Virtual Gallery:

Evaluation:

Overall, I think my personal study was very successful. I enjoyed the process of making my photobook and found that it helped me develop my skills as a photographer throughout the different phases as I learnt how much time was needed in order to produce a coherent final result during the process of taking photos and organising them, especially as I used words to accentuate each spread. I found the process of creating a narrative by mixing various images quite pleasant as I was able to change what each image meant by changing where it was placed and its colour scheme – this was something that intrigued me quite a bit.

I did struggle throughout the process due to my Lightroom glitching, however, I think this helped me to refine some of the details within my book as I was given the chance to restart and reimagine each spread, allowing me to improve the spreads I wasn’t sure on and create a more visually appealing book. Alongside that, I struggled when beginning my photobook as I wasn’t sure how I wanted to lay it out due to how many options there were to compose my layout which felt quite overwhelming at first. Despite these struggles, I was still able to create a physical photobook that I’m proud to have made.

Prints:

For this project, I decided against having a lot of final prints as I knew my photobook would include most of my images and I didn’t want my final pieces to be exact copies of spreads in my photobook. Due to this, I carefully went through my images and paired a few images together that I felt would work well mounted, leaving me with 3 sets of images.

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Mounting + Experimentation

I decided to mount my first 2 image sets in a simple manner in order to draw more attention towards the juxtaposition rather than create a busy/distracting frame that would take away from the images. This led to me sticking my images onto foam board then mounting them onto a sheet of black mount board as I felt it’d help to make my photos stand out.

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For my 3rd set, I decided that I wanted to create a more interesting layout as I hadn’t used these images yet in my photobook and I wanted to make them look more interesting whilst still keeping the overall layout quite simple. This led to some experimentation where I laid my prints out on a table and tested different layouts before deciding on the one I liked best.

Some of my experiments:

As I explored my ideas, I thought about the possibility of having one of my images floating above the rest which led to some further experimentation on how I would be able to do so and what the most effective method would be. At first, I tried having my image held up by small pieces of mount boards, however, I disliked how unstable and visible this method was. Then, I tried using 2 small pieces of mount board and locking them together by cutting a small slit into each piece. This allowed the image to be held up from a smaller, less visible point which I preferred as it made the piece look cleaner and more stable.

I decided upon my final layout as I preferred having my images slightly skewed rather than perfectly symmetrical as I found it more visually interesting/impactful to look at, especially as the images work together to create a small scene.

Link to my photobook: This is a Life.

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I began the process of creating my photobook by importing all my images into a folder in Lightroom so I’d have all of my images in one place, making the selection process much more convenient as I could easily switch back and forth between my images and between my photoshoots.

In order to differentiate between my good quality images and my less successful images, I used the ‘X’ key to reject images that I didn’t think were of a good enough quality for my photobook and the ‘P’ key to select images that were in focus and I would be useful for my project.

From there, I began some of the editing process, doing some small changes [such as turning them black and white, increasing the contrast etc] to improve images that I was considering for my final photobook. I made sure to add a blue colour label to these images so I’d be able to keep track of how many images I was considering, making it so locating the edits would be a quick process.

Next, I filtered out all my images so that only the blue ones would be seen and began organising my images into a rough layout, pairing images that I thought would work well together.

Then, I began the process of making my actual photobook, beginning to create the first few spreads whilst adding text in order to add depth to the images and book itself.

I put in a working cover whilst I began to figure out what I wanted the title to be and where I wanted it to be placed. I decided upon the phrase ‘this is a life’ as I felt like it fits quite well as it states what the book is about whilst setting the tone too.

I experimented with the layout of my spreads, pairing various images together so I could choose the ones I liked best and reuse the photos that didn’t fit in elsewhere.

I then went into photoshop and created my front cover by taking an images of my family and editing it into a photo of a washing machine, lowering the opacity to create a more distant look. I chose a washing machine as Portuguese people are often stereotyped as cleaners and I thought it would be a subtle way of showing some of the stereotypes we face. Alongside that, I also though it looked like a window which would invite people to look into the book along with helping people understand how they’re looking into our lives as an outsider.

Then I continued adding and arranging images carefully, taking care with each spread to make them flow into each other rather than having each spread be really busy which would of made it difficult to look at each image and the story/reasoning behind them. I also tried to use text that would guide the viewer through the photobook, helping to piece together the narrative being portrayed in each act.

I went back to my mum’s part-time job with my camera after a week or so and retook some of the images I took on my phone with my camera, spending time on the composition of each image and looking out for any small details that could make an interesting photo that I hadn’t thought of/taken at my previous shoot.

Contact Sheets

I tried to use the lights available to my advantage which ended up being a slight struggle due to how spaced out they were in certain areas, creating dark images unless I used my flash which would occasionally leave my images overexposed.

Best Shots: Post Editing

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 

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  

Describe your photobook in:

A Paragraph:

My photobook is going to be about the Portuguese experience in Jersey and how it affects our sense of belonging due to the cultural differences. I’m going to use self-portraits of myself and some images of my parents paired with some text in order to portray this experience to the best of my abilities. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to capture aspects of our culture despite the fact that we’re quite separated from it due to that fact we live in Jersey whilst the rest of our family is in Madeira, making embracing our culture to its fullest quite difficult.

A Sentence:

My photobook is going to use a mixture of portraits in order to express the sense of belonging and separation as a Portuguese person living in Jersey.

3 Words:

Culture, separation, belonging

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Design your photobook:

I want my photobook to have a short, blunt title in a mid-sized font to catch the attention of the viewer, allowing for intrigue from the title alone. I’d like for it to be a hardback with a black and white image on the cover, setting the theme/tone of the book right from the beginning.

I’m going to try arrange the images inside in a similar way that Larry Sultan did in his photobook ‘Pictures from home’ [1992] as I like how he displays his images alongside his text, allowing the images to be displayed in different layouts on every spread rather than place every image the same way on every page.

Research a photo-book and describe the story it is communicating  with reference to subject-matter, genre and approach to image-making.

This photobook focuses on the photographer’s parents through a mixture of text and photography, creating an emotional piece of work as Sultan writes about his parents and his time with them, focussing on the mundane conversations that usually link back to his photography. The book itself is a visual memoir that uses a mix of documentary and staged photography to portray his parents American, suburban life.

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Who is the photographer? Why did he/she make it? (intentions/ reasons) Who is it for? (audience) How was it received? (any press, reviews, awards, legacy etc.)

Sultan made the photobook as “the institution of the family was being used as an inspirational symbol by resurgent conservatives. I wanted to puncture this mythology of the family and to show what happens when we are driven by images of success. And I was willing to use my family to prove a point.”

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Deconstruct the narrative, concept and design of the book and apply theory above when considering:

The photobook has a hardcover with an image indented and glued onto the hardcover and uses two different types of paper inside; the typical glossy photography paper that’s found in most photobooks and a different type of paper that feels just as thick but isn’t glossy – almost like thicker printer paper. It doesn’t have a dust jacket nor does it use any sorts of unique binding, using normal case binding. However, the title of the book along with the photographers name have been letter pressed into the cover in a muted orange, standing out against the dark green used for the rest of the cover. It also is very blunt and literal, directly stating what the photobook is about ‘pictures from home’.

The images inside are mostly in colour, the few that aren’t being older images of his parents that have been re-photographed for the purpose of being put in the book which helps add to the story that Sultan has created of his parents in modern times, the older images almost acting as a reflection of what they were which is further shown through his use of text to create a narrative.

The book itself is rectangular, wider yet shorter than an A4 sheet of paper, allowing for plenty of room for Sultan’s images to be spaced out in various ways upon each spread with his choice in text alongside their respective images.

Diana Markosian is an American and Russian visual artist who uses both film and photography to portray her roots. Her series ‘Inventing My Father’ and ‘Mornings (With You)’ depicts her relationship with her father after not seeing him on almost 20 years after moving away when she was 7. The series also includes text about her relationship with him, focussing on the awkward tension between them as they both view each other as strangers.

I feel inspired by her images due to how they’re clearly laced with personal and emotional aspects. The amount of time that she’s put into creating each individual image along with how she’s chosen to compose, edit, and present them allows us to see the emotional distance between her and the people within each image yet still portrays the warmth she feels for them. I hope I can portray a similar feeling within my own project by looking further into her work.