I have decided to develop my ideas into a Zine for my final outcome. To create my zine, I used the following format in Adobe InDesign: a new document with a width of 148mm, a height of 210, 16 pages, 2 columns and a column gutter of 5mm. This will be printed as A4 but will fold to be A5.

Experimenting with the placement of images

I have decided to place this image as a two-page spread as I think it is one of my most successful images – the two-toned nature of the light in this image also means that it is split down the middle of the page spread which I like.

Here I was unsure of which photo to use – I decided against the image to the left, as I think the textures in the photos were too different – I felt that they were not closely related enough.

Therefore, I changed the layout – I think this picture to the left works well with the one on the right due to the shared sense of line and shape, linking them cohesively together.

Here, I was in the process of using a larger image (the left), enlarging it to full size then cropping it – the blue lines on the image were pulled in to create the cropped effect, aligned with the inner purple left line of the page.

Final Zine

Below is my final outcome, created on Adobe InDesign.

I chose this image as my front cover due to the sense of the looming towers – I think the group of three towers give an idea of the different parts of my project. I think that the graphical and measured look of the towers, through the use of line and shape in the image, helps to give a clear introduction to my project and zine.

This spread I think creates great contrast and a statement about housing on the island – I chose these two images next to each other because of their similar large amount of white tones, and slight black tones around the edges. Furthermore, I think this image shows two facets of the housing crisis: the left shows the demolition and destruction of housing, whereas the right shows the neglect and ignorance of the government about vacant properties. Both show the unfiltered reality of the impact of overpopulation and housing poverty on the island. – Overall, I think this was one of the most successful spreads in my zine.

I used this image as a double spread in my zine as I wanted to show the different details of each individual window in the building – each individual window shows a different life in the building, which contrasts with the rigid patterning and dullness of the outside of the building.

I have placed these two images next to each other due to the similar use of line and shape – however there is also great contrast between the two with the varying light and dark tones in each image. Each of these images in in 3 parts in a way, which means that they work cohesively together in one piece. I also think that the repetitive shapes of both these images shows the ‘copy and paste’ nature of a lot of social housing in the island, and how these buildings stick out because of their size and shape.

I chose this image as a double page spread as I wanted to highlight one of my best images from my project. In this image, I particularly like the contrasting tones in the image – when I was shooting, the light was coming from the right, shining only onto the left side of the building. This creates a kind of split-tone effect, and with my use of black and white editing this is much more obvious. Having this image as a double page spread means that the split between the two tones is just off-centre – I like this about the spread.

This is another one of my favourite spreads from my zine. I think these two images tell an interesting story, and in my head they show the idea of a so called “ideal home”, but one that is not conventional, as it is derelict. I think there is a sense of calm given from these two images, away from the destruction and slight sadness in my other images and spreads. It shows what looks like a normal, lived in home, but as you look closer, you see it has been left, unoccupied. I think this spread also shows the waste of vacant houses on the island, as I researched – this home looks almost lived in, almost welcoming, amongst destruction and waste that was seen in my other images.

I chose this image to be a two-page spread, as I wanted to highlight the high amount of fine details in this image – the rainbow image to the right on the door is a reminder of the lockdown in 2020, showing how the lives of those who have left these flats are still left behind but only in little amounts. Furthermore, this image shows evidence of destruction in these derelict and disused buildings, which to me also symbolises the mistreatment of those struggling to access housing on this island.

This spread is made of one image – I decided to split this image in half and did so by duplicating and splitting the images in InDesign. I did this to make sure the composition was balanced – with the image whole, the eye was drawn too much to the white part of the image to the right, and I think that the focal point of the image should be the strong sense of line and repetition in the actual building. To me, the repetition and geometric shape in this spread represent the similarity of each big block of flats on the island, almost as if they have just been duplicated – giving more reason for my duplication of the image in this spread.

I think this image is a more lighthearted end to what is quite a heavy, and dark project – this ‘no-ball games’ sign shows what would have been a fun side to living on the estate, flipping my project’s idea round, which I quite like.

My process

After reviewing my images, I have decided to move away from the idea of Laura Romero and Anastasia Savinova’s collages, and more into the documentary photography of my studied artists: Peter Mitchell, and Sharon O’Neill. However, I am still interested in the idea of compiling my images in a collage, so am still influenced by my collage artists. The aim of my photographs is to show the reality of the housing crisis, and evidence of the strong class and wealth divide in the island – my editing will not hide or ‘sugar-coat’ anything in my pictures. I am planning to edit some of my images in Black and White, and some in colour, with a grainy look that emulates my chosen artists’ work, a lot of which is from the 80s/90s, so was taken on film cameras.

Further evaluation of my shoots and their relevance

In the end, as I have changed my idea and moved away from the idea of including industrial buildings, my shoot of finance and other industrial buildings are probably not going to be used in my final outcomes for Anthropocene. – this includes my images of the abandoned warehouse. This is because, after researching the housing crisis further, and with my interest in documenting this issue increasing, they became less relevant to my idea. I want to produce carefully linked work that shows a clear outcome from my chosen ideas and pictures, so therefore I chose not to use my images of industrial buildings. However, I do not regret carrying out these photoshoots, as they allowed me to choose what I thought was going to work within my project, and then develop this into a further photoshoot.

Edits from my first photoshoot: The cedars, Le Marais, and Marina Court

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This edit is from Le Marais. I chose this image as one of my best images and to edit it due to the strong lines within the image – I also love the sense of repetition in the lines of windows in this image. In my editing, I used Lightroom to change my image to black and white, as well as adding higher contrast to the image. I think that adding contrast and adding shadow was important for this image – it helped to keep the harsh lines and repetition clear and sharp, which was important for me as they are what makes the image successful.

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Due to the high contrast between the sky and the building in this image, I wanted to enhance this further in my editing. I did this by increasing the contrast, but most importantly adjusting shadows, and adding whites. This meant that the areas of white, the sky and windows of the building, remained bright, but the darker areas stood out with high contrast at the same time.

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I chose this image as one of my selections/to edit, due to the way the light hits on the left of the building, but not the right – this creates a contrast between the sides of the image, between light and dark which I really like. In my editing, I wanted to keep this light vs dark in the image, so did not increase the contrast too much – I added a little exposure too, to ensure the bright parts of the images stayed exposed correctly with the added contrast.

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I used heavy cropping in this image – I think this helped the image’s composition a lot, as the eye is drawn purely to the sky, which takes the focus away from the actual building. Therefore, I think my cropping was effective in removing unwanted distraction in this image.

De Quetteville Images

Below are some examples of editing – completed on develop mode, in Lightroom Classic.

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This image of my third photoshoot is one of my favourites from my shoot at De Quetteville Court – I used slight cropping in this image to make sure that the bushes framed the house, which I think worked best compositionally. – I used high contrast and low exposure, but upped the whites slightly to enhance the darker parts of the images but also to keep the white of the door and building behind bright and intense. I think this helped the cohesiveness of the image – the new building looked starkly different in the original, but with my editing, it blends quietly into the background – this creates a soft comparison between the old, dilapidated estate, and the new, modern tower behind.

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For this edit, the door had a really vibrant blue colour, as well as some purple flowers at the bottom which toned nicely with the blue – because of this, I edited in colour as well for this photo – I produced two edits using virtual copies in Lightroom.

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This edit and the one below are my two deadpan style images from this series – I used black and white again for these, but slightly more muted – I kept the exposure and whites up, to ensure the image didn’t get too dark as I added contrast and blacks.

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In this edit, I wanted to focus on the details in the image – I did this by using high contrast, but also using texture and clarity to ensure the fine details in this image stand out.

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In this image, cropping in my editing was very important. I wanted the main focal point of this image to be the door, so I cropped the image in tighter – I left a little of the leaves to the side, as the darkness of the leaves when in black and white toned in well with the darkness of the door and fence – therefore I think cropping and editing in Black and white for this image made all the parts work more cohesively together.

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Due to the strong sense of geometric shape and line in this image, I thought that editing in black and white with high contrast would fit well – the sense of line and shape in this image was strengthened by the use of clarity, texture, and contrasting blacks and whites.

Other examples of my editing

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Evaluation of my editing

Overall, for this project, I think my editing was quite successful. As I was editing, I thought about each particular part of an image, and how the different parts would work together with different editing tools. I think that black and white was the right choice with my types of images – the high contrasted nature of my edits helped to highlight the strong sense of line and repetition in my images, as well as helping to contrast the light and dark elements of my images, which were often strong. These pictures were taken on overcast days, which produced bright and sometimes overexposed images – editing in black and white helped this, as it blended the blacks and whites in the whole image, not just highlighting overexposure in one area.

Links to my theme and artist references

I think that my editing links well to my idea of documenting the reality of the housing crisis – black and white allowed me to show the plain reality of my area I was photographing, without glossing over anything or hiding any ‘unwanted’ parts of my images. My work I think links closely with the work and comparisons of Sharon O’Neill. – both the images she was comparing to, and hers. Even though Sharon was comparing time directly in her series, by using archive images from the architect of the building, and I did not use direct comparisons, I think that my work still comments on the passing of time, and ‘desirability’ or ‘undesirability’ of an area, like Sharon O’neill did, – I showed how buildings that used to be ‘desirable’ when built, have now been discarded, overtaken by newer buildings – showing evidence of the lives of those who lived in flats, and also the architecture of those still lived in with my images from housing estates not abandoned.

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Furthermore, although my images are not edited in colour, I think the deadpan style and angles, as well as the actual subjects, link very closely to Peter Mitchell. However, after comparing my image with Peter’s, I realise that to mimic his style of shooting, I should have used less zoom on my images, with the whole building in shot. However, I think that the theme of Peter Mitchell’s work, photographing the mundane, links heavily to my work – I tried to inspire my work by his in this aspect, by photographing the mundane reality of what parts of St Helier look like as a result of the growing housing crisis and wealth divide.

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In Lightroom, as part of my selection process, each location’s best images have their own colour label. Before labelling my images, I used the P and X tools on my keyboard to either flag or hide my better and worse images, to help me make smaller selections with my colour labels. When I was selecting my best images, I was looking for straight images, with clear and sharp focus. I was also looking for images that were the correct exposure – this was an issue with the bright but cloudy weather – I found both over and under exposure in my images. Also, I was looking for images with a composition which was even and balanced – however this can be helped in my editing process.

Shoot 1

Below are my best images from my photoshoot of housing blocks/estates. I have separated them by location with a colour label within their folder.

Le Marais

My best images for this location were labelled with a blue colour label.

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Marina Court

My images for this location were labelled with a yellow colour label.

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The Cedars (next to the tunnel)

My images from this location were labelled with a purple colour label.

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Shoot 2

These are my best images from my second photoshoot of derelict and industrial buildings. My best images from this shoot were also colour labelled based on the type/location of image.

Ann Street Brewery

My best images are labelled green for this location.

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Ann Street / housing

My best images are also labelled green for this location.

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Department for Infrastructure Building

My best images are also labelled green for this location too.

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Finance/ office buildings on the Esplanade

My best images are labelled red for this part of the photoshoot.

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Shoot 3 – development of my previous two shoots

Images of specific housing and flats

Labelled blue in Lightroom.

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Buildings

Labelled Green in Lightroom.

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Warehouse

Labelled red in Lightroom.

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Contact Sheets

After completing my photoshoots, I imported my photos into Lightroom Classic, into my folders for the topic of Anthropocene. – I have one folder for shoot 1 – housing, and one for shoot 2 – buildings.

Shoot 1

In my first photoshoot, I took photos of housing blocks and estates: Le Marais, St Clements, and St Helier – the two blocks of flats I photographed in St Helier were next to the tunnel and next to the bus station.

These pictures are from a block of flats near the bus station. I found that for photographing housing, using a portrait orientation worked better for a more balanced composition in my images, however landscape worked also with a larger zoom (picture 22).

These images were taken from outside a block of flats next to the tunnel in St Helier. The pictures started off great but the weather began to impact my images, so I had to stop (pictures 56 and onwards are impacted by the rain)

These images are of the same block of flats next to the tunnel in St Helier. – the weather impacted my shoot a little here with rain getting on the lens – I had to stop my shoot as I was worried about my camera, and I continued my shoot again later in the same location, as I liked the quality of the pictures, just not the weather conditions. From about picture 85 onwards was my second attempt at photographing these flats. – I was happy with my second attempt at this shoot, and I think that the moody skies help to add contrast and shadow to my images.

These pictures are of the three blocks of flats at Le Marais. I started off photographing them from afar, as I wanted to show the difference between these huge towers and the nature in the fields right next to them – I think I captured this contrast quite well in images 122 to 134. Then, I went into the estate itself to capture the blocks closer up. I found an angle pointing up to the sky, a high angle, achieved some great shots, as I think it emphasises the size of the block. I also liked the more zoomed in shots, as they created a more abstract image, focusing on the regular pattern of the windows.

Here I took more pictures of Le marais, featuring more of the whole buildings – I want to use these as the outlines of my collages in the style of Laura Romero possibly. Also, from picture 183 onwards I took pictures of another block of flats, which were not far from Le Marais, next to the lighthouse.

Evaluation

Overall, I am quite happy with this shoot. I think capturing the more tired and dilapidated areas of housing is important in relation to Anthropocene is important, as a lot of these flats with not be in place for much longer – they are all soon to be renovated and some turned into higher rise, more modern blocks of flats. I’m therefore pleased with my choices of location for this shoot as I think these areas show how the population of the island is increasing the buildings higher and higher, but to also show how places like Le Marais seem slightly forgotten, and neglected. – the housing crisis is putting more and more stress on social housing, which I wanted to show through this photoshoot. I wish I had taken more pictures of the buildings as a whole however, as these will be useful to use as my outlines / bases for my collages.

Shoot 2

In my second photoshoot, I took pictures of industrial buildings, both modern and run down / abandoned.

Here I photographed the finance buildings near the bus station and the waterfront. I had trouble getting the correct angle with a few of these images, meaning I often ended up with wonky images – however I aim to fix this in my editing.

More images of the finance / industrial buildings near the bus station – I tried to capture the differences between buildings next to each other, to include in my collages later on (picture 66 to 73 for example).

Photos of Ann Street Brewery : I had some trouble with under/over exposure when photographing the old brewery – I experimented with ISO on manual mode until I found the right one – wrong ISO – picture 116, 117, and 118, fixed ISO, 119 onwards.

These are more images of Ann Street brewery, and the surrounding housing, some of which was disused, about to be demolished – this really interested me, and I think this area created some images that will be successful in my collages / final outcomes. For example the graffiti (123) which Anastasia Savinova uses in her work.

More images from my Ann Street location – these were quite successful, for example 135 – 140, of the new housing block amongst the old, and the back of the brewery (147).

These images were taken at the derelict Department for Infrastructure building next to Fort Regent. I mainly chose to photograph this building for the patterns of the boarded up windows – I plan to incorporate different types of pattern with windows from different buildings in my collages. I found this building quite difficult to photograph how I wanted as there was fencing around it – I tried to use this fencing in my images (picture 250 – 257 for example), but if I was to do this shoot again, I could have maybe found a way around this fencing to photograph the building from the angles I originally wanted.

Evaluation

I have mixed opinions about my second photoshoot – I think the photos of the finance buildings around the Esplanade and the bus station could have been better – if I was to do the shoot again I could maybe use a tripod to ensure straight and clear images, as a lot of mine were wonky at this location. However, I was quite pleased with my images from Ann Street – I found this area very interesting to photograph, as all of these semi abandoned housing blocks behind the brewery were right next to the new, modern developments – I think this showed how some parts of Jersey are just completely forgotten by the government. This was completely new to me (the area) and in hindsight, wish I had taken more images.

Photoshoot 3 – development of last 2 shoots

After selecting my best images and evaluating my past two shoots, I decided to research more on the housing crisis, and the overdevelopment in the island. – I decided to re visit one location from my second photoshoot, at De Quetteville Court. I previously photographed this area, but focused on the old brewery next to it. After my first photoshoot in this area, I was intrigued – the new block of flats has been built, but sits next to the old flats and houses, which have laid empty for some time now. I wanted to photograph these, to highlight the waste of vacant properties on the island, as I researched, as well as how the housing crisis puts more and more pressure on social housing to keep improving and changing. This leaves the dated, vacated buildings behind – I wanted to document this through my development of my ideas in my third photoshoot.

I photographed the old estate at De Quetteville court, the surrounding streets, and also an abandoned warehouse.

In my images of the vacated estate, I wanted to take deadpan images of the houses (pictures 58, 54, 70), to show how they have been left, still with posters in windows, and windows open, but boarded up and bare – this contrast was something I wanted to show in my images.

More pictures of the estate – I was also interested in how nature has taken over in some of these images, with flowers growing into windows and fences, despite the large amount of grey and concrete everywhere (pictures 120,117).

My final images of the estate – I then moved to a disused apartment building and warehouse – I had trouble with straight images again here, as I could not get to the angle I wanted to, due to the location.

Evaluation

Overall, I think this was a successful addition to my collection of photos for this project – my added research into the housing crisis helped inform my decisions, like going back to an area such as De Quetteville after researching its’ history and refurbishment. It was helpful feeling like I was actually commenting on an issue within the island, that I felt strongly about, rather than just taking pictures with no meaning behind them.

Peter Mitchell

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Peter Mitchell, born in 1943, has been quietly building a career for 40 years. Living and working in Leeds for much of his life, Mitchell treats his surrounding with a unique sense of care that is evident in his work. An essential part of the colour documentary scene in the 1970s and ‘80s, Mitchell’s landmark show A New Refutation of the Space Viking 4 Mission at Impressions Gallery in 1979 has had an immeasurable impact on contemporary photographic culture. Mitchell has never been a prolific publisher of work; 1990’s Memento Mori examined the dramatic impact of the Quarry Hill redevelopment project in Leeds and his long overdue monograph, Strangely Familiar, published in 2013, features formal portraits of Leed’s people and their places of work. Mitchell’s latest work, Some Thing means Everything to Somebody, is an eccentric autobiography told through inanimate objects silently observed by scarecrows. By pairing an intensely personal collection with the symbolic ‘Everyman’, Mitchell has produced something that is not only autobiographical but the representation of what a lifetime can mean.

“It is as if Peter Mitchell has taken the atmosphere and mood of Edward Hopper’s famous painting and established it as a matter of documentary fact in the north of England at a moment when collapse can lead to further desolation or possible renewal. So these beautiful pictures are drily drenched in history – social, economic and photographic.”

– Geoff Dyer

Strangely Familiar

In the 1970s, Mitchell was working as a truck driver in the English city of Leeds, and he photographed the city during his rounds. This work depicts the factories and small shop owners of Leeds, all photographed in a very formal manner with the aid of a stepladder.

https://strangelyfamiliar.co.uk/strangely-familiar/

In 1979, the photographs were shown at Mitchell’s one-person exhibition at Impressions Gallery in York; this was the first landmark color photography exhibition in the UK. The work was later included in the seminal exhibition ‘How We Are: Photographing Britain’ at Tate Britain in 2007. Strangely Familiar presents 47 color plates, beautifully printed on matt paper and playing off of the artist’s accompanying texts. The book opens with an introduction by Martin Parr.

Early Sunday Morning

Early Sunday Morning, edited and sequenced by John Myers, shows a different Leeds to Mitchell’s earlier publications. It is neither the sombre look at destruction seen in Memento Mori, nor the detached view of ‘the man from mars’ of A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission, but a more intimate document of Mitchell’s own Leeds.

The book reveals the layers of the city’s history, exposed by the changes to the urban landscape that epitomised the 1970s and 80s. Hundred-year-old terraces and cobbled streets sit flanked by concrete flats, with newly cleared ground to either side are presented with Mitchell’s typical graphic framing. 

Link to my work

Peter Mitchell’s work links to my project as I plan to photograph the mundane, in a documentary style, just like Peter Mitchell. I plan to photograph normal, everyday parts of Jersey that are overlooked by the government

Sharon O’Neill

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Founder Sharon O’Neill is a lens-based artist and curator. Her work and research explore the ordinary world through which the fabric and details of a place or community are revealed. Her work has a strong emphasis on collaboration, particularly with the development and research of archives, both familial and historical and with curating. Sharon has a Master’s Degree in Photography from the University of Brighton and has exhibited nationally as part of an emerging talent exhibition entitled ‘Into View’ with her work being showcased in national and international media.

In 2015 she was shortlisted for the Photo London & Magnum Photos Graduate Photographers Award. In 2016 she received Arts Council funding to bring together a major exhibition Blueprint for Living that was featured as part of the 2016 London Festival of Architecture and supported by RIBA. Alongside her photographic work, Sharon has also spent the majority of her career as a Photo Editor for national newspapers and magazines in which she has commissioned, researched, curated and produced many bodies of work and archives and has extensive knowledge and contacts within the world of photography, journalism and the arts.

The ‘flats’ collection

Part of London County Council’s massive post-war house building programme to provide needed homes for working-class families, the five blocks on The Fitzhugh Estate in Wandsworth were designed by Sir John Leslie Martin, principal architect of the Royal Festival Hall, and completed in 1956.

Through her research and with archive and contemporary photographs, she explores Martin’s themes of modernism, environmentalism and the ‘power’ of a well-designed home to improve everyday life, as demonstrated in his writing and books from the 1930s and the flats built in the 1950s and asks: ‘Has the power of his ideas stood the test of time as the current residents live in the future of his 1930s vision and are there anything we can learn as we begin to emerge from our ‘lockdown’ world?’

Link to my work

60 years after John Leslie Martin completed the Fitzhugh Estate in London, photographer Sharon O’Neill visited to see if the project lived up to its promises. This housing estate was, in post-war Britain, considered a very desirable place to live. – Sharon, 60 years later, went back to the same estate to document how the flats were in the more modern-day. When she went back to photograph, these flats had become an “undesirable” place to live. This was because, in the 1980s, the dismantling of the council housing in the UK began. I want to comment on the “undesirability” in my images, and I like the comparison element of Sharon O’neill’s images. This is why I have chosen to photograph places such as De Quetteville Court, the old (and new) flats which have been replaced with newer, more ‘desirable’ housing. This is not the same comparison, but I am drawing my inspiration for a lot of my project from Sharon O’neill’s work on comparing two pieces of opinion/time.

https://www.dezeen.com/2016/06/19/blueprint-for-living-sharon-oneill-photography-post-war-housing-estate-london-festival-architecture/ – a link to an article about this collection.

Collage Artists

Laura Romero

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Laura Romero is a Spanish artist and photographer, who was born in Madrid in 1976. She now lives in Mexico, where she explores her home environment and surroundings. She began as an artist at 11 with oil paints and drawing. She studied fine arts at University and says in an interview that this was something she always wanted to dedicate herself to, but to combine it with design. She considers her work to be very intimate, as she tells a story with her images about everyday life and everyday experiences. She intends to provoke the audience to take a second closer look at ordinary things that generally go unnoticed.

Her international participation has been outstanding, appearing in art fairs from Hamburg to Istanbul, Madrid, and Paris, among others. Both her individual and her collective work have been exhibited around the world.

“I consider my work to be quite intimate. Under the scope of my own experiences, I elaborate a story about everyday life, I expose situations we all face day to day. My intention is to bait the audience into taking a second, closer, look; it is an invitation to reflect on everything that goes by in our journey unnoticed.”

This image is part of Laura’s collection titled “Intervals”. The tones in this image were mostly muted, but with areas of brighter colours, for example, the bottom of the image to the right of the image, with the bright yellow and blue tones. This blue tone is seen throughout the image also, for example, lower down on the left of the building, and on the top right. These areas create natural links – leading lines in the image. The eye is drawn first of all to the top right, then down to the left, as the hotel sign is the biggest focal point in the image. It is then drawn from each corner slowly back and forth down to the bottom of the image. The white background of the image causes the outlines of the buildings that have been collaged together to stand out, which highlights the irregular shape and layout of the image’s composition. The use of different windows in this image creates a sense of repetition, even if they are all combined from different buildings. With the idea of combining multiple different buildings and placing them on top of each other using multi-exposure effects, the image links to a sense of clutter and overcrowding in this environment, therefore linking it to Anthropocene.

Intervals

https://www.altiba9.com/artist-interviews/laura-romero-digital-photographic-art – a link to an interview with Laura Romero.

The images I plan to use of Laura Romero as my inspiration is from the “Intervals” collection. Laura has been working with her city for a long while. She likes to “question” the territory in which she lives, and through her works, she builds “a new identity”. The cities she works with represent a part of her own identity and the identity of those around her. In her collages, she attempts the reframe and remake the facades of buildings, and society in a way.

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Habitual Scenarios

The work in Scenarios (Mexico 2016-2018) is a journey to the inner self, an exercise of introspection that emerges from change. In this work, the artist Laura Romero explores her form of space under the scope of the diverse scenarios and places she walks every day. It is through this look that she accomplishes formulate an adaptation that identifies her with the place where she dwells, thus personalising them –and making it possible for the scenario to speak on her behalf.

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A memory of space and a time

In this collection, Laura placed different buildings onto each other, with some being put onto concrete – this shows the theme of looking more closely at everyday buildings once more, which is also shown in the Intervals collection. The memory of space and time collection will also influence my work as I think it links closely with the other collection, and I like how it features the theme of altered landscapes.

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Anastasia Savinova

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Russian born artist Anastasia Savinova is now based in Sweden creating architectural masterpieces through digital processing. The artist’s work is constantly circling juxtapositions; the house and nature, walking to find new landscapes and digital rendering to create the images, the documented photographs processed together to make something unnatural. 

She describes her work in an interview –” In my practice, I work with different media: photography, drawing, rubbing, video, sound, performance, found object, text and sculpture and so on.  I love the flexibility of this. There is always room for experiment and play. I truly admire artists who can focus on something specific, let’s say printmaking, and work with it the entire life and improve and learn every single aspect of this. I’m myself never clear with definitions. There is a lot of fun and spontaneity, but also some challenges in that, of course.  One day I want to dance and the next day I want to make sculptures. It happens that sometimes I don’t get done either and get frustrated. But I “trust the journey” and want to keep this flexibility and naïve curiosity.”

Genius Loci

Genius Loci is a journey to a multitude of places, urban and rural, inhabited and people less, accessible and secluded. The project explores the character and the spirit of the place. Each work is a visual archive, where one picture concentrates the essence and the feeling of a visited site. Streets and mountain passes encounter on the road and off-road are a rich source of visual information such as form, colour and texture; at the same time, all the encountered environments contain something incorporeal.

Ancient Romans believed that every place has a protective spirit – genius loci; in contemporary usage, genius loci refers to a location’s specific atmosphere and the way it is experienced. Each work is composed of numerous photographs of buildings and landscape forms that are authentic for a studied area. These works balance documentary and fiction, factual and imaginary spaces, and become keepers of the memory and the spirit of the Place.

This image is in the Genius Loci collection, compiled from images of Berlin. This image has lots of brown and grey tones, maybe symbolising the darker aspects of the city – Anastasia does this by photographing the unseen parts of cities, and the backs of buildings. There is a sense of repetition in the image, with all the different types of rectangular shapes in the windows – as well as the overall shape of the image with creates contrast – the bright white background helps the image itself to stand out more. There is a use of perspective in these images – some buildings are very large for example in the middle of the image to the right. However, at the top of the image, there are smaller buildings that are minuscule in comparison to the others. I think that the focal points within this image are the bits of graffiti, which contrast with the rest of the colours in the image with their bright white lettering.

Sideway encounters

https://vimeo.com/anastasiasavinova – a link to Anastasia’s Vimeo page, where she posts videos of her art and video work.

Sideway Encounters part of the project focuses on places in-between: sheds and barns and other constructions, discovered during long road trips, at times abandoned and ruined, secretly hidden outside the towns or solemnly standing in the middle of nowhere, lost in vast fields of grass or dusty roadsides, juxtaposed with powerful nature.

Sometimes these constructions are found side by side with animals, which often seem to be the only rulers out there. These large-scale collages visualize a particular atmosphere, the breath of these poetic and enigmatic “in-between” places. Roadless Encounters pictures places, where no road reaches, one can only get there by walking for days: mountain refuges and ruins, forest huts and ancient shelters.

My artists’ influence on my project

I plan to incorporate the idea of collage and multi-exposure effects which are seen in the work of both these artists into my Anthropocene. The concept of the housing crisis on the island as well as overpopulation and industrialisation in my images through my photos of housing, as well as commercial buildings, joined together like my two artists. I like the idea of collaging my images by hand, using ripping and rough edges, but also might experiment with photoshop. Also, I’m interested in the way Laura Romero prints her images onto concrete, and I like the idea of using printing with ink in my project.

Photoshoot plan

I am going to do my first photoshoot of industrial buildings in St Helier, such as finance buildings, as well as others. For my second photoshoot, I am taking pictures of housing blocks, with graffiti/artwork on some to emulate the work of my artists. I am planning to edit a few of my images in black and white, and the rest in colour – this is because I plan to collage/layer them, and this will help this idea to work. My other option is to create a zine of my images, editing in black and white only.

	Genre	Location	Props	Idea	Lighting	Camera Settings
Photoshoot 1	Landscape	St Helier	Possibly a tripod	Anthropocene – Industrialisation of Jersey	Natural – bright	Landscape, manual
Photoshoot 2	Landscape	St Helier, St Clements, St Saviours	Tripod	Anthropocene – Overpopulation and housing crisis	Natural – bright	Landscape, manual
Photoshoot 3	Landscape	Saint Helier		Anthropocene – vacant buildings, housing crisis	Natural	Landscape, close up, manual

Mindmap of Ideas

My main ideas

An idea I have is to take images of monumental areas on the island such as tourist areas or areas that have changed drastically over time. I would then find archive images, via Facebook or Jersey Heritage, of the same places, at the same angles as my images ( I would find the archive pictures first), and put them together as pairs to show how Jersey is changing due to our effect on the island. This idea is linked to the over industrialisation of the island, and how the need for more and more money has pushed iconic and once loved local places away

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Social Divides and Poverty

Another of my main ideas for the Anthropocene shoot is to document the wealth divide on the island. This links to the Anthropocene project as the human impact of wealth and poverty is seen on the island via the lack of affordable housing, and the extreme housing crisis, contrasting with the mega-rich business owners and families who continue to build bigger and bigger houses and drive the divide further and further – whilst also destroying preserved areas in Jersey’s green spaces. I plan to photograph this by contrasting the new modern big houses on the island with the highrise, neglected buildings in Jersey. My aim with this idea would be to show the divide in the island created by the constant building and expansion of the island. I would then present my images as opposites juxtaposed next to each other, or potentially collaged with articles on the issue as one piece.

The last five years have seen the amount that households have to spend dropping, with income inequality between the rich and poor rising. Five years ago, the gap between rich and poor in Jersey was smaller than in the UK – today, Jersey is a more unequal society than the UK, with twice as many pensioners described as living on “relative low incomes”.

The figures are contained in the Household Income Distribution report, which measures how much money different types of households are surviving on. The report uses an international definition of “relative low income” or “at risk of poverty” – which is any household that receives less than 60% of the average (median) income.

In Jersey, that means £29,400 for two adults living together, £41,160 for two adults with two children, or £19,698 for a single adult. According to those figures:

56% of one-parent families are at risk of poverty.

29% of children are at risk of poverty.

28% of pensioners are at risk of poverty.

The report found that while Jersey’s tax and benefits system reduced inequality between the rich and poor, the effect was completely nullified by the high costs of housing.

Jersey’s housing crisis

One of my main ideas is to show the impact of overpopulation in Jersey and show its effect on how St Helier, St Clement and other parishes look like as an effect of this. I plan to do this by photographing big housing estates, high rise buildings, building estates, and anything such as objects or people I meet as I photograph these areas if I feel they fit with the idea of my shoot.

I have chosen to photograph the housing crisis because of how it is going to impact my future, but also how it impacts almost all residents on the island, including myself.

As the cost of living has risen, housing prices have skyrocketed: Jersey is currently the most expensive place to live in the UK, with higher house prices than London.

With Jersey’s population increasing, as well as the raising in housing prices, the need for social housing is increasing. – Many old blocks of flats and houses are being demolished, to be renewed with modern, state of the art apartments in their place. I have chosen to photograph a few sites of these demolitions in Jersey, to show how the island’s need for housing is affecting the landscape – and what is left behind once everyone is moved out.

For example, De Quetteville court has just been renovated – I plan to photograph the old flats which have been left after the new ones are now built.

Furthermore, the same thing has just begun at the Le Marais flats – they are refurbishing the old flats and completely modernising them. I plan to photograph the flats before their modernisation. – some have already been left, and the construction has begun, and I am keen to photograph the block that is left, compared to the ones still lived.

https://roklimited.je/projects/le-marais – a link to Rok Construction’s plans.

There are over 4,000 vacant properties on the island, recorded in April this year, and the number is increasing despite the desperate need for housing – The number of vacant houses in Jersey has increased by almost 1,000 in the last decade – despite a severe shortage of homes for islanders. A total of 4,027 private dwellings were identified as vacant on Census Day, which equates to a vacancy rate of 8.3%. Both the number and proportion of vacant properties have increased in 2021 compared to the last census in 2011 when 3,103 vacant dwellings were recorded – a vacancy rate of 6.9%.

https://www.itv.com/news/channel/2022-04-19/census-finds-4000-jersey-properties-empty-despite-housing-crisis – a link to the article about this census.

I am interested to photograph both the vacant properties and those that are neglected by the government, as there seems to be no solution to the issue that is causing the island so much trouble. – this housing crisis means that my generation will have a lot of trouble finding housing on the island – there is already evidence of this, with many businesses unable to find accommodation for their staff.

https://www.itv.com/news/channel/2022-01-05/its-just-too-expensive-to-live-here-inside-jerseys-worsening-housing-crisis – an article telling the story of someone on the Island who is unable to find adequate housing, like many others.

Urban and Urban Decay photography

As part of my ideas for photographing evidence of the housing crisis and vacant buildings, urban photography, and particularly decay photography is a key part of my inspiration.

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My aim for this project is to photograph the housing crisis in reality – I have researched it thoroughly and through this, I now know what sites and ideas I am going to carry out.

Collage

I really like the idea of using collage for my final outcomes, as this is a way of working I really like and I think works well, as well as the idea of juxtaposition and comparison in my outcomes to bring across the point of my work on Anthropocene. The idea of collaging my images I think would work well with the idea of photographing the housing crisis, bringing across the idea of overcrowding, by combining and overlapping my images of housing.

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After researching, I have found a style of collage I like: These are by artists like Laura Romero and Anastasia Savinova among others. I think that these two artists work very well with my chosen topic due to the way I would be able to use an outline of some buildings, and fill these with the images of the flats and houses I plan to photograph. For these collages to be successful, I would need to take images in a typology style – they need to be straight on to work as effectively as the collages of Anastasia and Laura’s work.

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Zines

Another idea I have for my presentation of my final outcome is the use of Zines.

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What is Anthropocene?

 Anthropocene is the concept that the Earth has moved into a novel geological epoch characterized by human domination of the planetary system, is an increasingly prevalent framework for debate both in academia and as a wider cultural and policy zeitgeist.

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The Anthropocene is sometimes used to simply describe the time during which humans have had a substantial impact on our planet. Whether or not we are in a new geological age, we are part of a complex, global system and the evidence of our impact on it has become clear.

When analyzing the reasons that have caused the appearance of this new geological age, we can speak of two main causes: the model of energy production and the resource consumption model. The energy produced from coal, oil and natural gas emits large amounts of greenhouse gases, the main causes of global warming.

For its part, the growing population needs a greater use of natural resources that nowadays surpasses the capacity of the Earth to regenerate them.

In Anthropocene, human actions bring many consequences, including changes in the water cycle, imbalances and destructions in the marine and terrestrial ecosystems, the increase of extreme meteorological phenomena, the acidification of the oceans or the disappearance of the forests.

Anthropocene in Photography and Edward Burtynsky: The Anthropocene Project

As the impact of man on the natural world has become more and more obvious, many photographers and artists have produced responses to the age of Anthropocene. These kinds of images are not made just of environmental commentary, but a commentary on other manmade issues such as housing crises and poverty.

Born in Canada in 1955, Burtynsky has been investigating human-altered landscapes in his artistic practice for over 35 years, capturing the sweeping views of nature altered by industry; from stone to minerals, oil, transportation, and silicone.

The Anthropocene Project is directly influenced by the proposed new geologic era ‘Anthropocene’ – introduced in 2000 by chemist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Jozef Crutzen, to represent a formal recognition and acknowledgement of the “human signature” on the planet.

Experts argue that the end of the current epoch has been marked by striking acceleration since the mid-20th century of carbon dioxide emissions and rising sea levels, the mass extinction of global species, and the transformation of land by deforestation and development. Burtynsky hopes to demonstrate this.

The Anthropocene Project includes photographs of the biggest terrestrial machines ever built in Germany, concrete seawalls in China that now cover 60 per cent of the mainland coast, and psychedelic potash mines in Russia’s Ural Mountains. Burtynsky says that in order to make an impact it was important to capture the largest examples of extractions of the planet, which explains why he visited a mighty 20 countries over a period of five years.

Keld Helmer-Petersen is one of the most influential Danish photographers in the 20th Century. He was an international pioneer in colour photography and was a central figure in not only Danish but also European modernist photography. His career spanned 70 years and he had strong interest in modern architecture, industrial areas and structures. He was very prolific and continuously experimented and challenged the many possibilities of the photographic image.

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From 1950 to 1951, Helmer-Petersen studied at the Institute of Design art school in Chicago. The stay there had a major impact on the development of his development as an artist. Helmer-Petersen’s stay at the legendary Institute of Design came about because of his first photobook ‘122 Colour Photographs’ published in 1948. It gained international attention and was recognised as one of the pioneering examples of art photography in colour. The featured photographs explored colour as shapes and surfaces in an original way, and it is what Helmer-Petersen is best known for today. 

His efforts have put a mark on photography as an artistic expression. With his keen eye for things that are generally overlooked, Keld Helmer-Petersen opened a door to the hidden beauty of a world, we thought we knew so well.

After his time at the Institute of Design, teaching art was of great importance to Helmer-Petersen and in 1964 he was appointed the first lecturer of photography at the Academy of Architecture in Copenhagen. Until retiring in 1990, he had influenced many architectural students’ perception of architecture and photography.

From the start, architecture played a significant role in Helmer-Petersen’s work, and throughout his longstanding career he was able to combine his personal interest with his work as a professional photographer. In 1956 Helmer-Petersen established himself as a professional architecture photographer with his own studio in Copenhagen. For many years he worked with some of the most renowned Danish modern architects and designers, such as Jørn Utzon, Kay Kørbing, Poul Kjærholm, Finn Juhl, Mogens Koch and Nanna Ditzel. He did works for ferries and schools in the 1950s and 1960s and his last commission was a series of works in 2008 called ‘Structures’ which can be seen at the Copenhagen Airport train station.

My Editing in the style of Keld Helmer-Petersen

For my editing in the style of Keld Helmer Petersen, I used my industrial images taken at La Collette. I used my black and white images. I then opened them in photoshop, then used the threshold tool, and moved the intensity up/down to achieve my desired results. I then used the invert tool on some of my images to create a clearer look. These experiments worked better with clear and sharp lines, and bold bits of symettry and machinery. This is why I think my images of the machines and structures at La Collette worked best.

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Contact Sheets

Below are some of my contact sheets – I imported my images into Lightroom, into a new collection called Urban Landscapes. I then used the P and X tools to select and deselect my images and find my favourites.

Here I have used P and X to delete images from my selection that are out of focus, overexposed or hazy.

Here I have de-selected images with not the best composition, a wonky horizon line, or an uninteresting subject.

In this contact sheet, I had some trouble with overexposure – I deselected these images and cropped some of my favourites that still had this issue to improve the quality of the image.

Havre Des Pas Buildings and housing images

These images are mostly in the style of my artist John Myers. I am planning to edit these in high contrast black and white to emulate his work. These were taken around Havre Des Pas pool, along the Boardwalk, and towards La Collette.

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Machinery and abstract images

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Typology Images

These images are going to be used as part of my images in the style of Berndt and Hilla Becher, who created Typologies that were a key part of The New Topographics.

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Evaluation

Overall, I think this shoot was really successful compared to some of my others. The bright and sunny weather really helped to prevent over/under-exposed images, as well as using the correct settings (landscape) and lens for the genre and idea I was focussing on. I had a bit of trouble with not enough/ too much zoom in my images, which created a few unbalanced compositions, however, I managed to fix this with the help of cropping.

After selecting my images in lightroom and organising them with colour coding, I edited them.

Havres Des Pas and Housing Images

I edited most of these images in Black and White, with high contrast and grain added – this was to emulate the style of my chosen artist, John Myers. I edited a few images in both colour and black and white, as I wanted to create two versions to see which I liked better.

Here I edited my image in colour and black and white, as I wasn’t sure which I liked best. I think that black and white help to show the different shapes in the building, as well as highlight shadows. However, I think that the version in colour helps to show contrast between the different tones, as well as highlighting the overall shape of the building in contrast to the bright blue in the sky.

Machinery and Abstract Images

Again, for these images, I edited in black and white with strong contrast, adding blacks and decreasing highlights.

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Here I have produced two different edits -In the one on the left, I have used “B and W landscape” preset on lightroom, and on the right I had used my own editing. I prefer the edit on the left because the higher levels of contrast, and my use of cropping which improves the composition.

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In this edit, I used dramatic editing to accentuate the use of shadow and line – I used high contrast, slightly decreased the exposure and highlights, increased the blacks in the image, and added grain.

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Here I have produced two different editing styles – with presets on lightroom – the left is “landscape B and W” and the right is “Sepia toned B and W”

Typology Images

After selecting the images to use for my typologies in the style of Berndt and Hilla becher, I edited them in black and white with high contrast. I then imported them into photoshop, where I created a new A3 document for each piece. I then sized all my images the same, and placed them with equal borders in my desired layout.

Final typologies

I think my typologies were partly successful, but I found that I didn’t have as many images that would work well in the style of typologies as I thought. If I was to do this shoot again, I would make sure to capture more fronts of buildings with straight-on angles with the same amount of zoom, so the pictures fit together more cohesively in my final edits.