document
width: 148mm
height: 210
pages: 16
orientation: portrait
columns:2
column gutter: 5mm
margins: top, bottom, inside, outside: 10mm
bleed: top, bottom, inside, outside: 3mm

Image Selection:

I started by making a new zine document in InDesign using the settings above. I then went into Lightroom and went through all of my photographs from the “My Rock” project. I wanted my zine to be about the rocks around the island of Jersey, which is why I chose 4 different locations (La Cotte, La Motte, L’Etacq and Gorey) and about 4 images for each location to present in my zine.

My Images:

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Societe Jersiaise Images:

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Possible Zine Layouts:

Layout 1:

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I like this layout because it uses all of my images and clearly shows all 4 locations, however, it also feels like there is too much going on. The pages of the zines are full of images which makes it a bit complicated and not as simple as I wanted at the beginning. Each page has a text in either the right or left corner which informs the viewer where the images were taken and why. I think this is a nice touch but it also clutters the page and the position of the text is inconsistent on each page which I don’t like. The title for this zine is “Around Jersey” which is an okay title because it truthfully says what the zine is about, but it’s also boring. I feel like the back cover should also be something more than just a black image because it makes the zine look unfinished. Even a little story/poem on what the zine is about would look nice at the back to make it more interesting.

Layout 2:

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I like this layout more than the other one because it looks simpler and it’s not as cluttered. I think the black and white images makes the zine look more well put together and not as distracting. I managed to use more or less the same images I used in layout 1, which I’m happy about, as well as a few new ones because I wanted the theme to be the same and I didn’t want to change it last minute. I took away the text from each page that informed the viewer about each location because I thought it was bit too much, but I will definitely use it again in a different project because I really liked it. I kept the back cover black because I couldn’t think of anything and added the text “my rock” all over it in grey because that is my title. I changed the title to the name of my project because I thought it would be easier and more fitting.