Mon 6 – Wed 8 Feb: Class 13C + 13D 15 hours controlled test Photography classroom + Photography studio
DEADLINE: LAST DAY OF YOUR MOCK EXAM ESSAY > PHOTOBOOKS / FILM > BLOG POSTS
IN PREPARATION FOR MOCK EXAM MAKE SURE THE FOLLOWING IS READY BY THE END OF THIS WEEK:
Complete and proof read essay draft this week (so there is enough time to make final corrections and incorporate it into book design in Mock exam.)
Upload new photoshoots and edit in Lightroom – make sure to produce blog posts showing selection process and experimentation of images.
A draft layout of your photobook/ rough cut of film edit before your Mock Exam begin (that time is used to fine tune design with teacher’s approval)
Review Checklist on blog for overview of work that must be completed.
Go through Go4School Tracking Sheet (sent in email on 23 Jan) and improve, complete and publish missing blogposts.
Structure your 3 day Mock Exam as follows:
DAY 1: Essay: Complete essay, incl illustrations, referencing and bibliography + publish on blog (essay also needs to be added and presented at the end of your photobook)
DAY 2: Photoshoots/ recordings: Begin editing images or recordings for your photobook / film + produce blog posts showing selection process and experimentation of images. Use a combination of print screens + annotation. Write an evaluation about what went well and what you need to do next to develop your shoots and project.
DAY 3 Photobook/ film: Begin photobook design/ edit film + produce blogpost showing design process and evaluate. Produce a blog post showing layout and design process using a combination of print screens + annotation.
Prints: Begin to consider final prints and produce blog post showing presentation ideas and create mock-up in Photoshop and virtual gallery. Make sure you save final images in print folder here by end of the day:
Blogposts: Finish and publish any missing blog posts as per Checklist and your Go4School Tracking sheet.
ESSAY Publish final essay as a separate blog post with illustrations of key works by artists and your own images analysed in your text, as well as a bibliography listing all literary sources used. Also incorporate essay in the back of your book using layout in text columns and include illustrations and bibliography.
Marking Criteria
PHOTOBOOK Make sure you have a made a blog post that charts your design decisions, including prints screens of layout with annotation and write an ongoing evaluation. If you complete it; final book design must be checked and signed off by teacher.
For more help and guidance editing, process and evaluation go to blog post below.
BLURB – ORDER BOOK Inside Lightroom upload book design to BLURB, log onto your account on their website, pay and order the book.
Consider spending a few extra pounds on choosing better paper, such as Premium Lustre in check-out, change colour on end paper or choose different cloth/ linen if needed.
FILM Make sure you have a made a blog post that charts your editing process, including prints screens with annotation and write an evaluation. If you complete it; final film must be checked and signed off by teacher.
For more help and guidance on editing, process and evaluation go to blog post below.
Export final film as mp4 file and upload to Youtube / Microsoft Streams and embed on Blog. Follow these steps:
In Premier: Click on Sequence > Render IN/OUT
File > Export > Media
Export Settings: Format H.264
Output Name: use title of your film and save to V:Data drive
Click Export at bottom
Using Microsoft Stream: Open up Office 365
Go to All Apps and select Stream
Create > Upload Video
Browse to upload your exported film from V:Data drive
Write a short description, choose thumbnail and publish
My Content > Videos > embed film into Blog post with evaluation.
In Youtube: Set up an account at home (www.youtube.com)
Click Create (top right corner) > Upload video
Select file > your exported film from V:Data drive
Write a short description and choose thumbnail
Once uploaded, embed film into Blog post with evaluation.
BLOGPOSTS All blog posts in relation to the above must be published, including any other supporting posts missing from previous work modules since the beginning of Yr 13 academic year, including zines which must be printed & bound, Hockney ‘joiners’, 3D photo-sculpture and final prints.
See previous student, Stanley Lucas as a guide on blogposts that needs to be done and published before you the end of your Mock Exam.
FINAL PRINTS Select your final prints (5-7) from photobook/ film and make a blog post showing ideas about how to present them.
In photoshop produce a mock display (create new document size A1: 594 x 841mm) using different image sizes, for example: A3 x 2, A4 x 2, A5 x 3
PREPARE AND SAVE IMAGES FOR PRINTING:
Add your images to the print folder here…M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\Image Transfer\Printing Yr 13 ISLANDNESS
Complete any unfinished work from last term if you have time, For example: select images for print form Zine and My ROCK project.
File Handling and printing...
Remember when EXPORTING from Lightroom you must adjust the file size to 1000 pixels on the Short edge for “blog-friendly” images (JPEGS)
BUT…for editing and printing when EXPORTING from Lightroom you must adjust the file size to Short edge for “high resolution” images (JPEGS) like this…
A5 Short Edge = 14.8 cm
A4 Short Edge = 21.0 cm
A3 Short Edge =29.7 cm
This will ensure you have the correct ASPECT RATIO
Ensure you label and save your file in you M :Drive and then copy across to the PRINT FOLDER / IMAGE TRANSFER
For a combination of images, or square format images you use the ADOBE PHOTOSHOP > NEW DOCUMENT + PRINT PRESETS on to help arrange images on the correct size page (A3, A4, A5)
You can do this using Photoshop, Set up the page sizes as templates and import images into each template, then you can see for themselves how well they fit… but remember to add an extra 6mm for bleed (3mm on each side of the page) to the original templates. i.e. A4 = 297mm x 210 but the template size for this would be 303mm x 216mm.
Making a Virtual Gallery in Photoshop
Download an empty gallery file…then insert your images and palce them on the walls. Adjust the persepctive, size and shape using CTRL T (free transform) You can also add things like a drop shadow to make the image look more realistic…
PRACTICAL WORK: This term you have 5 weeks to complete all coursework, including essay and photobook or film. This include all relevant blog posts demonstrating your knowledge and understanding of: RESEARCH > ANALYSIS > PLANNING > RECORDING, EXPERIMENTATION > PRESENTATION > EVALUATION.
DEADLINE: MUST complete final photo-shoots/ moving image recordings by 5 February 2023
ESSAY: We will continue to spend at least 1 lesson a week on CONTEXTUAL STUDIES where you will be learning about critical theory, photo history and contemporary practice as well as developing academic study skills to help you writing your essay. However, it is essential that you are organising your time effectively and setting aside time outside of lessons to read, study and write.
DEADLINE: Essay MUST be handed in Mon 30 Jan 2023
PHOTOBOOK / FILM: Returning after Christmas we will be spending the whole month of January developing, designing and printing the photobook which will include your essay and somewhere between 40-60 images sequenced to tell a story. For those making a film you will spend January editing moving images and sound in Premiere.
MOCK EXAM: 6 – 8 Feb 2023 3 days controlled test (15 hours) Groups: 13D & 13C: MON 6 – WED 8 FEB
DEADLINE: Completion of photobook or film LAST DAY OF YOUR MOCK EXAM.
Week 17: 9 – 15 Jan Essay: Introduction and Paragraph 1 Photobook: Editing photoshoots
ESSAY:Lessons Mon -Thurs Complete the following:
MON: Academic Sources
Research and identify 3-5 literary sources from a variety of media such as books, journal/magazines, internet, Youtube/video that relates to your personal study and artists references .
Begin to read essay, texts and interviews with your chosen artists as well as commentary from critics, historians and others.
It’s important that you show evidence of reading and draw upon different pints of view – not only your own.
Take notes when you’re reading…key words, concepts, passages
Write down page number, author, year, title, publisher, place of publication so you can list source in a bibliography
Bibliography
List all the sources that you have identified above as literary sources. Where there are two or more works by one author in the same year distinguish them as 1988a, 1988b etc. Arrange literature in alphabetical order by author, or where no author is named, by the name of the museum or other organisation which produced the text. Apart from listing literature you must also list all other sources in alphabetical order e.g. websites/online sources, Youtube/ DVD/TV.
Quotation and Referencing:
Why should you reference?
To add academic support for your work
To support or disprove your argument
To show evidence of reading
To help readers locate your sources
To show respect for other people’s work
To avoid plagiarism
To achieve higher marks
What should you reference?
Anything that is based on a piece of information or idea that is not entirely your own.
That includes, direct quotes, paraphrasing or summarising of an idea, theory or concept, definitions, images, tables, graphs, maps or anything else obtained from a source
How should you reference?
Use Harvard System of Referencing…see Powerpoint: harvard system of referencing for further details on how to use it.
https://vimeo.com/223710862
Here is an full guide on how to use Harvard System of Referencing including online sources, such as websites etc.
TUE: Essay Question
Think of a hypothesis and list possible essay questions
Below is a list of possible essay questions that may help you to formulate your own.
Tue: Essay Plan Make a plan that lists what you are going to write about in each paragraph – essay structure
Essay question:
Opening quote
Introduction (250-500 words): What is your area study? Which artists will you be analysing and why? How will you be responding to their work and essay question?
Pg 1 (500 words): Historical/ theoretical context within art, photography and visual culture relevant to your area of study. Make links to art movements/ isms and some of the methods employed by critics and historian.
Pg 2 (500 words): Analyse first artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Pg 3 (500 words): Analyse second artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Conclusion (250-500 words): Draw parallels, explore differences/ similarities between artists/photographers and that of your own work that you have produced
Bibliography: List all relevant sources used
Wed: EssayIntroduction In this lesson you will write a 45 mins draft essay introduction following these steps:
Open a new Word document > SAVE AS: Essay draft
Copy essay question into Essay title: Hypothesis > if you don’t have one yet, make one!
Copy your Statement of Intent from previous blogpost.
Identify 2 quotes from your literary sources using Harvard System of Referencing.
Use one quote as an opening quote:Choose a quote from either one of your photographers or critics. It has to be something that relates to your investigation.
Begin to write a paragraph (250-500 words) answering the following questions below.
You got 45 mins to write and upload to the blog!
Think about an opening that will draw your reader in e.g. you can use an opening quote that sets the scene. Or think more philosophically about the nature of photography and and feeble relationship with reality.
You should include in your introduction an outline of your intention of your study, e.g.
What are you going to investigate?
How does this area/ work interest you?
What are you trying to prove/challenge, argument/ counter-argument?
Whose work (artists/photographers) are you analysing and why?
What historical or theoretical context is the work situated within?
What links are there with your previous studies?
What have you explored or experimented with so far in your photography project?
How will your work develop.
What camera skills, techniques or digital processes have you used, or going to experiment with?
Thurs: EssayParagraph 1 In this lesson you will write a 45 mins draft essay paragraph following these steps:
Use information gathered in blog post you produced before Christmas in relation to Art Movement and Isms as a basis for this paragraph
Select at least two quotes from your literary sources that you can incorporate into your paragraph.
Your paragraph must include visual examples of artists work within that art movement that is relevant to your Personal Study.
Consider content and instructions below
Complete Paragraph 1 and upload to the blog at the end of lesson
Paragraph 1 Structure (500 words): Use subheading. This paragraph covers the first thing you said in your introduction that you would address.The first sentence introduces the main idea of the paragraph. Other sentences develop the subject of the paragraph.
Content: you could look at the following…exemplify your hypothesis within a historical and theoretical context. Write about how your area of study and own work is linked to a specific art movement/ ism. Research and read key text and articles from critics, historians and artists associated with the movement/ism. Use quotes from sources to make a point, back it up with evidence or an example (a photograph), explain how the image supports the point made or how your interpretation of the work may disapprove. How does the photograph compare or contrast with others made by the same photographer, or to other images made in the same period or of the same genre by other artists. How does the photograph relate to visual representation in general, and in particularly to the history and theory of photography, arts and culture.
Include relevant examples, illustrations, details, quotations, and references showing evidence of reading, knowledge and understanding of history, theory and context!
PHOTOBOOK: Lesson Fri Bring images from new photo-shoots to lessons and follow these instructions
EDITING:
Save shoots in folder and import into Lightroom
Organisation: Create a new Collection from each new shoot inside Collection Set: PHOTOBOOK
Editing: select 8-12 images from each shoot.
Experimenting: Adjust images in Develop, both as Colour and B&W images appropriate to your intentions
Export images as JPGS (1000 pixels) and save in a folder: BLOG
Create a Blogpost with edited images and an evaluation; explaining what you focused on in each shoot and how you intend to develop your next photoshoot.
Make references to artists references, previous work, experiments, inspiration etc.
Prep for photobook design: Make a rough selection of your 40-50 best pictures from all shoots. Make sure you have adjusted and standardised all the pictures in terms of exposure, colour balance.
EXPERIMENTING:
Export same set of images from Lightroom as TIFF (4000 pixels)
Experimentation: demonstrate further creativity using Photoshop to make composite/ montage/ typology/ grids/ diptych/triptych, text/ typology etc appropriate to your intentions
Design: Begin to explore different layout options using InDesign and make some page spreads for our newspaper (format: 280.5 (h) x 420 mm (w)
Alternatively design a photo-zine. Set up new document as A5 page sizes. This is trying out ideas before you begin designing photobook.
Make sure you annotate process and techniques used and evaluate each experiment
EVALUATING: Upon completion of photoshoot and experimentation, make sure you evaluate and reflect on your next step of development. Comment on the following:
How successful was your photoshoot and experimentation?
What references did you make to artists references? – comment on technical, visual, contextual, conceptual?
How are you going to develop your project from here? – comment on research, planning, recording, experimenting.
What are you going to do next? – what, why, how, when, where?
FILM:Lesson time Fri Bring footage from video/ audio recordings to lessons:
EDITING: • Save media in folder on local V:Data Drive • Organisation: Create a new project in Premiere • Editing: begin editing video/ audio clips on the timeline • Adjusting: recordings in Colour / B&W appropriate to your intentions.
EXPERIMENTING: • Video: experimenting with sequencing using relevant transitions and effects • Sound: consider how audio can add depth to your film, such as ambient sound, sound fx, voice-over, interview, musical score etc. • Title and credits: Consider typography/ graphics/ styles etc. For more creative possibilities make title page in Photoshop (format: 1280 x 720 pixels) and import as a Psd file into your project folder on the V-Data drive.
EVALUATING: Write an evaluation on the blog that reflects on your artistic intentions, film-editing process and collaboration. Include screen-prints from Premiere and a few ‘behind the scenes’ images of the shooting/ production for further annotation. Comment on the following:
How successful was your photoshoot and experimentation?
What references did you make to artists references? – comment on technical, visual, contextual, conceptual?
How are you going to develop your project from here? – comment on research, planning, recording, experimenting.
What are you going to do next? – what, why, how, when, where?
PHOTOBOOK: Lessons Mon-Thurs Produce a number of blogposts that show evidence of the following:
1. Research a photo-book and describe the story it is communicating with reference to subject-matter, genre and approach to image-making.
2. 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.)
3. Deconstruct the narrative, concept and design of the book and apply theory above when considering:
Book in hand: how does it feel? Smell, sniff the paper.
Paper and ink: use of different paper/ textures/ colour or B&W or both.
Format, size and orientation: portraiture/ landscape/ square/ A5, A4, A3 / number of pages.
Title: literal or poetic / relevant or intriguing.
Narrative: what is the story/ subject-matter. How is it told?
Structure and architecture: how design/ repeating motifs/ or specific features develops a concept or construct a narrative.
Design and layout: image size on pages/ single page, double-spread/ images/ grid, fold- outs/ inserts.
Editing and sequencing: selection of images/ juxtaposition of photographs/ editing process.
Images and text: are they linked? Introduction/ essay/ statement by artists or others. Use of captions (if any.)
UNDERSTANDING PHOTOBOOKS: NARRATIVE, EDITING, SEQUENCING, DESIGN, FORM, FUNCTION
Earlier in the academic year we looked at narrative in photography. Let’s refresh our memory and revisit some of the theories around visual storytelling.
Narrative is essentially the way a story is told. For example you can tell different narratives of the same story. It is a very subjective process and there is no right or wrong. Whether or not your photographic story is any good is another matter.
Narrative is constructed when you begin to create relationships between images (and/or text) and present more than two images together. Your selection of images (editing) and the order of how these images appear on the pages (sequencing) contributes significantly to the construction of the narrative. So too, does the structure and design of the photo-zine or photobook.
However, it is essential that you identity what your story is first before considering how you wish to tell it. Planning and research are also essential to understanding your subject and there are steps you can take in order to make it successful. Once you have considered the points made between the differences in narrative and story complete the following:
CASE-STUDIES: Let’s explore some examples of images used in photo-essays and photobooks and see if we can identify the story as well as examine how narrative is constructed through careful editing, sequencing and design.
PHOTO-ESSAY: The life of a country doctor in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains
“A photo is a small voice, at best, but sometimes – just sometimes – one photograph or a group of them can lure our senses into awareness. Much depends upon the viewer; in some, photographs can summon enough emotion to be a catalyst to thought”W. Eugne Smith
W. Eugene Smith compared his mode of working to that of a playwright; the powerful narrative structures of his photo essays set a new benchmark for the genre. His series, The Country Doctor, shot on assignment for Life Magazine in 1948, documents the everyday life of Dr Ernest Guy Ceriani, a GP tasked with providing 24-hour medical care to over 2,000 people in the small town of Kremmling, in the Rocky Mountains. The story was important at the time for drawing attention to the national shortage of country doctors and the impact of this on remote communities. Today the photoessay is widely regarded as representing a definitive moment in the history of photojournalism.
Here is a Powerpoint with more information about how to construct a Traditional Picture Story that includes individual images such as:
Person at Work
Relationship Shot
Establishing Shot
Detail shot
Environmental Portrait
Formal Portrait
Observed Portrait
Here is a link to an entry for Percival Dunham considered Jersey first photojournalist for a very brief period in 1913 and 1914, when he worked for Jersey Illustrated Weekly and then the Morning News, the main competitor for many years for the Evening Post (now the Jersey Evening Post and the island’s only daily newspaper for over half a century). Try and identity individual images as above from a selection of prints from the Societe Jersiaise Photographic Archive that holds over 1000 images by Percival Dunham in their collection.
Select somewhere between 12-15 images from the set and edit and sequence them to construct a specific narrative.
Record an image of your sequence and produce a blogpost where you describe the above process.
PHOTOBOOKS: In October of 1958, French publisher Robert Delpire released Les Américains in Paris. The following year Grove Press published The Americans in New York with an introduction by American writer, Jack Kerouac (the book was released in January 1960).
Like Frank’s earlier books, the sequence of 83 pictures in The Americans is non-narrative and nonlinear; instead it uses thematic, formal, conceptual and linguistic devices to link the photographs. The Americans displays a deliberate structure, an emphatic narrator, and what Frank called a ‘distinct and intense order’ that amplified and tempered the individual pictures.
Although not immediately evident, The Americans is constructed in four sections. Each begins with a picture of an American flag and proceeds with a rhythm based on the interplay between motion and stasis, the presence and absence of people, observers and those being observed. The book as a whole explores the American people—black and white, military and civilian, urban and rural, poor and middle class—as they gather in drugstores and diners, meet on city streets, mourn at funerals, and congregate in and around cars. With piercing vision, poetic insight, and distinct photographic style, Frank reveals the politics, alienation, power, and injustice at play just beneath the surface of his adopted country.
Since its original publication, The Americans has appeared in numerous editions and has been translated into several languages. The cropping of images has varied slightly over the years, but their order has remained intact, as have the titles and Kerouac’s introductory text. The book, fiercely debated in the first years following its release, has made an indelible mark on American culture and changed the course of 20th-century photography. Read article by Sean O’Hagan in The Guardian
MORE PHOTOBOOKS: A few photobooks dealing with memory, loss and love
I went back to Russia to visit the places containing scattered vestiges of my father’s memory.
On a mission to photograph the invisible, with Deleted Scene photographer Yury Toroptsov takes us to Eastern Siberia in a unique story of pursuit along intermingling lines that form a complex labyrinth. His introspective journey in search of a father gone too soon crosses that of Akira Kurosawa who, in 1974, came to visit and film that same place where lived the hunter Dersu Uzala.
Yury Toroptsov is not indifferent to the parallels between hunting and photography, which the common vocabulary makes clear. Archival documents, old photographs, views of the timeless taiga or of contemporary Siberia, fragments or deleted scenes are arranged here as elements of a narrative. They come as clues or pebbles dropped on the edge of an invisible path where the viewer is invited to lose himself and the hunter is encouraged to continue his relentless pursuit.
Dealing with the grief that the photographer suffered following the death of her mother, Where Mimosa Bloom by Rita Puig Serra Costatakes the form of an extended farewell letter; with photography skillfully used to present a visual eulogy or panegyric. This grief memoir about the loss of her mother is part meditative photo essay, part family biography and part personal message to her mother. These elements combine to form a fascinating and intriguing discourse on love, loss and sorrow.
“Where Mimosa Bloom” is the result of over two years work spent collecting and curating materials and taking photographs of places, objects and people that played a significant role in her relationship to her mother. Rita Puig Serra Costa skillfully avoids the dangerous lure of grief’s self-pity, isolationism, world-scorn and vanity. The resonance of “Where Mimosa Bloom” comes from all it doesn’t say, as well as all that it does; from the depth of love we infer from the desert of grief. Despite E.M.Forster’s words – “One death may explain itself, but it throws no light upon another” – Rita Puig Serra Costa proves that some aspects of grief are universal, or can be made so through the honesty and precision with which they are articulated.
I received a text message. “Today, our divorce was finalized.” The message from my mother was written simply, even though she usually sends me messages with many pictures and symbols. I remember that I didn’t feel any particular emotion, except that the time had come. Because my parents continued to live apart in the same house for a long time, their relationship gently came to an end over the years. It was no wonder that a draft blowing between the two could completely break the family at any time.
In Japan, legend has it that a man and woman who are predestined to meet have been tied at the little finger by an invisible red string since the time they were born. Unfortunately, the red string tying my parents undone, broke, or perhaps was never even tied to begin with. But if the two had never met, I would never have been born into this world. If anything, you might say that there is an unbreakable red string of fate between parent and child.
Before long, I found myself thinking about the relationship between my parents and . How many days could I see my parents living far away? What if I couldn’t see them anymore? Since I couldn’t help feeling extremely anxious about it, I was driven to visit my parents’ house many times. Every day I engage in awkward conversation with my parents, as if in a scene in their daily lives. I adapt myself to them, and they shift their attitude toward me. We do not give way entirely to the other side, but rather meet halfway. Indeed family problems remain unresolved, although sometimes we tell allegorical stories and share feelings. It means a lot to us that our perspectives have changed with communication.
My family will probably never be all together again. But I feel without a doubt that there is proof inside of each of us that we once lived together. To ensure that the red string that ties my family together does not come undone, I want to reel it in and tie it tight.
‘The Epilogue’ is the book about the story of the Robinson family – and the aftermath suffered in losing their 26 year old daughter to bulimia. Working closely with the family Laia Abril reconstructs Cammy’s life telling her story through flashbacks – memories, testimonies, objects, letters, places and images. The Epilogue gives voice to the suffering of the family, the indirect victims of ‘eating disorders’, the unwilling eyewitnesses of a very painful degeneration. Laia Abril shows us the dilemmas and struggles confronted by many young girls; the problems families face in dealing with guilt and the grieving process; the frustration of close friends and the dark ghosts of this deadliest of illnesses; all blended together in the bittersweet act of remembering a loved one. Read more here on Laia Abril’s website
Week: 19-20-21: 23 Jan – 8 Feb Complete Essay and Photobook MOCK EXAM: 3 days (15 hrs) Mon 6 – Wed 8 Feb
In the next three week focus on beginning to edit and collect all your images, archival material and texts, including finishing writing your essay needed to complete your photobook.
ESSAY:Lesson Fri Complete conclusion, bibliography, proof read and hand in draft essay no later than Mon 30 Jan.
You want to aim for a draft layout and hand in draft version of your essay before your Mock Exam day, then use that day to fine tune design and complete essay.
1. Write a book specification and describe in detail what your book will be about in terms of narrative, concept and design with reference to the same elements of bookmaking as above.
Narrative:What is your story? Describe in:
3 words
A sentence
A paragraph
Design: Consider the following
How you want your book to look and feel
Paper and ink
Format, size and orientation
Binding and cover
Title
Structure and architecture
Design and layout
Editing and sequencing
Images and text
2. Produce a mood-board of design ideas for inspiration. Look atBLURB online book making website, photo books from photographers or see previous books produced by Hautlieu students on the table in class.
3. Create a BLURB account using your school email address. With Blurb you have different options on how you design your book:
a) Using Lightroom to design your book which is integrated with BLURB. Only for use on school computers, unless you have LR at home on your own laptop.
b) Download Bookwright via Blurb onto your own laptop and work offline at home and you can work indecently of school. Here you have full control of layout/ design features. Once completed, you upload photo book design to Blurb
c) Choose online option if you want to work directly online. Very limited layout/design options (not recommended!)
For those who wish to make their own hand-made photobook using Indesign follow the same steps as below in terms of documenting and annotating your design process. or if you want to customize your Blurb book see me for more details on how to do it.
4. Using Lightroom make a rough selection of your 40-50 best pictures from all shoots. Make sure you have adjusted and standardised all the pictures in terms of exposure, colour balance/ B&W, contrast/brightness etc. Produce blogpost from each shoot with selection of edited images following instructions below.
EDITING:
Save shoots in folder and import into Lightroom
Organisation: Create a new Collection from each new shoot inside Collection Set: PHOTOBOOK
Editing: select 8-12 images from each shoot.
Experimenting: Adjust images in Develop, both as Colour and B&W images appropriate to your intentions
Export images as JPGS (1000 pixels) and save in a folder: BLOG
Create a Blogpost with edited images and an evaluation; explaining what you focused on in each shoot and how you intend to develop your next photoshoot.
Make references to artists references, previous work, experiments, inspiration etc.
EXPERIMENTING:
Export same set of images from Lightroom as TIFF (4000 pixels)
Experimentation: demonstrate further creativity using Photoshop to make composite/ montage/ typology/ grids/ diptych/triptych, text/ typology etc appropriate to your intentions
Make sure you annotate process and techniques used and evaluate each experiment
EVALUATING: Upon completion of photoshoot and experimentation, make sure you evaluate and reflect on your next step of development. Comment on the following:
How successful was your photoshoot and experimentation?
Did you realise your intentions?
What references did you make to artists references? comment on technical, visual, contextual, conceptual?
How are you going to develop your project from here? – comment on new photoshoot, editing, experimenting.
What are you going to do next? – what, why, how, when, where?
5. Print a set of small work prints (4 to one A4 page) on the Laserjet, cut them up in guillotine and lay them out on the big white table for editing.
6. Decide on format (landscape, portrait) size and style of your photo-book. Begin to design your photo book, considering carefully, narrative, editing, sequencing, page spreads, juxtaposition, image size, text pages, empty pages, use of archival material etc.
7. Add your illustrated essay at the end of your photo book, including title, any captions (if needed), bibliography, illustrations of artists work (incl data) and images of your own responses. Think carefully about font type, size and weighting.
8. Produce screen prints of layout ideas as you progress and add to Blog for further annotation, commenting on page layout/ narrative/ sequencing/ juxtaposition of pictures.
9. Make sure all blog posts are finished including, research, analysis, experimentation, annotation and an evaluation of final outcomes.
9. Final prints: Select a set of 5-6 photographs as final outcomes and evaluate – explaining in some detail how well you realised your intentions and reflect on what you have learned in LOVE & REBELLION project.
10. Save final prints in our shared PRINT folder (no later than 15:00 end of your Mock exam day) in a high-resolution (4000 pixels on the long edge.) Save each images in your name i.e. first name_surname_title_1, and 2, 3 and so on.
M:\Departments\Photography\Students\Image Transfer\PRINTING\A2 Coursework Prints Spring 2021
11. NEWSPAPER SPREADS: In anticipation of the possibility of producing a newspaper based on the themes of LOVE & REBELLION design 3-4 versions of a newspaper spreads based on images from your photobook.
You must design the following spreads:
SEQUENCE: Select a series of movie stills (between 5 – 12) and produce a sequence from your film either as a grid, story-board, contact-sheet or typology.
MONTAGE: Select an appropriate set of movie stills and create a montage of layered images. You may to choose to work in Photoshop for more creativity and import into InDesign as one image (new document in Photoshop 420mm(h) x 280.5mm(w) in 300 dpi)
JUXTAPOSITION: Select 2 movie stills and juxtapose images opposite eahc others or layer them to create new meaning.
FULL-BLEED: Select one movie still as a full-bleed spread.
Follow these instructions:
Create new document in InDesign with these dimensions: 420mm(h) x 280.5mm(w), 10 pages, Orientation: Portrait, 2 columns, Column gutter 5mm, Margins: 10mm, Bleed: 3mm
Only use in high-res TIFF/JPEG files (4000 pixels)
Use design ideas and layouts from your zine/ newspaper research as well as taking inspiration from artists listed here as a starting points for your spreads.
Incorporate texts and typography where appropriate.
Once you have completed pagespreads, double check:
All images are high-res file
Check links in InDesign (if Red Question mark appears re-point to image in your folder)
Package your layout and save in your name into this shared folder: M:\Departments\Photography\Students\Image Transfer\LOVE & REBELLION\Newspaper
PRINTING: From Indesign export spreads as JPEGs into shared folder above and choose size A3.
ESSAY: In the Spring term will be spending 1 lesson a week every Wednesday on writing and developing your essay. However, you will need to be working it independently outside of lesson time.
Objective:Criteria from the Syllabus
Be aware of some of the methods employed by critics and historians within the history of art and photography.
Demonstrate a sound understanding of your chosen area of study with appropriate use of critical vocabulary. – use for image analysis
Investigate a wide range of work and sources
Develop a personal and critical inquiry.
Marking Criteria
Academic Sources:
Research and identify 3-5 literary sources from a variety of media such as books, journal/magazines, internet, Youtube/video .
Begin to read essay, texts and interviews with your chosen artists as well as commentary from critics, historians and others.
It’s important that you show evidence of reading and draw upon different pints of view – not only your own.
Take notes when you’re reading…key words, concepts, passages
Write down page number, author, year, title, publisher, place of publication so you can list source in a bibliography
Bibliography
List all the sources that you have identified above as literary sources. Where there are two or more works by one author in the same year distinguish them as 1988a, 1988b etc. Arrange literature in alphabetical order by author, or where no author is named, by the name of the museum or other organisation which produced the text. Apart from listing literature you must also list all other sources in alphabetical order e.g. websites/online sources, Youtube/ DVD/TV.
Quotation and Referencing:
Why should you reference?
To add academic support for your work
To support or disprove your argument
To show evidence of reading
To help readers locate your sources
To show respect for other people’s work
To avoid plagiarism
To achieve higher marks
What should you reference?
Anything that is based on a piece of information or idea that is not entirely your own.
That includes, direct quotes, paraphrasing or summarising of an idea, theory or concept, definitions, images, tables, graphs, maps or anything else obtained from a source
How should you reference?
Use Harvard System of Referencing…see Powerpoint: harvard system of referencing for further details on how to use it.
https://vimeo.com/223710862
Here is an full guide on how to use Harvard System of Referencing including online sources, such as websites etc.
TUE: Essay Question
Think of a hypothesis and list possible essay questions
Below is a list of possible essay questions that may help you to formulate your own.
Make a plan that lists what you are going to write about in each paragraph – essay structure.
Essay question:
Opening quote
Introduction (250-500 words): What is your area study? Which artists will you be analysing and why? How will you be responding to their work and essay question?
Pg 1 (500 words): Historical/ theoretical context within art, photography, visual and popular culture relevant to your area of study. Make links to art movements/ isms and some of the methods employed by critics and historian.
Pg 2 (500 words): Analyse first artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Pg 3 (500 words): Analyse second artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Conclusion (250-500 words): Draw parallels, explore differences/ similarities between artists/photographers and that of your own work that you have produced
Bibliography: List all relevant sources used
Essay question: Hypothesis
Think of a hypothesis and list possible essay questions
Introduction (250-500 words). Think about an opening that will draw your reader in e.g. you can use an opening quote that sets the scene. You should include in your introduction an outline of your intention of your study e.g. what and who are you going to investigate. How does this area/ work interest you? What are you trying to prove/challenge, argument/ counter-argument? What historical or theoretical context is the work situated within. Include 1 or 2 quotes for or against. What links are there with your previous studies? What have you explored so far in your Coursework or what are you going to photograph? How did or will your work develop. What camera skills, techniques or digital processes in Photoshop have or are you going to experiment with?
Paragraph 1 Structure (500 words): Use subheading. This paragraph covers the first thing you said in your introduction that you would address.The first sentence introduces the main idea of the paragraph. Other sentences develop the subject of the paragraph.
Content: you could look at the following…exemplify your hypothesis within a historical and theoretical context. Write about how your area of study and own work is linked to a specific art movement/ ism. Research and read key text and articles from critics, historians and artists associated with the movement/ism. Use quotes from sources to make a point, back it up with evidence or an example (a photograph), explain how the image supports the point made or how your interpretation of the work may disapprove. How does the photograph compare or contrast with others made by the same photographer, or to other images made in the same period or of the same genre by other artists. How does the photograph relate to visual representation in general, and in particularly to the history and theory of photography, arts and culture.
Include relevant examples, illustrations, details, quotations, and references showing evidence of reading, knowledge and understanding of history, theory and context!
See link to powerpoints: Pictorialism vs Realism and Modernism vs Postmodernism here
Paragraph 2 Structure (500 words): Use subheading. In the first sentence or opening sentences, link the paragraph to the previous paragraph, then introduce the main idea of the new paragraph. Other sentences develop the paragraphs subject (use relevant examples, quotations, visuals to illustrate your analysis, thoughts etc)
Content: you could look at the following...Introduce your first photographer. Select key images, ideas or concepts and analyse in-depth using specific model of analysis (describe, interpret and evaluate) – refer to your hypothesis. Contextualise…what was going on in the world at the time; artistically, politically, socially, culturally. Other influences…artists, teachers, mentors etc. Personal situations or circumstances…describe key events in the artist’s life that may have influenced the work. Include examples of your own photographs, experiments or early responses and analyse, relate and link to the above. Set the scene for next paragraph.
Include relevant examples, illustrations, details, quotations, and references showing evidence of reading, knowledge and understanding of history, theory and context!
Paragraph 3 Structure (500 words): Use subheading. In the first sentence or opening sentences, link the paragraph to the previous paragraph, then introduce the main idea of the new paragraph. Other sentences develop the paragraphs subject (use relevant examples, quotations, visuals to illustrate your analysis, thoughts etc)
Content: you could look at the following…Introduce key works, ideas or concepts from your second photographer and analyse in-depth – refer to your hypothesis…Use questions in Pg 2 or add…What information has been selected by the photographer and what do you find interesting in the photograph? What do we know about the photograph’s subject? Does the photograph have an emotional or physical impact? What did the photographer intend? How has the image been used? What are the links or connections to the other photographer in Pg 2? Include examples of your own photographs and experiments as your work develop in response to the above and analyse, compare, contrast etc. Set the scene for next paragraph.
Include relevant examples, illustrations, details, quotations, and references showing evidence of reading, knowledge and understanding of history, theory and context!
Conclusion (500 words): Write a conclusion of your essay that also includes an evaluation of your final photographic responses and experiments.
List the key points from your investigation and analysis of the photographer(s) work – refer to your hypothesis. Can you prove or Disprove your theory – include final quote(s). Has anything been left unanswered? Do not make it a tribute! Do not introduce new material! Summarise what you have learned. How have you been influenced? Show how you have selected your final outcomes including an evaluation and how your work changed and developed alongside your investigation.
Bibliography: List all the sources that you used and only those that you have cited in your text. Where there are two or more works by one author in the same year distinguish them as 1988a, 1988b etc. Arrange literature in alphabetical order by author, or where no author is named, by the name of the museum or other organisation which produced the text. Apart from listing literature you must also list all other sources in alphabetical order e.g. websites, exhibitions, Youtube/TV/ Videos / DVD/ Music etc.
Use this simplified list to check that you are on task. Every item on the list represents one piece of work = one blog post. It is your responsibility as an A-level student to make sure that you complete and publish appropriate blog posts each week.
Final outcomes & Deadlines: Essay (2000 words): Mon 30 Jan 2023 Photobook / Film/ Prints: Last day of Mock Exam WED 8 FEB
SUMMER TERM
WEEK 9: 9-13 Nov 1. REVIEW & REFLECTION: overview of past projects
WEEK 10: 14-20 Nov 1. RESEARCH: ‘islandness’ – produce mindmap & moodboard 2. HOMEWORK: Jersey – a Crown Dependency Deadline: Wed 23 Nov
WEEK 11: 21-27 Nov 1. Statement of Intent 2. Artists References – case-study 1 3. HOMEWORK: Contextual Studies 1: Conversations on Photography Deadline: Wed 30 Nov
Week 12: 28 Nov – 4 Dec 1. Artists References – case-study 2 2. HOMEWORK: Photoshoot 1 – plan and record response to initial ideas/ artists studies Deadline: Wed 7 Dec
Week 13: 5 – 11 Dec 1. Art movements and isms: write 500 words + illustrations 2. HOMEWORK: Response to art movements and isms Deadline: wed 14 Dec.
Week 14-15: 12 – 16 Dec 1. Literary Sources – select 3-5 key texts 2. Essay Question – formulate 2-3 variations of hypothesis 3. Essay Plan – define each paragraph 4. Practice: Plan at least 3 photoshoots over Xmas in response to your project. what, why, how, when, where?
XMASBreak: 17 Dec – 5 Jan 1. RECORDING: Produce a number of photographic response to your Personal Study and bring images from new photo-shoots to lessons in January. 2. READING: Key texts (interviews, reviews, articles etc.) about your subject, photo-history and chosen artists in preparation of writing your essay in January.
Week 16-17: 5 – 15 Jan 1. Essay: Introduction 2. Essay: Paragraph 1 3. Practice: Edit photoshoots and evaluate
Week 18: 16 – 22 Jan 1. Essay: Paragraph 2 & 3 2a: Photobook: Select book and deconstruct narrative, concept and design 2b: Film: Select film and deconstruct narrative, editing and sound
Week 19 – 20: 23 Jan – 3 Feb 1. Essay: Conclusion, bibliography, proof-read DEADLINE: Hand in draft Mon 30 Jan 2a: Photobook: Write a book specification; narrative, concept and design 3b: Photobook: Moodboard and create Blurb account 2b: Film: Storyboarding; narrative, visuals and sound 3b: Film: Moodboard and begin editing
Week 21: 6 – 8 Feb MOCK EXAM 1. Essay: Publish final essay with illustrations and a bibliography 2a: Photobook: Complete design and include essay in Blurb 2b: Film: Complete editing film, export and embed on blog 3. Print: Select a set of 5-6 final prints for mounting 4. Blog: Review and complete all supporting blogposts 5. Statement: write 100-200 words and save in folder
The A-level coursework consist of two modules, Personal Investigation (worth 72 marks) and Personal Study (essay worth 18 marks) which are interlinked and informed by each other. All the work that you produced (both coursework and exam) in Yr 12 also contributes towards A-Level coursework and overall equates to 60% of the total marks and the remainder 40% accounts for the External Set Assignment (Exam) in 2023. The Personal Study essay account for 12% of the total coursework marks. The last week before H-Term 6-10 Feb is a Mock Exam and will count as final DEADLINE
What is a Personal Study?
The aim of this unit is to critically investigate, question and challenge a particular style, area or work by artists/ photographer(s) which will inform and develop your own emerging practice as a student of photography. The unit is designed to be an extension of your practical work in your Personal Investigation module where the practical informs and develops the theoretical elements and vice versa of your ongoing project.
Your Personal Study is a written and illustrated dissertation, including a written essay (2000 words) and a lens-based body of work (either stills photography or moving image) with a number of final outcomes produced from your Personal Investigation unit.
This year you have a choice to make either a film (3-5mins) or a photo book, either online using Blurb or by hand using traditional book binding techniques, which you design to include both your essay and a final selection and sequence of your photographs produced as a response to your chosen theme of ‘islandness’
Explore Shannon’s blog posts to learn more about her Personal Study into patriarchy and women’s traditional role
In addition, you are expecting to produce an appropriate amount of blogposts that demonstrates your ability to research, analysis, plan, record, experiment, present and evaluate.
What it says in the syllabus (Edexcel)
Essential that students build on their prior knowledge and experience developed during the course.
Select artists work, methods and art movements appropriate to your previous coursework work as a suitable basis for your study.
Investigate a wide range of work and sources.
Develop your written dissertation in the light of your chosen focus from the practical part of previous coursework and projects.
Establish coherent and sustainable links between your own practical work with that of historical and contemporary reference.
Be aware of some of the methods employed by critics and historians within the history of art and photography.
Demonstrate a sound understanding of your chosen area of study with appropriate use of critical vocabulary.
Show evidence for an ongoing critical and analytical review of your investigation – both your written essay and own practical work in response to research and analysis.
Develop a personal and critical enquiry.
Culminate in an illustrated written presentation.
How to get started: Link your chosen area of study to your previous work, knowledge and understanding based upon your chosen theme of ‘islandness’.
Up until now you have explored ‘islandness’ focusing on geological sites of special interest through MY ROCK project in class and produced three different outcomes; photo-collages (‘joiners’), 3D photo-sculpture and a photo-zine. All these outcomes are exploring a sense of place and storytelling in different ways and it’s up to you to decide which theme and medium you enjoy most and feel will give you the best chance at producing a quality final outcome. This project will be the final chance you have to improve your coursework marks and grades!
You can decide to continue to respond to or investigate the theme of ‘islandness’ in a similar or different way looking at Jersey’s geology, or take a fresh look at the theme and create a body of work thinking about MY JERSEY – either as way to explore who you are as an individual or examine aspects of Jersey’s history, culture and heritage that gives the island its unique identity.
For example, some of the subjects or issues you wish to explore within the theme of ‘islandness’, you may have explored previously in Yr 12 projects based around the theme of ‘heritage’, that included PORTRAITURE and IDENTITY and LANDSCAPE and ANTHROPOCENE. Or, you may wish to develop new ideas around COMMUNITY and FAMILY. It may be useful for you to revisit some of the projects you have already covered in your coursework, so far (see below).
The choice is between making a photobook; exploring a subject and theme in depth using photography as a tool for visual storytelling, either through observation (documentary) or staging (tableaux) a series of photoshoots. Making a film might be more in line with your creative skills set and offer other elements to storytelling, such as moving image and sound. Either option offers its own unique set of challenges and opportunities for you to express yourself creatively as A-Level Photography student.
In this module we will examine how different narrative structures can be used to tell stories in pictures from looking at photobooks as well as cinema. We will consider narrative within a documentary approach where observation is central in representing reality, albeit we will look at both visual styles within traditional photojournalism as well as contemporary photography which employs a more poetic visual language that straddles the borders between objectivity and subjectivity, fact and fiction.
PRACTICAL WORK: You have 8 weeks in lesson time and over 2 weeks at Christmas to complete principal shoots and make new images. This include all relevant blog posts demonstrating your knowledge and understanding of: RESEARCH > ANALYSIS > PLANNING > RECORDING, EXPERIMENTATION > PRESENTATION > EVALUATION.
PHOTOBOOK: Returning after Christmas we will be spending the whole month of January developing, designing and printing the photobook which will include your essay and somewhere between 40-60 images sequenced to tell a story.
FILM: If you are making a film, then you will be spending January editing your footage, including both visual (moving image/ still-images) and sound (voice-over, sound effects, ambient sound, music scores). Your essay will be published as a separate blog post.
DEADLINE: MUST complete 3-4 new photo-shoots/ moving image recordings this AUTUMN TERM that must be published on the blog by Thurs 5 Jan 2023.
ESSAY: We will be spending minimum 1 lesson a week on CONTEXTUAL STUDIES where you will be learning about art/photo history, critical theory and contemporary practice as well as developing academic study skills to help you writing your essay. However, it is essential that you are organising your time effectively and setting aside time outside of lessons to read, study and write.
DEADLINE: Final Essay MUST be handed in Fri 27 Jan 2023
MOCK EXAM: 6 – 10 Feb 2023. 3 days controlled test (15 hours) Groups: 13C: MON 6 – WED 8 FEB 13D: WED 8 – FRI 10 FEB
DEADLINE: Completion of photobook or film LAST DAY OF YOUR MOCK EXAM.
NEWSPAPER: From the work that you produce as part of this unit there is potential opportunity that we will be making a collective newspaper based on the theme of ‘islandness’. DEADLINE: 24 March 2023
Week 9: 9 – 13 Nov Developing Personal Study Review and Reflect
Lesson task Wed:Personal Investigation Choose one final project from past students.
For photobooks, look through sequence of images carefully and study their supporting blog posts. For films, watch film saved in shared folder here and study their supporting blog posts.
M:\Departments\Photography\Students\Image Transfer\LOVE & REBELLION\FILM\Personal Study
Present their project in class and comment on the book, or film’s quality, with reference to: Concept Editing Sequencing Design Narrative Aesthetic
Make an assessment using the mark sheet below and calculate a grade.
Lesson task Thurs:Personal Study Read the essay and comment on its overall written and interpretative quality as well as its use of critical, contextual and historical references, eg.
Does the essay address its hypothesis?
Does it provide new knowledge and understanding?
Is the essay well structured with a sense of an introduction, paragraphs and a conclusion?
Use and flow of language, prose, punctuation, spelling.
Use of specialist vocabulary relating to art and photography.
Analysis of artist’s oeuvre (body of work) and key work(s).
Evidence of wider reading with reference to art history/ theory, political discourse and/or socio-economical context.
Use of direct quotes, summary or commentary from others to make an informed and critical argument.
Use of referencing system (eg. Harvard) and a bibliography.
Use of illustrations with captions listing name of artist, title of work and year of production.
Make an assessment using the mark sheet and calculate a grade.
Lesson Task FRI: Review and Reflect complete the following blogpost
Objective:Criteria from the Syllabus
Essential that students build on their prior knowledge and experience developed during the course.
Develop your written dissertation in the light of your chosen focus from the practical part of previous coursework and projects.
From all the coursework (Personal Investigation) that you have produced write an overview of what you learned so far (both as Yr 12 and Yr 13 student) and publish on the blog.
1. Describe which themes (heritage, anthropocene, geology,) medium (photography, film), approaches (documentary, tableaux, conceptual), artists (incl contextual references to art history, movements and isms) and photographic skills, processes, techniques and methods (incl learning new software) inspired you the most and why.
2. Include examples of both previous and current experiments and imagery to illustrate your thinking.
Week 10: 14 – 20 Nov Introduction to Personal Study Explore theme of ‘islandness’ complete the following blogposts
‘island’ – a piece of land completely surrounded by water
Before we continue, let’s consider more closely what the concept of islandness is. As ontology is concerned with the nature of being, islandness could be defined, or described as:
The property of being or belonging to an island, especially insofar as it affects society and culture.
Or put more simply: A focus on islands and island communities.
If we consider this more carefully, we think of islandness within the context of:
Island characteristics
A sense of place and identity
Isolation vs connectedness
Insularity– (geographical, cultural, political, social and economic constraints)
RESEARCH & RESPOND – Group work
TASK: In small groups of 2-3 students discuss the concept around ‘islandness‘ and produce a mindmap and moodboard. Take a photograph of your findings and publish on the blog.
ISLAND IDENTITY
What makes Jersey special and why does that matter? These two simple-sounding questions underpin the creation of a new ISLAND IDENTITY project led by Deputy Carolyn Labey, Deputy of Grouville, Assistant Chief Minister and Minister for International Development.
RATIONALE: Our national Identity – how we see ourselves and how others see us – matters a great deal. In Jersey, our ability to work together, care for each other, grow our economy and look after our environment depends on us being bound to each other by more than a shared geography and set of rules. Whatever our backgrounds or occupations, we can benefit from a shared sense of belonging and a shared understanding of what it means to be Jersey.
The ISLAND IDENTITY project has produced a website and a report that has identified distinctive qualities of island life in Jersey. You may wish to explore one of those key themes more in-depth as a concept for your project. They are:
Constitution & Citizenship Communities International Economy Education & Sport Heritage, Culture & the Arts Environment
Lessons Tue-Fri: In groups of two produce a poster that reflects on one of the key areas listed above.
1. What makes Jersey special and why does it matter to you? 2. What does it mean to be ‘Jersey’, now and in the future? 3. What can we all do to solidify a cohesive and positive Island identity? 4. Are there barriers to a positive and inclusive Island identity? (What requires a greater focus and what is being missed?)
Consider ways you could explore the topic through photography and/or film.
Develop a concept and provide a number of creative starting points for a project.
Poster must be visually stimulating using a combination of images, graphics and text.
Present your poster and ideas in class by Fri 19 Nov.
Publish poster on the blog and write an evaluation by Mon 22 Nov.
CONSIDER Island Identity: Jersey’s geological sites of special interest and its natural landscape, Medieval architecture and castles, Neolithic structures and archaeology, German fortifications, influence of Norman culture and language; ie. cultural festivals/ social rituals/ Jérriais speakers/ place names, agricultural heritage; Jersey cow, Royal potato, cider making, knitting, maritime history; privateering, North Atlantic cod-fisheries, worldwide merchant trade, ship building, International Finance Centre; tax heaven, Tourism; a Victorian seaside retreat, 1960s, 70s and 80s heyday of mass tourism, Current housing crisis and cost of living, Environmental protection and sustainable living, Future issues for young people of Jersey???
Illustrate it with images where appropriate and include hyperlinks to resources and any references that may help you to develop your ideas further.
The brief is to show JERSEY through your eyes as students of photography. Reviewing your past projects, moodboard and mindmap write 250-500 words where you consider the following:
Wed 16 Nov: Homework Task Jersey – a Crown Dependency Deadline: Wed 23 Nov
RESEARCH > Explore why Jersey is a Crown Dependency. Produce a blog post with text and images (incl video links) that illustrates your understanding of Jersey constitutional relationship with the UK.
The Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown dependency, which means that it is not part of the UK but is rather a self-governing possession of the British Crown. However, the UK Government is constitutionally responsible for its defense and international representation.
RESPOND > Photo-assignment: Binary opposites TASK: Choose one binary opposite below that is linked with the theme of ‘islandness’ and Jersey’s constitutional relationship with the UK and produce a set of 3 images that illustrates each word.
inwards vs outward
negative vs positive
closure vs openness
isolation vs connectedness
autonomy vs dependence
THEORY > BINARY OPPOSITES
definitions: Binary opposites: a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning.
Theory of binaries. According to French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, meaning is often defined in terms of binary oppositions, where “one of the two terms governs the other.”. An example would be the white/ black binary opposition in the United States, the African American is defined as a devalued other. An example of a binary opposition is the male-female dichotomy, where male is the dominant gender and women are subservient (patriarchy).
Patriarchy: a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it, both within family, workplace and government.
Synonym: a synonym is a word that means the same or nearly the same thing as another word
Antonym: a word of opposite meaning. The usual antonym of good is bad.
Binary opposition & narrative: Claude Levi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist who developed the theory of structuralism and structural anthropology. Levi Strauss theory on binary opposition talks about how narrative can be split into opposites, such as Good and Evil, Man and Woman, Rich and Poor, etc. Due to having these opposites, when together it creates the conflict in the narrative story and this becomes the central climax. Read more here.
Week 11-12: 21 Nov – 6 Dec PERSONAL STUDY: Statement of Intent and Artists references HOMEWORK: Contextual Studies: Conversations on Photography. Deadline Wed 30 Nov complete the following blogposts
STATEMENT OF INTENT
Write a Statement of Intent that clearly contextualise;
What you want to explore?
Why it matters to you?
How you wish to develop your project?
When and where you intend to begin your study?
Make sure you describe your how you interpret the theme of ‘islandness’, subject-matter, topic or issue you wish to explore, artists references/ inspirations and final outcome – photobook or film.
You may wish to consider:
What makes Jersey special to you?
What are the distinct qualities of island life?
A sense of place and identity
Explore the notion of the ‘Jersey way’ or ‘Jersey-ness’.
What makes a person’s identity? Identity is simply defined as the characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is. Elements or characteristics of identity would include race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, physical attributes, personality, political affiliations, religious beliefs, professional identities, and so on.
What does the word “identity” mean to you? Identity is about positive traits; it also can be negative traits. It’s a combination of things that you do; it’s your talents, it’s your strengths, it’s your passions, it’s what you love, it’s what you care about.
Plan your first photo-shoot as a response to initial ideas. Must be published on the blog by Mon 5 Dec.
There are three photographic genres that you could apply to developing ideas and planning photoshoots, they are:
LANDSCAPE > PLACE > GEOGRAPHY > ENVIRONMENT > GEOLOGY – familiar vs unfamiliar, ordinary vs extra-ordinary, vernacular vs spectacular PORTRAIT > PEOPLE > IDENTITY > CULTURE > COMMUNITY – individual vs collective STILL-LIFE > OBJECT > HISTORY > MEMORY > FAMILY – private vs public
THEORY > ANALYSIS
Objective:Criteria from the Syllabus
Select artists work, methods, theories and art movements appropriate to your previous coursework work as a suitable basis for your Personal Study.
Investigate a wide range of work and sources
ARTISTS REFERENCES: Select 2-3 artists/photographers that have inspired your work already and that you would like to research in depth as a basis for your Personal Study. Compare and contrast their practice and work following these steps:
Produce a mood board with a selection of images and write an overview of their work, methods, style, approach and subject matter.
Select at least one image from each photographer and analyse in depth using methodology of TECHNICAL > VISUAL > CONTEXTUAL > CONCEPTUAL.
MEANING & METHODS: Identify meaning and methods behind selected artists/photographers work and research at least 3 different literary sources (online articles, books, Youtube clips) that will provide you with different critical perspective and views other than your own.
The literary sources will also provide you with something to read for further contextual understanding and critical thinking in preparation for writing your essay. Make sure you save hyperlinks photocopies etc in a new folder: Academic References.
Incorporate quotes and comments from artist themselves or others (art critics, art historians, curators, writers, journalists etc) using a variety of sources such as Youtube, online articles, reviews, books
Make sure you reference sources and embed links to the above sources in your blog post.
WED 23 Nov: CONTEXTUAL STUDIES1 Conversations on Photography: As a case study read one interview, identity 3 quotes and apply theory to a analysis of one image.
PLANNING: Plan a shoot in response to researching and interpreting artists work above. Make sure it relates to your ideas on how you intend to develop your project. Follow these instructions: what, why, how, when, where?
RECORDING: Complete planned photo-shoot and bring images in to class. Begin to edit and show experimentation with images using Lightroom / Photoshops/ Premiere as appropriate to your intentions. Make sure you annotate processes and techniques used.
EVALUATION: Upon completion of photoshoot and experimentation, make sure you evaluate and reflect on your next step of development. Comment on the following:
How successful was your photoshoot and experimentation?
What references did you make to artists references? – comment on technical, visual, contextual, conceptual?
How are you going to develop your project from here? – comment on research, planning, recording, experimenting.
What are you going to do next? – what, why, how, when, where?
Week 13: 5 – 11 Dec Theory & Practice: Art Movements & Isms HOMEWORK: Photographic response Deadline Wed 14 Dec complete the following blogposts
The syllabus states clearly that you have to be aware of some of the methods employed by critics and historians within the history of art and photography.
To demonstrate your knowledge and understanding you will have to write a paragraph in your essay providing historical context about your chosen artists/ photographers and how their work and practice is linked to a specific period of photographic history, art movement/ ism or theory.
THEORY > Art Movements & Isms
For this task you need to select an art movement and ism that is relevant to your Personal Study.
Pictorialism
Realism / Straight Photography
Modernism
Post-modernism
Follow these instructions:
1. Start by watching the films below, study PPT presentations and read articles here which will provide you with an overview.
2. Copy the text from the sheet here and produce a blog post with the information needed for each art movement as basic knowledge from which to develop your study further.
3. Choose one of the art movements/ isms relevant to your Personal Study and write 500 words which would form the basis of paragraph 1 in your essay on Historical/ theoretical context and publish on blog.
Wed 7 Dec: Homework Task Produce a photographic response to Art Movement/ Isms Deadline: Wed 14 Dec
Make a creative response to your research and analysis of an art movement/ ism that is relevant to your personal study project. This could be a new photo-shoot or re-working images/ material already made. Aim to produce at least 3 different creative outcomes and produce a blog post with your responses and an evaluation.
Week 14 + XMAS: 12 Dec – 5 Jan Essay: Academic study skills Book/Film: Plan 3 photoshoots for Xmas
ESSAY
Mon: Literary sources:
Research and identify 3-5 literary sources from a variety of media such as books, journal/magazines, internet, Youtube/video that relates to your personal study and artists references .
Begin to read essay, texts and interviews with your chosen artists as well as commentary from critics, historians and others.
It’s important that you show evidence of reading and draw upon different pints of view – not only your own.
Take notes when you’re reading…key words, concepts, passages
Write down page number, author, year, title, publisher, place of publication so you can list source in a bibliography
Bibliography
List all the sources that you have identified above as literary sources. Where there are two or more works by one author in the same year distinguish them as 1988a, 1988b etc. Arrange literature in alphabetical order by author, or where no author is named, by the name of the museum or other organisation which produced the text. Apart from listing literature you must also list all other sources in alphabetical order e.g. websites/online sources, Youtube/ DVD/TV.
Quotation and Referencing:
Use quotes to support or disprove your argument
Use quotes to show evidence of reading
Use Harvard System of Referencing…see Powerpoint: harvard system of referencing for further details on how to use it.
TUE: Essay Question
Think of a hypothesis and list possible essay questions
Wed: Essay Plan Make a plan that lists what you are going to write about in each paragraph – essay structure
Essay question:
Opening quote
Introduction (250-500 words): What is your area study? Which artists will you be analysing and why? How will you be responding to their work and essay question?
Pg 1 (500 words): Historical/ theoretical context within art, photography and visual culture relevant to your area of study. Make links to art movements/ isms and some of the methods employed by critics and historian where appropriate.
Pg 2 (500 words): Analyse first artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Pg 3 (500 words): Analyse second artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Conclusion (250-500 words): Draw parallels, explore differences/ similarities between artists/photographers and that of your own work that you have produced
Bibliography: List all relevant sources used
BOOK/ FILM
Thurs: Plan Photo-shoots
Produce a blog post with a detailed plan of at least 3-4 photoshoots that you intend on doing in response to your Personal Study in the next 3-4 weeks – including Christmas break. Follow these instructions: what, why, how, when, where?
Fri: Work-in-Progress
Prepare a 2-3 mins presentation on something that you are working on right now in your project. For example:
An idea An image A photo-shoot An experiment An inspiration New research New development
Use blog posts to present in class. As a class we will give constructive feedback on how each student can develop their work and project.
XMAS BREAK
RECORDING: Produce a number of photographic response to your Personal Study and bring images from new photo-shoots to lessons: READING: Key texts (interviews, reviews, articles etc.) about your subject, photo-history and chosen artists in preparation of writing your essay in January.
Week 15 – 16: 5 – 15 Jan Essay: Introduction and Paragraph 1 Book/ Film: Edit photoshoots and evaluate
ESSAY
Thur 5 Jan: Essay Plan Make a plan that lists what you are going to write about in each paragraph – essay structure
Essay question:
Opening quote
Introduction (250-500 words): What is your area study? Which artists will you be analysing and why? How will you be responding to their work and essay question?
Pg 1 (500 words): Historical/ theoretical context within art, photography and visual culture relevant to your area of study. Make links to art movements/ isms and some of the methods employed by critics and historian where appropriate.
Pg 2 (500 words): Analyse first artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Pg 3 (500 words): Analyse second artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Conclusion (250-500 words): Draw parallels, explore differences/ similarities between artists/photographers and that of your own work that you have produced
Bibliography: List all relevant sources used
EssayIntroduction In this lesson you will write a 45 mins draft essay introduction following these steps:
Open a new Word document > SAVE AS: Essay draft
Copy essay question into Essay title: Hypothesis > if you don’t have one yet, make one!
Copy your essay introduction (from Essay Plan) which will give you a framework to build upon and also copy your Statement of Intent.
Identify 2 quotes from sources identified in an earlier task using Harvard System of Referencing.
Use one quote as an opening quote:Choose a quote from either one of your photographers or critics. It has to be something that relates to your investigation.
Begin to write a paragraph (250-500 words) answering the following questions below.
You got 45 mins to write and upload to the blog!
Think about an opening that will draw your reader in e.g. you can use an opening quote that sets the scene. Or think more philosophically about the nature of photography and and feeble relationship with reality.
You should include in your introduction an outline of your intention of your study e.g.
What are you going to investigate.
How does this area/ work interest you?
What are you trying to prove/challenge, argument/ counter-argument?
Whose work (artists/photographers) are you analysing and why?
What historical or theoretical context is the work situated within. Include 1 or 2 quotes for or against.
What links are there with your previous studies?
What have you explored so far in your Coursework or what are you going to photograph?
How did or will your work develop.
What camera skills, techniques or digital processes in Photoshop have or are you going to experiment with?
WED 11 JAN: CONTEXTUAL STUDIES2 Decoding Photography • Select one of the questions listed • Read text in detail, make notes and identify 3 quotes • Select one image from examples mentioned in text and apply your own interpretation of the photograph by applying theory and critical thinking • Incorporate the 3 quotes above into your interpretation of the image and make sure you comment on the quotes.
RECORDING: Produce a number of photographic response to your Personal Study and bring images from new photo-shoots to lessons:
• Save shoots in folder on Media Drive: and import into Lightroom • Organisation: Create a new Collection from each new shoot inside Collection Set: IDENTITY & COMMUNITY • Editing: select 8-12 images from each shoot. • Experimenting: Adjust images in Develop, both as Colour and B&W images appropriate to your intentions • Export images as JPGS (1000 pixels) and save in a folder: BLOG • Create a Blogpost with edited images and an evaluation; explaining what you focused on in each shoot and how you intend to develop your next shoot. • Make references to artists references, previous shoots, experiments etc.
EXPERIMENTING:
• Export same set of images from Lightroom as JPEG (4000 pixels) • Experimentation: demonstrate further creativity using Photoshop to make composite/ montage/ typology/ grids/ diptych/triptych, text/ typology etc appropriate to your intentions • Design: Begin to explore different layout options using InDesign and make a new zine/book. Set up new document as A5 page sizes. This is trying out ideas before we begin designing photobook in January. • Make sure you annotate process and techniques used
EVALUATION: Upon completion of photoshoot and experimentation, make sure you evaluate and reflect on your next step of development. Comment on the following:
How successful was your photoshoot and experimentation?
What references did you make to artists references? – comment on technical, visual, contextual, conceptual?
How are you going to develop your project from here? – comment on research, planning, recording, experimenting.
What are you going to do next? – what, why, how, when, where?
Show evidence for an on-going critical and analytical review of your investigation – both your written essay and own practical work in response to research and analysis.
PHOTOBOOK
PLANNING
STORY: What is your story? Describe in:
3 words
A sentence
A paragraph
NARRATIVE: How will you tell your story?
Images > new photographic responses, photo-shoots
Archives > old photos from family albums, iPhone
Texts > letters, documents, poems, text messages
PRACTICAL WORK
RECORDING: Produce a number of photographic response to your Personal Study and bring images from new photo-shoots to lessons:
• Save shoots in folder on Media Drive: and import into Lightroom • Organisation: Create a new Collection from each new shoot inside Collection Set: IDENTITY & COMMUNITY • Editing: select 8-12 images from each shoot. • Experimenting: Adjust images in Develop, both as Colour and B&W images appropriate to your intentions • Export images as JPGS (1000 pixels) and save in a folder: BLOG • Create a Blogpost with edited images and an evaluation; explaining what you focused on in each shoot and how you intend to develop your next shoot. • Make references to artists references, previous shoots, experiments etc.
EXPERIMENTING:
• Export same set of images from Lightroom as JPEG (4000 pixels) • Experimentation: demonstrate further creativity using Photoshop to make composite/ montage/ typology/ grids/ diptych/triptych, text/ typology etc appropriate to your intentions • Design: Begin to explore different layout options using InDesign and make a new zine/book. Set up new document as A5 page sizes. This is trying out ideas before we begin designing photobook in January. • Make sure you annotate process and techniques used
EVALUATION: Upon completion of photoshoot and experimentation, make sure you evaluate and reflect on your next step of development. Comment on the following:
How successful was your photoshoot and experimentation?
What references did you make to artists references? – comment on technical, visual, contextual, conceptual?
How are you going to develop your project from here? – comment on research, planning, recording, experimenting.
What are you going to do next? – what, why, how, when, where?
FILM
PLANNING
STORY: What is your story? Describe in:
3 words
A sentence
A paragraph
NARRATIVE: How will you tell your story?
Visuals > new photographic responses, photo-shoots
Sound > ambient, sound fx, voice-over, interview, music
Archives > found imagery, footage, audio
PRACTICAL WORK
STORYBOARDING: Based on your specification and narrative produce a storyboard with details of individual scenes, action, shot sizes, camera angles and mise-en-scene (the arrangement of the scenery in front of the camera) from location, props, people, lighting, sound etc.
PLANNING: Produce a detailed plan of at least 3-4 video/audio recordings that you intend on doing in the next 3-4 weeks – incl Christmas break
RECORDING: Produce a number of photographic response to your Personal Study and bring footage from video/ audio recordings to lessons:
• Save media in folder on local V:Data Drive • Organisation: Create a new project in Premiere • Editing: begin editing video/ audio clips on the timeline • Adjusting: recordings in Colour / B&W appropriate to your intentions.
EXPERIMENTING: • Video: experimenting with sequencing using relevant transitions and effects • Sound: consider how audio can add depth to your film, such as ambient sound, sound fx, voice-over, interview, musical score etc. • Title and credits: Consider typography/ graphics/ styles etc. For more creative possibilities make title page in Photoshop (format: 1280 x 720 pixels) and import as a Psd file into your project folder on the V-Data drive.
EVALUATING: Write an evaluation on the blog that reflects on your artistic intentions, film-editing process and collaboration. Include screen-prints from Premiere and a few ‘behind the scenes’ images of the shooting/ production for further annotation. Comment on the following:
How successful was your photoshoot and experimentation?
What references did you make to artists references? – comment on technical, visual, contextual, conceptual?
How are you going to develop your project from here? – comment on research, planning, recording, experimenting.
What are you going to do next? – what, why, how, when, where?
INSPIRATIONS / IDEAS / INTERPRETATIONS
My London: through the eyes of Liz Johnson Artur, Kalpesh Lathigra and Sirui Ma. Themes of family, discovery and the natural world inform the work of these three contemporary photographers.
You can also look for contemporary photographers here on LENSCULTURE or visit the photo-agency MAGNUM Another good source for conversations with artists are on A Small Voice, which are conversations with contemporary photographers. You may not be able to listen to the podcasts in school due to network security, but at home or outside of school is fine.
PORTRAIT > PEOPLE > IDENTITY > CULTURE > COMMUNITY
The Holderness coastline in north-east England is Europe’s fastest-eroding coastline, with nearly two metres of land lost to the cold waters of the North Sea each year. The shoreline is made up of soft clay, unlike the durable rock in other parts of the country, and it breaks away much easier. Along with the earth itself, homes, shops and all manner of man-made structures tumble down the steep cliffs as rising sea levels eat away at their base. Documentary photographer Max Miechowski was born in Lincolnshire, not far from these disappearing sites. He spent many of his childhood holidays in seaside resorts along this stretch of land, and remembers them fondly. So much so that in 2019 they became the focus of his series A Big Fat Sky – a body of work that Miechowski hoped would present England’s east coast sincerely, away from the tongue-in-cheek depictions we have grown accustomed to through the work of some contemporary British photographers. “It’s not just people drinking cups of tea, covered in ice cream on the beach,” he says. “There is something else happening there, and I wanted to paint a slightly dreamier, more sensitive picture of that landscape.”
While making the work, Miechowski became increasingly aware of the effects that the rapid coastal erosion was having on seaside towns. He decided to return to them at a later date. When the pandemic hit at the beginning of 2020, he figured it was the ideal moment to do just that. Travelling by car, Miechowski ventured to the spots along the coast that were most at risk of disappearing, from the Isle of Sheppey in Kent all the way up to Yorkshire’s Spurn Point, exploring and shooting in the day, sleeping in his car by night. The resulting body of work is Land Loss. “It was a case of visiting those places and starting to get an understanding of what they look like, what they feel like, and who lives there,” he says. “But I was also thinking about how I might respond to them.”
“The objective of these landscapes was not only to show what Britain looked like at this particular time, but also to convey how it felt to drive through it, and to stand by while it moved around you”
Danny Fox
Kingsley Ifill and Danny Fox met around 10 years ago on the London art scene. The photographer and painter quickly became friends, but their artistic collaboration didn’t begin until much later. In 2020, they released the first of their trilogy of books, Haze: a series of 92 Polaroids made during the Covid-19 lockdown in Fox’s makeshift speakeasy, and now studio, in Cornwall. Later that year, they published a book of nude portraits, which were made in 2019 in LA. Their latest collaboration, Holy Island, marks a departure. While the first two books were published under Ifill’s own imprint, Tarmac Books, Holy Island is released by Loose Joints. More significantly, its subject matter moves away from figurative studies and into the landscape.
In December 2021, Ifill and Fox set out on an eight-day road trip around the British Isles. “We wanted to do something that was completely different,” says Ifill. “Grey skies and muddy fields in English winter were as far removed as it could be from, you know, pretty people in the Hollywood Hills.” Neither artist had a particular interest in landscape images. “I’ve always liked landscape painting as a genre,” says Fox, “but never felt I had anything to contribute to it before. It’s more difficult to make a landscape ‘your own’.” But in this mutually unfamiliar territory, the photographer and painter found a new subject matter.
Twelve women photographers, both current and former Magnum members, meditate on process in an expansive exhibition at the International Center of Photography.
It’s not about the fetishisation of a subject. But about the motivations and intentions of bearing witness to what’s happening in our world. Each project contributes to a picture of the possibilities of interacting with others and having photographic exchanges. It’s timely. I hope it’s inspiring too.”
Charlotte Cotton, Close Enough’s curator
ARGENTINA. Buenos Aires. 1999. The Necklace.ciggarette 001
Exploring the possibilities of photography has been at Magnum’s heart since its inception. Founded in 1947 in the shadow of World War Two, the agency marked the alliance of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, George Rodger and David Seymour, bound by their curiosity in photography and the world. Storytelling was central from the beginning. The show’s title playfully rifts off Capa’s famous saying: “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.“ The quote evokes the idea of an intrepid documentarian, an image to which Magnum is bound despite not being entirely accurate then or now. “If you think about the photographic spectrum within Magnum, it’s always surprising that it’s still dominated by Robert Capa on one end, with frontline, photojournalistic work, and Cartier-Bresson on the other, with more formal concerns expressed in street photography,“ says Meiselas. “But, between those two, my male and female colleagues take more diverse approaches with their photography.“
Today’s collective remains an amorphous entity with a greatly expanded membership for whom Capa’s charge will mean many things. In the show’s context, one might interpret ‘close enough’ as remaining an ethos of sorts. But one with different connotations: relating to an intangible photographer-subject relationship, as opposed to the physical proximity of the camera. A sense of relationality snakes through the exhibition present within each project. It also emerges between the photographers themselves: three generations of women who belong, or have belonged, to the collective. As Meiselas reflects, “What has interested me as the bridge between the earlier culture of women in Magnum – Eve Arnold, Inge Morath, Marilyn Silverstone, Martine Franck, and myself – and this new generation, is how they see the world differently. It’s not to say that there aren’t men within Magnum and outside our community who develop extended relationships like these. The show was not conceived to exclude men, but rather to be inclusive of women and allow them to reveal the kinds of connections that they have in their work as they interface in dialogue with each other.“
Meiselas is joined by Olivia Arthur, Myriam Boulos, Sabiha Çimen, Cristina de Middel, Bieke Depoorter, Carolyn Drake, Nanna Heitmann, Hannah Price, Lua Ribeira, Alessandra Sanguinetti and Newsha Tavakolian. It would be impossible to do justice to the individual projects here, but to learn more from several of the participating artists, listen to discussions, co-produced by Magnum and British Journal of Photography, here.
“The tent itself was the central womb. It was constantly shape-shifting, swelling to accommodate more protesters”
Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh: One Hundred Days of Resistance, is an urgent and necessary record that collates photographs, drawings, maps, letters, songs and other material from the protest site. The book is testimony to the quiet resilience and tender songs of freedom of the women of Shaheen Bagh.
Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh is a book that depicts the life and death of a protest site. Within its pages, Indian photographer Prarthna Singh constellates images, portraits, maps, children’s drawings, songs, poems, letters and other memorabilia born from the Shaheen Bagh movement. Self-published earlier this year, the book is a record of radical female resistance, an attempt to validate its significance and resist its active erasure.
On 15 December 2019, a small group of Muslim women from the Shaheen Bagh neighbourhood started a bonfire and a sit-in protest on one of Dehli’s busiest highways. They were responding to a brutal act of police violence at Jamia Millia Islamia university where students were demonstrating against two government bills designed to strip the Indian constitution of its promise of religious equity, forcing Muslims to leave or be internally displaced. While injured students were rushed to medical facilities, and others were barricaded in their classrooms, their mothers and grandmothers took to the streets.
In the Guatemalan Highlands, a new generation is coming of age, adopting the culture of global youth for an aesthetic that blends tradition and contemporary trends. After a turbulent time away, Brennerreturned to his homeland looking for personal peace and, with his latest project, documents a turning point in the country’s troubled history.
Juan Brenner’s Genesis is a project that thrives in the space in between. It constellates survival and loss, war and peace, beauty and brutality, tradition and modernity to describe a new era in the Guatemalan Highlands. We feel it most pronounced in how young Guatemalans are reimagining the aesthetic codes of their country. Inspired by social media and the cultural force of reggaeton, they adorn themselves in streetwear, gold chains, grills, acrylic nails and colourful hair, recontextualised with traditional indigenous garments. These creative instincts signal more than a redefinition of beauty and identity; they embody a new, defiant set of aspirations for living. While many elders perceive this as a threat, Brenner believes it is the dawn of a critical new era.
“I really identify with the younger generations in Guatemala right now,“ says Brenner. “They are creating their own story. The Highlands’ youth are the first generation to effectively establish an intelligible dialogue with their contemporaries worldwide. There is a [new] vitality, which springs from the territory itself, coupled with the splendour that always belonged to this group. It’s really beautiful what’s happening, but I’m one of the few people in the country who feels that way. People are terrified about losing cultural rituals because the kids are exposed to new influences. Documenting that is one of the main pillars of Genesis.“
“Colour is like a different language that we all understand. Certain colours have certain codes in our society. At the same time, colours can also have a very intuitive feel to them… a certain energy. I like to use that to communicate what I’m feeling”
In their debut book ‘Puberty’, Laurence Philomene journals two years of gender transition. Documenting a ‘second adolescence’, the Montreal artist’s immersive book is intimate and dynamic in equal measure
Leafing through the pages of Puberty by Laurence Philomene is like reading a teenage diary. Bound in a softcover debossed with yellow cursive and gold stars, its pages are filled with colour and scrawled with handwritten notes. The book follows two years of a transition in which Philomene, who is non-binary, undergoes hormonal replacement therapy (HRT).
Anchored by a series of self-portraits organised chronologically, the project reveals intimate details about Philomene’s lived experience as a chronically ill transgender person. We meet their cat Vashti, and their best-friends Nina, Lucky and Rochelle; we learn about their nighttime rituals and their favourite neighbourhood willow tree. But reading this ‘journal’, as such, doesn’t feel voyeuristic or intrusive. Philomene has invited us into this space. On the first page of the book, decorated with multi-coloured sparkles, they write: “This story is my offering to you. I am so grateful for your love and energy while reading it. I hope it ignites a light of possibility in your heart.” And so it begins.
As a young photographer, Philomene was “obsessed” with artists like Wolfgang Tillmans and Tim Walker, and magazines like Love Magazine, Pop Magazine, Dazed, and I-D. Ten years later, their own work is featured in the very titles they idolised, including Dazed and i-D, but also mainstream publications like The New Yorker, Vogue Italia, and CNN
“Now, when I look at it, of course, I’m like, ‘Where the hell is this guy right now?’, ‘Where is this girl?’ And my heart is breaking for where they could be”
Yelena Yemchuk
Following the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, Yemchuk spent five years travelling to Odesa to document young people volunteering to join the army. Her upcoming photobook is a reminder of the love and lives of the young Ukrainian people now faced with war
“People have said that in my work, I tend to romanticise my country,” says Yelena Yemchuk. “When you look at the photographs that I take in Ukraine… everything has a little halo of beauty around it. Even if it’s just a dirty jacket lying on the ground with a cigarette stubbed out on it.”
Yemchuk was born and raised in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, which at the time of writing is facing the full force of Vladimir Putin’s hostile army. The photographer is no stranger to the collateral damage of dictatorships. At the age of 11, during the later years of Leonid Brezhnev’s 18-year rule of the Soviet Union, Yemchuk’s parents emigrated to the United States, leaving behind everything and everyone they knew.
After graduating from the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, Yemchuk began translating her relationship with Ukraine to photography, a process that became more focused during her frequent trips back. Yemchuk first visited Odesa in 2003, and immediately felt a connection with the city and its inhabitants. “That was when I found my language,” she says. “We were on the beach and I had three or four rolls of film in my pocket. Five minutes later, I was running back to get the rest of my film. It was like one of those amazing dreams where everywhere you look there’s a photograph, everywhere you look there’s something going on, something magical happening.”
Ten years would pass before Yemchuk visited again, in 2013. “It felt like Odesa [was] its own floating dreamland… I needed to capture it right there and then,” she says. “I didn’t know what I wanted to shoot, I was just shooting and hanging out and experiencing the city.”
IDENTITY POLITICS: Identity politics is the term used to describe an anti-authoritarian political and cultural movement that gained prominence in the USA and Europe in the mid-1980s, asking questions about identity, repression, inequality and injustice and often focusing on the experience of marginalised groups
add video on identity politics from post last year…
Here are some blog posts from a couple of years where we explored a number of universal and local issues in relation to the themes of LOVE & REBELLION, such as RACISM, COLONIALISM, CAPITALISM, IDENTITY POLITICS, GENDER, AUTHORITY, PROPAGANDA and CLIMATE CHANGE. Some of these issues may resonate with you when developing your focus for your Personal Study.
What Lies Below the Surface: See new work by London students exploring how photography can be used to represent the depth and diversity of our identities.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Autograph’s learning and participation programme has always focused on supporting young people to think differently about the urgent social issues that affect their lives. We have a history of working with teachers and schools to share the ways in which visual representation intersects with issues of race, identity and human rights, and how students can make profound commentary on these questions using the camera and their creative minds.
In today’s uncertain climate this feels more necessary than ever. With heated debates on racial justice and the continuing impacts of the pandemic on our lives, we think it’s crucial for young people to have the space for creativity and self-expression, and to be supported in asking critical questions about the world around them.
Julian Germain: GENERATIONS celebrates families, individuals, diversity and the people of Birmingham and the West Midlands in large-scale photographic portraiture. Based on the aesthetic of the family portrait Germain will use a large format camera to work collaboratively with families of four and five generations from across the region. The photographs will capture details and provoke questions about our life and times.
The group portraits present people at different stages of life; new-borns, infants, children, teens and their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and great great-grandparents. Fundamental questions are raised that relate to us all; life, death, time and the effects of time, where do we come from and where will we go?
Zanele Muholi is one of the most acclaimed photographers working today, and their work has been exhibited all over the world. With over 260 photographs, this exhibition presents the full breadth of their career to date. Muholi describes themself as a visual activist. From the early 2000s, they have documented and celebrated the lives of South Africa’s Black lesbian, gay, trans, queer and intersex communities.
“I picked up the camera because there were no images of us that spoke to me at the time when I needed them the most. I had to produce a positive visual narrative of my community and create a new dialogue with images”Read a recent interview with Muholi here in British Journal of Photography and watch short film.
Bona, Charlottesville 2015 Zanele Muholi born 1972
In the early series Only Half the Picture, Muholi captures moments of love and intimacy as well as intense images alluding to traumatic events – despite the equality promised by South Africa’s 1996 constitution, its LGBTQIA+ community remains a target for violence and prejudice.
Faces and Phases
In Faces and Phases each participant looks directly at the camera, challenging the viewer to hold their gaze. These images and the accompanying testimonies form a growing archive of a community of people who are risking their lives by living authentically in the face of oppression and discrimination.
Other key series of works, include Brave Beauties, which celebrates empowered non-binary people and trans women, many of whom have won Miss Gay Beauty pageants, and Being, a series of tender images of couples which challenge stereotypes and taboos.
Zanele Muholi: series Somnyama Ngonyama
Muholi turns the camera on themself in the ongoing series Somnyama Ngonyama – translated as ‘Hail the Dark Lioness’. These powerful and reflective images explore themes including labour, racism, Eurocentrism and sexual politics.
Nigerian multi-disciplinary artist Ken Nwadiogbu is a full time visual artist who creates innovative conceptual drawings on various surfaces as he engages in multidisciplinary modes of storytelling. Gender equality, African culture, and Black power are a few aspects of his current research and artistic practice.
PACKAGES IN BROWN SKIN
CURATOR’S INTERPRETATION
“Ken Nwadiogbu believes that the advancement of reasoning which by extension is change, is mostly dependent on the ability to grasp consciousness. As such, one underlining factor of his artistry is to stimulate the viewer into being in his shoes whilst they interact with his work. He employs familiar motifs and imageries to ease them into this space.
An ideal Nwadiogbu piece constitutes a silhouette of a form, mostly human, which he embeds an eye or parts/whole of a face into— his ultimate pronouncement on the theme of creating consciousness to what represents our collective reality through art.” – Kennii Ekundayo, Art Curator Grid, 2020
ARTIST STATEMENT
We are all heroes in our movies.
My artist lens is one of a focused bystander experiencing my reality while observing the world around me. That world could be my local community, my country of Nigeria, my studio in England, or any of the living workspaces I have adopted globally. Wherever I am, I always feel the need to analyse, investigate, and perceive the news around me. As an artist, I accept the significant roles of ethnographer and strategic visionary that we artists have played in society throughout history.
My artistry reflects my own human experience and acts as a social commentary on the experience of others, so for me, that role comes with a need to be empathetic when understanding and representing the characters captured throughout various contexts in my art. My art-making process allows me to discover and reveal who we truly are at our core, whether in a moment or in a movement. One may find a reflection in the contemporary realism of my drawn faces, or in the painted expressions of fashion, or home décor – ultimately, my goal reaches beyond realism and lies in a space between authenticity and possibility.
Sammy Baloji’s artistic concern is rooted in the daily life of Congolese people, and he uses photography to explore his country’s present and to retell its history from the perspective of its people. “Ethnography, architecture, and urbanism [are] among my current focuses,” he has written. “My reading of the Congolese past is a way of analyzing African identity today, through all the political systems that the society has experienced.” He often combines archival photographs with his own shots of the people and places bearing the marks of colonialism. In his “Mémoire” series (2006), for example, he focuses on the former mining town of Lubumbashi. By superimposing photographs of the people who worked and ran the mines over his own images of these now disused structures, he reveals the ongoing ramifications of the past.
Sammy Baloji, Mémoire
Curated by writer Ekow Eshun, and showcasing photography, prints, textile, installation and video, We Are History presents works which are moving, lyrical and thought-provoking, capturing nature as a place of both beauty and fragility. Featuring artists Alberta Whittle, Allora & Calzadilla, Carolina Caycedo, Louis Henderson, Malala Andrialavidrazana, Mazenett Quiroga, Otobong Nkanga, Zineb Sedira and a newly commissioned work by multidisciplinary artist Shiraz Bayjoo, the exhibition interrogates the environmental issues facing the southern hemisphere by looking to the past and drawing important insight from the cultural practices and knowledge systems of indigenous peoples.
Collectively, the exhibition’s contributors are looking to expand the common narrative around climate change, a subject which is often linked to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the West. We Are History invites visitors to look further back in time, exploring significant periods of change such as the 18th century colonial era, which saw plantation agriculture and the forced mass migration of people through slavery reshaping lives and landscapes on a global scale.
LANDSCAPE > PLACE > GEOGRAPHY > ENVIRONMENT > GEOLOGY
Reflections on absence, agency, and change weave through Winship’s quiet, observational images
“I seem to be asked to go to places in the winter,” says Vanessa Winship, reflecting on the works collected in her new exhibition, The Season, currently on view at Huxley-Parlour, and in her new book, Snow. The images, which span seven winters and five countries, are delicate, muted: frost clinging to gathered bracken, the quivering paleness of ice at a lake’s edge. They are the product of seven years of creation — a period encompassing international political upheaval, increasing climate disaster, and two years of a pandemic.
Winship’s vision of winter, however, is not harsh or unforgiving. Speaking to me on Zoom, she invokes Breughel’s winter scenes: the benign hush of his skies, ice-skating figures scattered underneath. “Winter isn’t negative,” she says. “We have to have winter. We have to have dormancy. We have to tighten our belts.”
The body of work that became Snow began as a commission. A magazine sent Winship to Ohio, US, to search for the Amish. “I didn’t feel that I got what the magazine needed,” she says. “I decided to return — in the same weather conditions, like a detective, to see if I could figure out what was disconcerting me,” she remembers. “I went back to Ohio alone, attempting to somehow comprehend this feeling I had about the landscape.”
“For a lot of us, the 1980s were a very dark period in American history. There was not a lot of optimism. Being able to comment on the world with photography is what interested me.” Mimi Plumb
PLUMB 20 F6PLUMB 8-F7
Mimi Plumb unearths the darker side of the Golden City, San Francisco. After living in the city since the 80s, Plumb’s new book gathers snapshots of walks around the neighbourhood as she grappled with the unsettling disillusionment and shortcomings of the social landscape
I am sitting in the light-flooded living room of Mimi Plumb’s second-storey flat in Berkeley, melting into a cosy, plush chair. Plumb sits nearby on the couch. She is telling me about her first job, working for the department of housing, after receiving her bachelor’s degree from the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) in 1976. For three years, she photographed farm workers and Native American housing throughout California; an experience that proved formative. “What I was seeing felt like Band-Aids, and that politicised me,” she explains. “I started to think, ‘How can we address these kinds of problems?’”
These seeds of social concern informed her practice and conversations when she returned to SFAI for her MFA in the mid-1980s. Plumb recalls that, “for serious discussions about the meaning of my work, its overriding content, my concerns, fears and anxiety about what I saw in the world, I spoke with Larry Sultan. We often talked about what is to be done. Do images make a change? Can images make a change?” She continues: “For a lot of us, the 1980s were a very dark period in American history. There was not a lot of optimism. Being able to comment on the world with photography is what interested me.”
Many of these pictures also evoke the work in Henry Wessel’s Incidents (2013), moments drawn from everyday life that subtly unsettle as one closely surveys the scenes. Plumb’s distinctive aesthetic approach and framing of the world further imbue her subjects with a psychological intensity, together creating a disquieting tension that compels sustained, curious looking. Even the most innocuous scenes – a construction site, a woman laying outside on a blanket, a teenager lost in thought on a stool – are rendered uncanny through Plumb’s lens. Her striking, nighttime portraits in The Golden City, where fill flash is regularly used to dramatic, eerie effect, most acutely demonstrate this surrealism.
The photographs in this series were made in East London between 2009 and 2013. They feature objects and creatures that I sourced from the local surroundings and placed into the body of my camera.
I hoped through this method to encourage the spirit of the place to clamber aboard the images and be encapsulated in the film emulsion, like objects embedded in amber. My aim was to evoke the feeling of the area at the same time as describing its appearance as the subject was both in front and behind the camera lens at the same moment.
I like to think of these photographs as in-camera photograms in which conflict or harmony has been randomly formed in the final image depending on where the objects landed.
CLIMATE CHANGE > ANTHROPOCENE
Diane Burko, “Unprecedented” (2021), mixed media, 8 x 15 feet (all images courtesy the artist)
Diane Burko’s images of melting glaciers and dying coral reefs are not just pictorially impressive; they have strong emotional impact. (Carter Ratcliffe)
Diane Burko, “Postscript” (2019), mixed media: bleached coral mounted on wood, 50 x 25 inches
As a photographer how would you respond to climate change? Can a study of the environment and landscape of Jersey be an inspiration for a Personal Study?
Study latest issue: Photography+ Environment #14 from Photoworks that looks at the role of the photographer in documenting and confronting climate catastrophe. To explore this question, each writer and artist invites us to think about the relationship between photography and climate change, and between the photographer and their environment
Also go back and explore some of the ideas, artists and creative starting points from earlier in the year.
The period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.
Open Cast Mining – Quarries: Ronez, St Peters Valley, Sand Quarry St. Ouens
Power Stations – La Collette, Bellozane Sewage Treatment
Urbanisation – St Helier: Grands Vaux, Le Marais Flats, Le Squez etc.
Mass Wastage – La Collette recycling centre
Disposable Society – La Collette recycling centre – refrigerator mountains etc
Land Erosion – farming industry: poly tunnels, packing sheds, plastic covered fields etc. Old Glass Houses
Over Population – poverty/social divides: Social Housing sites. Car Parks, traffic etc.
Industrialisation – La Collette area, Bellozane, industrial estates. Desalination Plant, German Fortification (WW2)
Study latest issue: Photography+ Environment #14 from Photoworks that looks at the role of the photographer in documenting and confronting climate catastrophe. To explore this question, each writer and artist invites us to think about the relationship between photography and climate change, and between the photographer and their environment
COMMUNITY plural noun: communities
a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.”Montreal’s Italian community”
a group of people living together and practising common ownership.noun: community; plural noun: communities“a community of nuns”
a particular area or place considered together with its inhabitants.”a rural community”
a body of nations or states unified by common interests.”the European Community”
the people of a district or country considered collectively, especially in the context of social values and responsibilities; society.noun: community; noun: the community“preparing prisoners for life back in the community”
denoting a worker or resource designed to serve the people of a particular area.modifier noun: community“community health services”
the condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common.”the sense of community that organized religion can provide”
a similarity or identity.”the law presupposes a community of interest between an employer and employees”
joint ownership or liability.”the community of goods”
ECOLOGY a group of interdependent plants or animals growing or living together in natural conditions or occupying a specified habitat. “communities of insectivorous birds”
What is difference between society and community? The main difference between society and community is that the society is built upon interactions with varied people whereas the community is the collection of people with similar interests, essentially residing in one geographic place
Jersey Climate Conversation: Jersey’s Climate Conversation is your chance to influence change. By joining together, Jersey has the chance to do something different, to show the world what can be achieved with people power, and to create an ambitious low-carbon vision for our island.
Many other places have called citizens’ assemblies, to ask a randomly selected group of individuals to share their thoughts. But nowhere else has done this while also opening the door to the whole community to share their thoughts and ideas. We want you to share your thoughts, your visions, your ideas however big or small they are. We want you to be ambitious, bold and brave because if you are we all will be.
The ideas shared will help the Government develop the Carbon Neutral Roadmap, our long-term climate action plan for becoming carbon neutral.
Government of Jersey:Climate Emergency In response to the climate emergency the States Assembly voted to approve the Carbon Neutral Strategy. The Council of Ministers has published its Preferred Strategy for tackling the climate emergency. The detailed plans will be released for consultation in the Carbon Neutral Roadmap in December 2021.
Sustainable Finance: Jersey Finance has launched a long-term strategic plan to support Jersey’s finance industry in its transition to a more sustainable future. Watch a series of video here from industry insiders.
Jersey Overseas Aid: Jersey Overseas Aid’s annual budget is currently 0.25% of Jersey’s GVA, totalling £12.43 million in 2020. The budget is granted by the States of Jersey from tax payer monies, for the purpose of supporting international development and providing assistance during humanitarian crises. Jersey Overseas Aid exists within the responsibilities of the Chief Minister, making it the official international development donor organisation of the States of Jersey.
Jersey Overseas Aid is governed by three States Commissioners and three non-States Commissioners, all of whom are appointed by the States of Jersey. Its day-to-day operations are managed by professional staff experienced in running development and emergency projects around the world.
Sustainable Development Goals:The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries – developed and developing – in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.
EXHIBITION: Research and explore IN PROGRESS: Laia Abril – Hoda Afshar – Widline Cadet – Adama Jalloh – Alba Zari at the RPS Gallery (20 May – 31 October 2021) commissioned by the RPS as part of Bristol Photo Festival. Click on link image below.
CONSIDER COMMUNITY: Imagine you were the official photographer of your street, neighbourhood, town or city. You have been commissioned to create a sequence of photographs celebrating the spirit of this place and its people. These images will be published in various forms – in a free newspaper, on posters in bus shelters, on postcards , on advertising hoardings etc. You are limited to 10 pictures in total. Make a larger body of images, then edit these down to just 10. Arrange in a sequence or collage. What story do they tell? What are the challenges of an activity such as this and how might you set out to overcome these?
There are different approaches to how photographers work with a community. Either as a outsider looking in or as an insider who is part of that community. The best work often emerges from photographers who work with a social group that they are familiar with or have a personal connection to. A community can be defined as a group of people who share the same values, cultural codes and perform certain social rituals. This group could be family and friends or an estate or a neighbourhood. It could be a recreational activity or a sport.
PHOTOGRAPHERS / ARTISTS
You can find other alternative inspirations and artists references here:
Raymond Meeks (Halfstory, Halflife), Theo Gosselin (Sans Limites), Jen Davis (Eleven Years), Diana Markosian (Inventing my Father, Santa Barbara), Doug Dubois (My Last Day at Seventeen), Alessandra Sanguinetti (The Illusion of an everlasting Summer), Justine Kurland (Girl Picture), Jim Goldberg (Raised by Wolves) Sophie Calle (Suite Vénitienne), Nick Waplington (Living Room), Nan Goldin (The Ballad of Sexual Dependency), Corinne Day, (Dairy), Martin Parr (Signs of the Time, Common Sense, The Cost of Living), Chris Killip (Isle of Man: A book about the Manx), Lauren Greenfield (Fast Forward, Girl Culture), Nicholas Nixon (the Brown Sisters), Robert Clayton (Estate), Valerio Spada (Gomorrah Girl), Martin Gregg (Midlands), Alain Laboile, (At the Edge of the World, Sian Davey (Looking for Alice, Martha), Laia Abril (The Epilogue), Rita Puig-Serra Costa (Where Mimosa Bloom), Carole Benitah, (Photo Souvenirs), Richard Billingham (Ray’s a Laugh), Larry Sultan (Pictures from Home), Matt Eich: I Love You, I’m leaving, Yoshikatsu Fujii: Red Strings, Junpei Ueda: Pictures of My life, Sam Harris (The Middle of Somewhere), Dana Lixenberg (Imperial Courts), Philip Toledano (Days with my Father, When I was Six), Mariela Sancari (Moises is not Dead), Yury Toroptsov (Deleted Scene, The House of Baba Yaga), Amak Mahmoodian (Shenasnameh), Colin Pantall, (All Quite on the Homefront), Mitch Epstein (Family Business), Jason Wilde (Vear & John, Silly Arse Broke It), LaToya Ruby Frazier (The Notion of Family),
Doug DuBois: My Last Days of Seventeen The title, “My last day at Seventeen,” was first uttered by Eirn while I was taking her photograph in her parents’ back garden on the eve of her 18th birthday. Although Eirn argues her remark was more properly phrased, “ it’s my last day as seventeen” the sentiment is the same: there is a time in everyone’s life where the freedom and promise of childhood are lost to the coming of age and experience. The process can be gradual or abrupt; it can begin at age 18, 12 or 40.
The photographs were made over a five year period in the town of Cobh, County Cork in Ireland. I came to Cobh at the invitation of the Sirius Arts Centre in the summer of 2009. Ireland had just begun its sharp decline from the boom years of the Celtic Tiger. I spent my days trying to ingratiate myself with contractors to gain access to building sites that lay abandoned throughout the Irish countryside. I got nowhere.
Raymond Meeks: Every summer, since as long as anyone in the area can remember, groups of teenage boys and girls have been congregating by a single-lane bridge that spans the tributaries of Bowery and Catskill Creeks in the Catskill Mountain region of New York. Just below it, in the wilderness, a waterfall drops sixty feet above a pond. Those daring enough to take the leap usually take a small run-up before flinging themselves off the precipice. Within the act of the jump and its timeless ritual lingers the last fleeting moments of youth, of endless summer days and reckless abandon. Beyond that, the unknown.
Known for his slow-burning chronicles of rural America, Raymond Meeks turns his attention to Furlong and its intrepid summer dwellers in his most recent book Halfstory Halflife. Sketching out his local area with a sensitive lyricism, Meeks observed its energy and atmosphere over the course of three years; the spectacle of the wait, the anticipation of the climb and the final leap into darkness, where time comes to a standstill as bodies are frozen in motion. These everyday experiences and rituals, simple and carefree in their nature, gain a weight and significance through the lens, as the bodies fall somewhere beyond the threshold of youth and into adulthood.
Theo Gosselin ( Sans Limites): The much anticipated follow up to his highly successful debut book Avec Le Coeur, Sans Limites by Théo Gosselin presents a glimpse of a life beyond boundaries – unrestricted by limitations of geography and social conventions. The result of the photographer´s most recent road trips across the US, Spain, Scotland and native France,
At times, Gosselin´s work approaches something akin to poésie bucolique; his photographs representing modern day pastoral landscapes that resemble 21st century equivalents of Poussin’s Et in Arcadia ego, Manet’s Déjeuner sur L’herbe or Cézanne’s Les Grandes Baigneuses. At other times, his images capture moments more resonant of Bacchanalian scenes. Deliberately cinematic, Gosselin’s photography reveals friends in the act of escaping from their regular lives into newly enticing and perilous modes of existence, ever in search of the persistent though elusive idea of freedom.
Jim Goldberg: Raised By Wolves. The personal story behind the making and the legacy of Goldberg’s seminal work about marginalized youth, which occupies the liminal space between documentary and narrative fiction
Jen Davis has spent eleven years working on a series of self-portrait ’s dealing with issues regarding beauty, identity, and body image. Her poignant and beautifully articulated photographs have recently been published Kehrer Verlag in a monograph titled, Eleven Years.For over a decade Jen has bravely turned the camera on herself revealing a journey of self analysis and self awareness that while very personal, it incredibly universal. Her work reflected a mastery of light and color.
Haley Morris-Cafiero: Wait Watchers For my series, Wait Watchers, I set up a camera in a public area and photograph the scene as I perform mundane tasks while strangers pass by me. I then examine the images to see if any of the passersby had a critical or questioning element in their face or body language. I consider my photographs a social experiment and I reverse the gaze back on to the stranger and place the viewer in the position of being a witness to a moment in time. The project is a performative form of street photography.
I place the camera on a tripod and take hundreds of photographs. The resulting images capture the gazer in a microsecond moment where the shutter, the scene, my actions and their body language align and are frozen on the frame. I do not know what the people in my photographs are looking at or reacting to. I present the images to the world to start a conversation about the gaze and how we use it communicate our thoughts of others.Diana Markosian: Inventing my Father
Family can be interpreted in different ways, one is to consider it in relation to the concept of HOME – which can be interpreted as both family or community. Home is also more than just the four walls of your house where you live with your family. Jersey, the island where you perhaps are born or where you grew up can be considered a home too. Home can be interpreted as a community. If you are away from home you often think about your home with a sense of nostalgia. Home can be associated with memories, feelings, hopes, fears etc.
For most of my life, my father was nothing more than a cut out in our family album.
An empty hole.
A reminder of what wasn’t there.
I have few childhood memories of him.
In one, we are dancing together in our tiny apartment in Moscow. In another, he is leaving.
My father would disappear for months at a time. Then, unexpectedly, he would come home.
Until, one day, it was our turn to leave.
The year was 1996.
My mother woke me up and told me to pack my belongings. She said we were going on a trip, and the next morning we arrived in our new home, in California.
We never said goodbye to my father.
For my mom, the solution to forget him was simple. She cut his image out of every photograph. But those holes made it harder for me to forget him.
I often wondered what it would have been like to have a father.
When I was seven years old, living with my family in Moscow, my mother woke me up in the middle of the night and said we were going on a trip. The year was 1996. The Soviet Union had long collapsed, and by then, so had my family. We left without saying goodbye to my father, and the next day landed in a new world: America.
Inspired by the 1980s American soap opera Santa Barbara, my mother enrolled with an agency in Russia that posted listings in American newspapers and catalogs for so-called mail-order brides. She was 35. We arrived to the coastal town of Santa Barbara, and were met by an older man who would soon become her husband, and take the place of my own father. And this is where the story begins. The idea of touching something that felt untouchable.
I returned to Russia to visit the scattered remnants of my father’s memory. In fact, I hardly know anything about him. He died before I turned two. I have no personal memories of him. Almost nothing that could have recalled its existence has survived. There was just his camera. When I was nine, I found it in the closet where my mother had kept it safe for years. I took it apart to the last screw as if I was looking for something hidden inside. With my own unconscious hands, I destroyed the last object that bound us to my father.
There are still his photos, which he had taken and drawn himself. My father was an amateur photographer. In one of these photos, I am a five month old baby lying face down on my parents’ bed. My eyes are fixed on him, the photographer. My father, who has only thirteen months to live.
His untimely death made him an abstract character, a shadow at the gates of nothingness. He was almost forgotten. No one spoke of him anymore. His grave has been abandoned. All I knew about him was from a few stories that people who knew him told me. Despite everything, these stories told and repeated with more or less precision depending on the witness maintained a semblance of memory. Just as folklore is passed on, repeated and revised from generation to generation.
LaToya Ruby Frazier: The Notion of Family
In this, her first book, LaToya Ruby Frazier (born 1982) 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
Sophie Calle: Venetian Suite
Sophie Calle’s practice is characterised by performances using rule-based scenarios, which she then documents. Venetian Suite consists of black and white photographs, texts and maps that document a journey the artist made to Venice in order to follow a man, referred to only as Henri B., whom she had previously briefly met in Paris. Although Calle undertook the journey in 1979, the texts describe the actions as taking place in 1980. Venetian Suite records Calle’s attempts to track her subject over the course of his thirteen-day stay in Venice. She investigates and stalks him, enlisting the help of friends and acquaintances she makes in the city. Eventually Henri B. recognises Calle, and they share a silent walk. Even after this encounter Calle continues her project, shadowing Henri B. from a distance until his arrival back in Paris. The work was initially produced in book form in 1983; the same year Calle also presented the work as a sound installation in a confessional booth. In 1996 she configured Venetian Suite as a gallery-based work, the appearance of which deliberately recalls a detective casebook, with texts written in a style that mimics and deconstructs the narrative tension typical of detective novels or film noir. The text begins as follows:
For months I followed strangers on the street. For the pleasure of following them, not because they particularly interested me. I photographed them without their knowledge, took note of their movements, then finally lost sight of them and forgot them. At the end of January 1980, on the streets of Paris, I followed a man whom I lost sight of a few minutes later in the crowd. That very evening, quite by chance, he was introduced to me at an opening. During the course of our conversation, he told me he was planning an imminent trip to Venice. I decided to follow him. (Calle and Baudrillard 1988, p.2.)
Matt Eich:I Love You, I’m leaving
This books is my meditation on familial bonds, longing, and memory. The series borrows from personal experience and the visual language of the everyday in order to create a fictional account that mirrors my reality. Made during a time of personal domestic unease, I photographed as my parents separated, and my family moved to a new city.
Yoshikatsu Fujii:Red Strings I received a text message. “Today, our divorce was finalized.” The message from my mother was written simply, even though she usually sends me messages with many pictures and symbols.
I remember that I didn’t feel any particular emotion, except that the time had come. Because my parents continued to live apart in the same house for a long time, their relationship gently came to an end over the years. It was no wonder that a draft blowing between the two could completely break the family at any time.
In Japan, legend has it that a man and woman who are predestined to meet have been tied at the little finger by an invisible red string since the time they were born. Unfortunately, the red string tying my parents undone, broke, or perhaps was never even tied to begin with. But if the two had never met, I would never have been born into this world. If anything, you might say that there is an unbreakable red string of fate between parent and child.
FILMMAKERS / CINEMA
Have a look at the many references to video art, avantgarde cinema and experimental filmmaking listed in these blogposts below
Levi Strauss put forward the theory that all narratives contain binary oppositions. The way we understands words and ideas are not certainly because of their meaning but due to the existence of their opposites. This can be linked to out narrative with casting of characters and the chosen personalities of the protagonist and antagonist. As the theme of insanity is often used in psychological thriller the binary oppositions I have considered are mind vs body and reality vs fantasy. As the narrative is updated Levi Strauss’ theory will be taken more into consideration to enable us to identify many more oppositions.
The Lion King – Good V Bad to create anticipation as the viewer wants good to win. (Protagonist V Antagonist)
Humans V Aliens – Reality V Fantasy allows the viewer to switch between worlds through graphics presenting high production values.
Week 12: 28 Nov – 4 Dec Personal Study: complete the following blogposts
1. STATEMENT OF INTENT > The brief is to show Jersey through your eyes as students of photography. Write 250-500 words where you consider the following:
Consider what makes Jersey special to you?
What are the distinct qualities of island life?
Explore the notion of the ‘Jersey way’ or ‘Jersey-ness’.
Illustrate it with images where appropriate and include hyperlinks to resources and any references that may help you to develop your ideas further.
There are three photographic genres that you could apply to developing ideas and planning photoshoots, they are:
LANDSCAPE > PLACE > GEOGRAPHY > ENVIRONMENT > GEOLOGY – familiar vs unfamiliar ordinary vs extra-ordinary vernacular vs spectacular PORTRAIT > PEOPLE > IDENTITY > CULTURE > COMMUNITY – individual vs collective STILL-LIFE > OBJECT > HISTORY > MEMORY > FAMILY – personal/private vs public SOCIETY > ANTHROPOLOGY > CULTURE.
The challenge/ task/ brief/ assignment is to show Jersey through your eyes as students of photography.
Consider what makes Jersey special to you?
What are the distinct qualities of island life?
Explore the notion of the ‘Jersey way’ or ‘Jersey-ness’.
Identity involves searching your soul, engaging with difficult issues, and asking not only who we are, but how others see us and what a vision for the future might look like. Capture a variety of perspectives – perspectives that are complex, multiple, overlapping, and at times contradictory. Think about what aspects of Jersey you value, or things which you don’t. Reflect on ‘how you see you self’ and ‘how others see you’?
Engage with Be thought-provoking and reflective
Autobiographical – based on real or lived experiences of your life. The images you produce could be a form of self-expression and personal style/ personality through the emphasis on fashion and how you dress. Could be an insight into your sense of self, character and personality. Family history, relationships and friendship groups
Photo assignments linked to theory into practice (every two weeks, read + record 1. Make a set of 3 positive images of Jersey 2. Produce an image that poses a question 3. Record aspects of what you consider unique to the island 4. How to photograph your soul?
Produce a series of photographs that: ‘confuse as much as fascinate, conceal as much as reveal, distract as much as compel’ (David Campany from On Photographs – link to reading his book + set an essay
Assignment: Students design their own set of rules/ manifesto to follow (class activity)
personal and cultural signifiers signs and symbolism > semiotics (see my text in I & C newspaper)
binary opposites: individuality vs togetherness nature vs culture male vs female black vs white
boundaries as a sub-theme for a photography project
Artists References: MY LONDON – linked to Photo London (find
EXTRA
In context of Jersey our new project, MY JERSEY asks:
What are the distinct qualities, characteristics and identities of living on an island like Jersey?
TASK: Write 250-500 words where you try and answer that question. Illustrate it with images where appropriate and include hyperlinks to resources and any references that may help you to develop your ideas further.
The Institute of Island Studies is a research and public policy institute based at the University of Prince Edward Island focusing on the culture, environment, and economy of small islands around the world, with an emphasis on Prince Edward Island. LEARN MORE
Islandness is a term which I will discuss here in its theoretical context; I will draw on empirical support from the case islands when I consider islandness further in chapter nine. However, I should note that it has only been through an understanding of the other research themes and of the case islands that I have been able to comprehend the nuances of the term ‘islandness’. Islandness, much like the term island, is a contested concept and one that is variously defined in nissological literature; there is “much scope for unpacking what is meant by islandness” (Baldacchino, 2004: 272). Consulting the dictionary, I note that a quality or condition is denoted by the suffix -ness, and so islandness broadly refers to island qualities, which are distinguishable from those of continents. At it broadest level, parallel to the definition of islands in relation to continents, islandness then relates to the distinctive characteristics of islands as compared to those of continents. But are islands really distinct from continents in the modern era? Péron (2004: 328-9) perceives increasing homogenisation of islands with mainlands, yet notes the survival of island distinctiveness:
I will explore distinct characteristics of islands, and of island identity, later in this chapter. The extent of isolation/connectedness of islands, or the permeability of their boundary, is a key debate in island studies (Hay, 2006) and an important component of islandness. After all, “Island studies is very much about the implications of permeable borders” (Baldacchino, 2007b: 5), and “tensions and ambiguities [such as isolation/contact] disclose the very stuff of ‘islandness’” (Warrington & Milne, 2007: 382). Islands are bounded systems but its boundaries are porous, open to both positive events and threats, such as over-development. Norberg-Schulz (1980: 13) considers that “the enclosing properties of a boundary are determined by its openings”; this can be applied to island boundaries which have tangible openings, or links to the outside world, such as airports and ferry terminals, and intangible openings such as trade and social exchanges with continental dwellers. Pitt (1980) points out the sharpness of boundaries and notes that boundaries do not only contain groups but permit all kinds of boundary crossings. For example, islanders may commute to work in cities and thereby diversify the island’s income base.
Consulting the dictionary, I note that a quality or condition is denoted by the suffix -ness, and so islandness broadly refers to island qualities, which are distinguishable from those of continents. At it broadest level, parallel to the definition of islands in relation to continents, islandness then relates to the distinctive characteristics of islands as compared to those of continents. But are islands really distinct from continents in the modern era? Péron (2004: 328-9) perceives increasing homogenisation of islands with mainlands, yet notes the survival of island distinctiveness:
All modern conveniences can be found, and the transport links with the mainland ‘close by’ are generally now more swift, easier and more comfortable; so much so that the distances seem to be reduced, as does the effect of the maritime barrier that has for so long cut off island dwellers from the rest of the world. And yet, if the inhabitants are to be believed, and if we listen as well as to the enthusiastic commentaries of regular visitors from the mainland, our conclusion might well be the same as that of commentators in the nineteenth century. A typical claim would be: ‘Here, things are different’. How does one explain the fact that this enduring distinctiveness of small islands is still so powerful and obvious that it easily confers an original identity to those who live there, emanate from there, or even just go there frequently?
Islandness is perched between the forces of closure (isolation) and openness (connectedness). Even as a transition zone or liminal space, the boundary is double-sided; it has an inward-looking aspect and an outward-looking one (Pitt, 1980).
Hence, I would like to define islandness as the dynamics of the natural boundary and the resulting island qualities, including elements geographical (for example, degree of separation from a mainland), political (often expressed through tensions between autonomy and dependence on a mainland jurisdiction) and social (such as islander identity and sense of place). While Meistersheim (1989, cited in Hache, 1998: 41) settles on several terms: ““insularity” is what belongs to the realm of geography and economics, and can be quantified, while “insularism” is all that is pertinent to politics, and “l’îléite” (“islandness”) is all that is related to the field of perception and the imaginary that surrounds islands and their societies”, I collapse these terms into components of islandness. Offshore islands have a degree of islandness, with greater islandness equating to more inward-looking and/or independent islanders and less islandness meaning greater integration with and/or dependence on a relevant mainland. Thus, islandness is an ambiguous concept:
islands and ‘islandness’ may best be understood in terms of a characteristic set of tensions and ambiguities, opportunities and constraints arising from the interplay of geography and history. Geography tends towards isolation: it permits or favours autarchy, distinctiveness, stability and evolution
Baldacchino (2007b: 15) uses the term islandness in place of insularity due to the latter’s “negative baggage30” and he describes islandness as “… an intervening variable that does not determine, but contours and conditions, physical and social events in distinct, and distinctly relevant, ways” (Baldacchino, 2004: 278). The Oxford English Dictionary defines insularity in terms of both its physical status and the impact of this physical status on its human inhabitants: “1. The state or condition of being an island, or of being surrounded by water; 2. The condition of living on an island, and of being thus cut off or isolated from other people, their ideas, customs, etc.; hence, narrowness of mind or feeling, contractedness of view.” Lehari (2003: 99) writes that “An island is a simile of a life style; an insular way of life or islandisation, however, is a social phenomenon and problem”. I consider islandness to be a more complex term than insularity, and one that provides greater scope for positive connotations. Insularity is commonly used as a negative term, representing closure and closed minds. The term islandness invokes both closure and openness, and hence can be used as a more positive term. However, Hache (1998: 47) uses the term insularity and asks “is geography really the driving factor when it comes to understanding islands and insularity?” In his view, insularity as a social phenomenon is the use, by people who live on an island or who belong to an island, of this very geographical characteristic in view of asserting a distinctive identity; of explaining their economic, social, cultural and political situation; and of justifying specific demands in those fields. Hache (1998) also considers that islands are subject to at least two factors that justify the perception of insularity as a hurdle: the permanent nature of the constraints imposed by their geographical condition (excluding those big and/or close enough to the mainland to have a fixed link, islands have to live permanently with the implications of their maritime isolation); and the fact that an island economy is always in a situation of extreme vulnerability since the implications of
Island characteristics
A key characterisation of islands has been as vulnerable places, environmentally, socially and economically (Adrianto & Matsuda, 2004; Briguglio, 1995; Kelman, various). Generalisations are difficult, but it can be argued that islands are subject to the impact of a common range of challenges associated with their island status (Royle, 2001). Islands have fewer resource options than continents. Compared to continents, islands have a high ratio of coastline length to area, and coasts are particularly sensitive environments. Islands are subjected to wave action from all sides and tend to have limited natural resources, such as hydrological catchments. Resource shortages, particularly water, can restrict development. Blomgren and Sorensen (1998: 321) discuss the role of geography in the economic problems of peripheral places:
The geographical criteria [sic] is important not only in terms of absolute distance [from economic centres], but also in terms of accessibility. Hence, less accessible regions such as islands and mountainous areas are more prone to experiencing economic underdevelopment. This relationship between insularity and economic development has been termed ‘the small island syndrome of underdevelopment’, indicating further that size is inversely related to the seriousness of the development problem.
Small islands typically have a narrow economic base and diseconomies of scale mean higher per capita costs to provide basic infrastructure and services. The water barrier raises transportation costs which impacts across island economies. Transport constraints affect a range of economic and social issues, including tourism and access to health care (Baldacchino, 2004). Small populations also make islands more demographically volatile – for example, youth out-migration – with knock-on effects. The loss of a small
number of young families could result in the closure of an island’s only school, while an influx of retirees could put pressure on health services. Such limiting characteristics of small islands can restrict sustainable development options.
However, islands also have characteristics of resilience, which can be defined as “the ability of human societies and associated ecological systems of land and water to cope with, adapt to and shape change without losing options for future development” (UNESCO & Contributors, 2004, n.p.), and islanders can have advantages – such as greater pools of social capital – over continental dwellers in this regard. However, Baldacchino (2004c) argues that the expressions ‘vulnerability’ and ‘resilience’ are not useful and that nissologists should move away from using such terms. My four cases are all continental islands, which are typically described as less ‘vulnerable’ than oceanic islands as they are physically closer to mainlands (although jurisdictional issues can influence resilience more than physical environments). Considering the diversity of islands and their multitude of economic, environmental and social variables, I do not consider it worthwhile labelling islands as vulnerable or resilient. Rather, it is important to recognise the various constraints that may face individual islands and to address these in management strategies. It is also imperative to identify opportunities for sustainable development which arise from particular island characteristics and these may include strong community bonds and the means to limit introduction of pest species and control tourist numbers.
In addition to focusing on the characteristics of individual islands, it is useful to recognise that offshore islands may share features that are distinct from their mainlands. Unlike many oceanic islands, offshore islands tend not to be significantly different from their adjacent mainlands in regard to geology and species composition, as they were once joined to these larger landmasses.
Sense of place and identity
Gillis (2004) writes of the philosopher Montesqieu assigning a determining role to geography, arguing that it shapes human populations and as such there is something peculiar about islanders. Islandness relates to the consequences of the geographical description of a piece of land as an island: specifically the environmental, economic, social and political consequences of this demarcation:
The physical boundaries of islands create not only a bounded entity in which society is structured, but a recursive dynamic between physical boundaries and social and cultural characteristics. The cultural and social imperatives appear to bounce off the physical boundaries which then reflect back, amplify, and reinforce those features that determine the island’s identity (Billot, 2005: 394).
It is these social and cultural characteristics (the more intangible elements of islandness) that I wish to focus on – the effects of islands on people, particularly the identity of islanders and sense of place. Norberg-Schulz (1980) writes of the Roman concept genius
You can focus on the geography of the island as a place exploring its ancient and modern landscapes/ such as its geology of rocks and granite formations, or the build/ man-made environments of human interaction and habitation.
Key words: Nostalgia, tourism, beaches
GEOGRAPHY > PLACE rock, granite, bays, beaches, nature, trees,
IDENTITY > PEOPLE
natural or human/ urban/
Zine – Sept > use same material + visit to SJ? – include Flora studies / cyanotypes > Anna Atkins – British Algae – workshop with Tom Pope (if he returns to Jersey for exhibition – tea stains (Lewis Bush – new book: Rainbow’s Depravity)
Artists References – AiR: Alexander Mourant > new project/ analogue processes/ performance (Claude Cahun + Clare Rae) how to engage with landscape (rocks)
External agencies: JICAS – Sean Dettman Geopark – Ralph Nicolls (geologist) Luddite Press – workshop (mono printing?)
Theory / Contextual studies: Photography & materiality: essay Island Identity report Prince Edward Island Journal Photo pedagogy
Before we begin our next creative phase we need to make sure you have chosen your best photo-collage/ joiner and saved in this folder below for our upcoming exhibition at the Link Gallery, Jersey Museum. Deadline Fri 16 Sept. M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\Image Transfer\PRINTING – JOINER\A3
Week 1-4: 6-28 Sept Practice: Still-life, 3D Photo-sculpture and Installation Theory: History of Still-life as a genre in art DEADLINE: Wed 28 Sept EXHIBITION: MY ROCK Link Gallery 1- 9 Oct, Jersey Museum
Still life has captured the imagination of photographers from the early 19th century to the present day. It is a tradition full of lavish, exotic and sometimes dark arrangements, rich with symbolic depth and meaning.
However, before we begin making images of our objects collected over the summer period we need to learn about how still-life emerged as an independent genre, in particularly during the early 1600s Dutch and Northern European paintings. Many of the objects depicted in these early works are symbolic of religion and morality reflecting on the increasing urbanization of Dutch and Flemish society, which brought with it an emphasis on the home and personal possessions, commerce and trade. Paintings depicting burnt candles, human skulls, dying flowers, fruits and vegetables, broken chalices, jewelry, crowns, watches, mirrors, bottles, glasses, vases etc are symbolic of the transience and brevity of human life, power, beauty and wealth, as well as of the insignificance of all material things and achievements.
Throughout its long history, still life has taken many forms, from the decorative frescoes of antiquity to the high art of the Renaissance. Traditionally, a still life is a collection of inanimate objects arranged as the subject of a composition. Nowadays, a still life can be anything from your latest Instagram latte art to a vase of tulips styled like a Dutch Golden Age painting. Read here for more details about the different categories within still-life paintings such as Fruits, Flowers, Breakfast pieces, Trompe L’Oeil and Vanitas.
Vanitas
Flowers
Fruit
Abraham van Beyeren (Dutch, The Hague 1620/21–1690 Overschie) Brilliant surfaces of metalwork and glass reflect lush fruits and a lobster in this still life. Heavily laden tables like this one, boasting both foodstuffs and imported luxuries such as the blue-and-white porcelain bowl from China, typify Dutch still life in the second half of the seventeenth century. Such paintings represent a shift away from the reminders of immortality and vanity in earlier still lifes and toward a wholehearted embrace of earthly pleasures.
Watch video: What does it mean? Symbolism in still life photography
READ the following two short essay linked with the exhibition above for more understanding of still life in art and photography—with its roots in the vanitas tradition.
1. HISTORICAL CONTEXT: Produce a blog post and describe origin and definition of still life as a genre in history of pictorial practice. Read texts above and below to gain an overview of how still-life emerged.
2. ANALYSIS: Select a key painting and comment on the religious, political and allegorical symbolism of food and objects in terms of wealth, status and power, or the lack of.
Cookmaid with Still Life of Vegetables and Fruit c.1620-5 Sir Nathaniel Bacon 1585-1627 Purchased with assistance from the Art Fund 1995 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T06995
Listen to curator Tim Batchelor discussing the painting
For further insights into the symbolic meaning of food and objects in still-life paintings, read this text Secret Symbols in Still-Life
Week 2: 11-19 Sept RECORD > RESPOND
Watch short film: Recreating a Roger Fenton still life photograph
STILL-LIFE: photograph objects you collected over the summer from bays and geological sites of special interest (SSI) and photograph them in the studio using different lighting techniques, backdrops and compositions.
All the above: Matt Brown, Yr 13 photography student 2021
You my wish to remind yourself and refer back to your previous study on objects and still-life that you explored as part of your HERITAGE project last year.
Collect a group of objects that you think combine well. Consider shape and size, colour, texture etc.
For ideas, look carefully at how Mary Ellen Bartley groups, lights and photographs her objects. Aim to create a set of images by altering the layout, lighting, focus, composition etc.
Stack objects
Light & Shadows
Rip & Tear
White monochrome
Splicing two images
Conceal & Reveal
Also photograph individual objects as specimen applying a typology approach, ie. deadpan and uniformly framed and lit in a way that is the same in all images.
Matt Brown, Yr 13 photography student 2021Darren Harvey Regan: The Erratics 2015Walker Evans: Beauties of the Common Tool, 1955
BLOG: Follow these instructions and complete the following blog posts:
EDITING – NEW PHOTOSHOOTS: Upload and process images from any new photo-shoots your have made in relation to PHOTO-ASSIGNMENT from Summer Project using Lightroom.
Save raw images from camera card on M:drive in SHOOTS in your project folder: MY ROCK.
Import images into Lightroom.
Create a new Collection: Shoot 2, Shoot 3, etc under collection set: MY ROCK.
Begin to select images using P (pick) and X (reject)Continue to select your best images in Lightroom using star ratings and/or colour labels.
Produce screen prints for each stage of your selection process and paste into new blog post: PHOTO-SHOOT 2, PHOTO-SHOOT 3, etc
In Develop mode, adjust images both as Colour and B&W images appropriate to your intentions.
Export images as JPGS (1000 pixels) and save in a folder: BLOG
Add a selection of your best edited images (8-12) to the blog post above and write an evaluation.
Week 3-4: 19 Sept – 2 Oct EXPERIMENTING > DEVELOPING
PHOTO-SCULPTURE: Print a selection of your images and mount them onto foamboard/ mountboard cut-outs and begin to work analogue with knives/ scissors and glue constructing a 3D photo-sculpture.
Jack Dale
Robert Heinecken, Figure Cube, 1965
Lauren Pascarella, Photographic Sculpture
Ideas for constructing a photographic sculpture
Joseph Parra
Jody Powell
Noemie Goudal
Lethe Wilson
ARTISTS REFERENCES. As inspiration for your photo-sculpture select at least two artists references as a case study. Explore, discuss, describe and explain key examples of their work relevant to your project and intentions. Follow these steps:
1. Produce a mood board with a selection of images and write an overview of their work, its visual style, meaning and methods. Describe why you have selected to study their work and how it relates to your project.
2. Select at least one key image and analyse in depth using methodology of TECHNICAL>VISUAL>CONTEXTUAL>CONCEPTUAL
3. Incorporate quotes and comments from artist themselves or others (art/ media /film critics, art/ media/ film historians, curators, writers, journalists etc) using a variety of sources such as Youtube, online articles, reviews, text, books etc. Make sure you reference sources and embed links in your blog post.
4. Compare and contrast your chosen artists in terms of similarities and contrasts in their approaches, techniques and outcomes of their work.
3DDESIGN PROCESS: Make sure you produce a blog post that show stages of your experimentation using camera/ phone to document your 3D photo-sculpture as it develops. Make sure you annotate the various processes and techniques that you are using and also describe creative decisions and choices that you make.
FURTHER EXPERIMENTATION: You can produce more than one photo-sculpture and create an installation of several pieces. Be creative and not afraid to make mistakes, Try out the following:
Print off a selection of carefully chosen images that you can then paste to either foamboard or mountboard. Then cut and arrange these choices so that you can create a free-standing photo-sculpture (see Lethe Wilson above)
Print same set of images (or chose a different set) — and then rip, tear, cut-n-paste to create a photo-montage. Re-photograph this and develop the composition into a final outcome using same method as above.
Layering various sizes of foam board with images and re-create a shape of a rock, or details of granite from geological sites of special interests.
Construct a organic or geometric shape first out of cardboard/ mountboard and wall paper your 3D sculpture with your own images
Manipulate images first in Photoshop using various tools and techniques to distort, blur, pixelate, liquify, render, stylise etc before printing and gluing onto your 3D model.
Consider incorporating other elements such as text, typography, figures, found material.
For example, add Jerriais words into your photo sculpture – see Other Resources below for ideas
Consider Jersey myth and storytelling as part of the meaning behind your photo-sculpture
INSTALLATION 3D Photosculpture > 2D image Upon completion of your 3D sculpture photograph your sculpture as an object experimenting with creative lighting techniques in the studio playing between light and shadows, creating a false sense of scale and size. Produce a blog post with a set of your most successful edited images and annotate.
WHOLE CLASS INSTALLATION As a whole class we will create an installation of all 3D photosculptures. Follow same process as above and add your most successful edited images to the blog post above and annotate.
FINAL PRINTS Select a set of your best 3 images and save into shared folder below. Mount prints and create a blog post with final presentation and include evaluation below.
M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\Image Transfer\YR13 MY ROCK
EVALUATING: Upon completion of your final outcomes and experimentation, make sure you evaluate and reflect on your creative development. Include images from our exhibition: MY ROCK at Jersey Museum (1-9 Oct) and comment on the following:
How successful was your experimentation?
What references did you make to artists references? – comment on technical, visual, contextual, conceptual links?
How are you going to develop your project from here? – comment on research, planning, recording, experimenting.
What are you going to do next? – what, why, how, when, where?
INSPIRATIONS: Artist References
Photographic installations which are site specific and 3-dimensional is very in vogue right now. Here are a selection of artists exploring the material nature of a photographic image (print, negative etc) and the idea that photographs can be sculptural.
Felicity Hammond
Felicity Hammond is an emerging artist who works across photography and installation. Fascinated by political contradictions within the urban landscape her work explores construction sites and obsolete built environments.
The Space Between @ ART ROTTERDAM 2017The Space Between @ ART ROTTERDAM 2017
In specific works Hammond photographs digitally manipulated images from property developers’ billboards and brochures and prints them directly onto acrylic sheets which are then manipulated into unique sculptural objects. Here a few selected works you can use as case studies
Case Study:World Capital (2019) Ink jet prints on vinyl and dibond, wood, rubber, water, concrete, steel, acrylic
Conversations about the homogenisation of the built environment have taken many forms. From Walter Benjamin’s writings about the effect of capitalism on nineteenth century Paris, to Ian Nairn’s scathing review of the growing ubiquity of town planning, the crisis surrounding urban identity has been and will continue to be widely contested.
In World Capital the conversation turns towards the way that digital technologies have influenced the global image of the city. Offering a commentary on the role that the computer generated architectural proposition plays in the increasing uniformity of the urban realm, the work outlines the ways in which the proliferation of the virtual world has contributed to urban indifference.
Combining images used to market contemporary housing alongside relics of the industrial past, the work collides local history with the global image that supersedes it. Re-imagining the Great Thames flood of 1928 which destroyed much of the site of the exhibition (now known as London City Island) World Capital recalls the area’s industrial and troublesome past, propelling its history into the near future.
In her work, British artist Felicity Hammond confronts the social, political, and economic contradictions of the postmodern city, whose buildings and façades shape our collective identity and open up a future by obliterating the past. Hammond’s large- scale collages combine found images from glossy real estate brochures with her own photographs. They are reminiscent of apocalyptic historic images, but they never reveal the locations of the places they show or how they relate. Instead, the collages reflect the increasing homogenization of big cities, resulting from a process of urban development steered by power struggles between international real estate companies, profit-driven investors, and gentrification critics.
Lorenzo Vitturi’s vibrant still lifes capture the threatened spirit of Dalston’s Ridley Road Market. Vitturi – who lives locally – feels compelled to capture its distinctive nature before it is gentrified beyond recognition. Vitturi arranges found objects and photographs them against backdrops of discarded market materials, in dynamic compositions. These are combined with street scenes and portraits of local characters to create a unique portrait of a soon to be extinct way of lif
His installation at the Gallery draws on the temporary structures of the market using raw materials, sculptural forms and photographs to explore ideas about creation, consumption and preservation.
Helen Chadwick Piss Flowers
INSTALLATION: Create a miniature installation on the white table in the classroom/ studio with your various photo-collages and 3D photo-sculptures and re-photograph it in-situ producing a new set of 2D images. Use proper studio lighting techniques, such as spotlights, chiaroscuro, flashlights and coloured gel for dramatic effect. Mount camera on a tripod frame different compositions that play on our sense of scale & shapes, form & texture and reality & fantasy. Consider making a backdrop out of paper or paint a backdrop that will add an effect.
INSPIRATIONS: Artist References
Look for inspirations from artists, such as James Casebere and Thomas Demand (see below) and compare/ contrast their work to your own images that you produce from photographing your sculptures.
James Casebere
James Casebere pioneering work has established him at the forefront of artists working with constructed photography. For the last thirty years, Casebere has devised increasingly complex models that are subsequently photographed in his studio. Based on architectural, art historical and cinematic sources, his table-sized constructions are made of simple materials, pared down to essential forms. Casebere’s abandoned spaces are hauntingly evocative and oftentimes suggestive of prior events, encouraging the viewer to reconstitute a narrative or symbolic reading of his work.
Caspar David Friedrich
James Casebere
While earlier bodies of work focused on American mythologies such as the genre of the western and suburban home, in the early 1990s, Casebere turned his attention to institutional buildings. In more recent years, his subject matter focused on various institutional spaces and the relationship between social control, social structure and the mythologies that surround particular institutions, as well as the broader implications of dominant systems such as commerce, labor, religion and law.
Thomas Demand
Demand studied with the sculptor Fritz Schwegler, who encouraged him to explore the expressive possibilities of architectural models at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where Bernd and Hilla Becher had recently taught photographers such as Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and Candida Höfer. Like those artists, Demand makes mural-scale photographs, but instead of finding his subject matter in landscapes, buildings, and crowds, he uses paper and cardboard to reconstruct scenes he finds in images taken from various media sources. Once he has photographed his re-created environments—always devoid of figures but often displaying evidence of recent human activity—Demand destroys his models, further complicating the relationship between reproduction and original that his photography investigates.
Thomas Demand builds models of the scenes of political and societal events and photographs them. This has made him one of the photographers most in demand today. Now his depictions of German history can be seen in Berlin.
Read interview here on BBC with Thomas Demand about his work and process of making Sadam Hussein’s kitchen. Discusses death of photojournalism (see also Jeff Wall)
Thomas Demand is his studio photographing one of his paper models
See my books on the table for resources and images about how Demand creates his sculptures.
Pacific Sun, a joint acquisition by LACMA and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Consisting of 2,400 frames that capture the artist’s meticulous recreation of YouTube footage of a cruise ship struggling in the midst of a violent storm, the work reveals Demand’s interest in opposing reality with the artificial. Demand’s earlier works dating from the early 1990s were also discussed, illuminating his cross-disciplinary practice spanning sculpture, architecture, photography, and film.
Theory: reality vs artificial
Jeff Wall constructed photography
Week 5: 3 – 9 Oct Practice: Zine-lab Theory: Archive DEADLINE: FRI 21 OCT
TUE 4 OCT:FIELD STUDIES & RESEARCH La Hocque & Societe Jersiaise Photo-archive
Activities: 08:45: Leave Hautlieu by boach to take us to La Hogue 9:15: Shoot at La Hogue/ Robin Bay/ Green Island/ La Motte 11:30: Coach to Societe Jersiaise, 7 Pier Road 12:00-12:30: Intro to archive and its collections: Look at Guiton’s set of images from La Motte archaeological dig and images from La Cotte. 12:30-13:20: Lunch 13:20-14:00: Research activity – students exploring online catalogue – link to Guiton’s images above and other collections 14:00-14:10: Break 14:10-15:00: Sequencing/ storytelling task: using Guiton’s set from La Motte and also La Cote De St Brelade 15:00 Coach return to Hautlieu School
IMAGES: explore the following
Landscape & views: rock formations along the coastline set against wider natural environments
Shapes & Form: Look for interesting granite that you may frame as rock face
Abstract & close-up: move in closer and look for textures/ patterns/ colourisation/ surfaces/ repetition within granite.
Photo-collaging: produce a series of images that overlap each other to form a much wider and detailed picture. (See Hockney and Allchurch for inspiration)
Narrative: Consider how to tell a story about Geological site and include a variety of images, including figures in a landscape
Emile F Guiton – La Motte excavation
BLOG POSTS
ARCHIVES: The Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive contains over 100,000 items dating from the mid-1840s to the present day and is the principal Jersey collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century photograph. Archives can be a rich source for finding starting points on your creative journey. This will strengthen your research and lead towards discoveries about the past that will inform the way you interpret the present and anticipate the future.
Produce blog post about Societe Jersiaise Photographic Archive with a specific focus on Emile F Guiton collections held in the archive that will inform your zine design.
You can find Guiton images and images from other collections here on our shared school folder:
In our final year of A-level photography we will study how different narrative structures can be used to tell stories from looking at the origin of photo essays in photojournalism to contemporary photography as well as cinema and literature.
This term we will begin to focus our attention on narrative in photography and explore visual storytelling as apart of our Personal Study, that includes developing a new body of work based around the theme of ‘islandness’, presented either as a photobook and/or a film, and writing an essay.
The aim is to produce a 16 page photo-zine in InDesign based around the images you have produced from exploring a bay or geological sites of special interest, that you selected to photograph as part of your Summer Project: MY ROCK.
NARRATIVE is essentially the way a story is told. For example you can tell different narratives of the same story. It is a very subjective process and there is no right or wrong. Whether or not your photographic story is any good is another matter.
Narrative is constructed when you begin to create relationships between images (and/or text) and present more than two images together. Your selection of images (editing) and the order of how these images appear on the pages (sequencing) contributes significantly to the construction of the narrative. So too, does the structure and design of the photo-zine. However, it is essential that you identity what your story is first before considering how you wish to tell it.
In order for you to understand better how narrative works in photography let’s consider the differences between narrative and story when making a photo-zine. For a more in-depth understanding of NARRATIVE and PHOTOGRAPHY go to blog post below.
Once you have considered the points made between the differences in narrative and story and done some research around Jersey’s geography, bays and geological site of special interest that you explored with your camera, ie. west coast or east coast, write the following:
Images > new photographic responses, photo-shoots of objects…
Archives > images from SJ photo-archive, found imagery…
Texts > experiment with typography, key words, poems…
EDITING: photo-shoots from school trip.
Produce a blog post with evidence of your photoshoot and editing and selection process.
In Lightroom make a rough edit of 50-60 images, then go through then again and reduce to 20-30 images and third round of editing to an ordered series of 12-16 images. Use screen prints to show editing process and add to blog with annotation.
Adjust your final set in Develop Mode and produce both colour and b&w versions of the same set, remember to crop for emphasis, and use other tools such as spot removal, graduated filter and adjustment brush, if needed
Produce a blog post where you evaluate your first edit of images, reflect on what story you are trying to communicate and how you can improve and develop your narrative.
SEQUENCING: Print your final set of 12-16 images as small work prints using print Microsoft wizard (4 images per page, 9x13cm) Cut images using guillotine and layout on table and begin to sequence them to construct a narrative. Consider the following:
Think about your theme or story. Think about start, middle and end images.
Which images are major (establishing shots, full page, double page), and minor (portrait, detail shots, small images, multiple images on the page etc.)
Think about visual relationship between images and their juxtaposition e.g colour, shapes, subject, repetition, landscape, portrait, objects, details etc.
What happens or changes over the series of images?
Are you using your best images?
Include archival images from Emile Guiton’s collections, such as La Motte (Green Island) or La Cotte (St Brelade)
You can find Guiton images and images from other SJ collections here on our shared school folder:
COLOUR – SHAPESSHAPES – GEOMETRYREPETITIONOBJECT – PORTRAITTypography and graphic elements
Week 6: 10 – 14 Oct DESIGN & LAYOUT Complete the following blog posts
RESEARCH > ANALYSIS: Research zines and newspaper design made by artists and photographer that will provide visual stimulus for your page design. Produce a mood board and consider the following in your analysis:
Café Royal Books is a small independent publisher of photography photobooks or zines, and sometimes drawing, solely run by Craig Atkinson and based in Southport, England. Café Royal Books produces small-run publications predominantly documenting social, historical and architectural change, often in Britain, using both new work and photographs from archives. It has been operating since 2005 and by mid 2014 had published about 200 books and zines and they are held in major public collections
Editions Bessard is a paris-based independent publishing house created by pierre bessard in 2011. Focusing on working with artists, writers and curators to realise intellectually challenging projects in book form.
The new imprint Éditions Emile is named in honour of Emile F. Guiton, the founding father of the The Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive. The first set of publications is a series of small photo-zines comprising of 48 pages with an average of 30-40 images and a short text providing further context. With plans to publish three editions annually, each issue of ED.EM. will take a fresh look at a specific collection within the archive, by pairing it with either another collection or contemporary work, in order to re-contextualise the images, keeping the collections active and relevant for new audiences both in the island and beyond.
Darren Harvey Regan
Entwining image and object, the work of Darren Harvey-Regan (b. 1974 Exeter) often sees a hybridisation of the conventions of photography and sculpture. As quietly humorous as they are frustrating his works challenge the viewer to distinguish where representation ends and the object begins. “The presentation of photographs in interaction with objects serves to highlight the inherent tensions within representation; between the photograph as an object and the image of the world it contains. In this way, I consider the photograph as being something not only to think about, but to think with.”
Create 2-3 examples of alternative layouts for your photo-zine using Adobe InDesign and complete a visual blog post that clearly shows your decision making and design process using screen-prints.
Make sure you annotate!
See examples of previous students blog charting his zine design process, here.
Week 7: 17 – 21 Oct PRINT & PRESENT Complete the following blog posts
PRESENTATION > EVALUATION: Print, fold and bind final photo-zine and hand in for assessment.
Write an overall final evaluation (250-300 words) that explain in some detail how successfully you explored the first part of the IDENTITY & COMMUNITY project. Consider the following:
Did you realise your intentions?
What did you learn?
Zine; including any contextual references, links and inspiration between your final design and theme, incl artists references.
During the summer it is important that you keep training your eye and practice making images. Below are two tasks: MY ROCK (photo-assignment) and another MY FAMILY (research) that you can work on during the summer break which will prepare you for the next academic year in September.
The images you produce here will be part of our next phase of our project when we begin to explore narrative and make a 16 page photo-zine in September.
PHOTO-ASSIGNMENT – MY ROCK: Select one bay or geological site of special of interest (SSI) in Jersey and explore it with your camera throughout the summer. DEADLINE: 6 Sept – first day of new academic term
Geological sites could include dolmens and other neolithic structures, such as La Cotte in St Brelade. Bays could include rocks, coastline and mythologial sites, such as Devil’s Hole (see resources for more sites linked to Jersey legends, myths and folklore below).
IMAGES: explore the following
Landscape & views: rock formations along the coastline set against wider natural environments
Shapes & Form: Look for interesting granite that you may frame as rock face
Abstract & close-up: move in closer and look for textures/ patterns/ colourisation/ surfaces/ repetition within granite.
Photo-collaging: produce a series of images that overlap each other to form a much wider and detailed picture. (See Hockney and Allchurch for inspiration)
Narrative: Consider how to tell a story about your site and produce a sequence of images. For example, consider Jersey myth, legends and folklore as part of the meaning behind your photo-shoots. You can incorporate elements of staging and include people and props to develop a specific narrative.
Still-life: Collect at least 5 different objects/ debris (natural/ man-made) from your site and photograph as object in-situ and also create a mini-studio at home using black/white paper or other materials as a backdrop. Bring these objects to class when we return in September too.
BLOG > PHOTO-ASSIGNMENT
Publish all your work on the blog before returning to school on Tue 6 September. Best of luck and have a great summer!
Produce at least 3-5 photo-shoots!
Review and evaluate your shoots as they develop
Identity weaknesses and strength
Plan and re-visit for a new shoot that adds value to what you already have.
Make sure you collect 5 objects from your shoots that you photograph as still-life and bring to class in September
You have to ask yourself: Am I satisfied that I have enough images/ material? What are you going to do differently on next shoot? How are you going to develop your ideas?
These images could become starting point for your Personal Study that we will develop later in the autumn term You could produce another photo-zine based on this summer project and any work that you produce will be assessed as part of your Personal Investigation (coursework) awarding you marks based on skills, knowledge and understanding of photography as a tool for communication in narrative, sequence and design.
INSPIRATIONS – ideas, styles, aesthetics
Here is a selection of images made by Matt Brown last year as part of his Personal Study: Bouley Bay.
Have a look at his blog here for more ideas around his research, artists inspirations and further experimentation.
Megan Woolsgrove and her project on Green Island: La Motte Here is an online link to her photobook: La Motte: Walking through Landscapes and Archives. Go to her blog here for more context, research, artists references, experimentation etc.
Inspiration was Anna Atkins photobook: Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions 1843-53
The first book to be photographically printed and illustrated, Photographs of British Algae was published in fascicles beginning in 1843 and is a landmark in the history of photography. Using specimens she collected herself or received from other amateur scientists, Atkins made the plates by placing wet algae directly on light-sensitized paper and exposing the paper to sunlight. In the 1840s, the study of algae was just beginning to be systematized in Britain, and Atkins based her nomenclature on William Harvey’s unillustrated Manual of British Algae (1841), labeling each plate in her own hand. Read more here
Beliefs and superstitions revolving around mythical characters in Jersey, Channel Island are common. The ancient lanes overhung with vegetation look almost like dark tunnels leading into the unknown. Unexplained ruins dotted around the coast add to the air of mystery and Island people with a long and proud history have many stories to tell which have been passed down from generation to generation. In this photo book I have explored three of Jerseys most famous and well-known legends, portraying each one with a series of environmental portraits, studio shots and landscape photographs. The first legend tells the story of the poor Bride of Waterworks Valley, the second shows the demonic presence down at Devil’s Hole and the third looks into the many tales of Witchcraft in Jersey. This project is my response to the provided themes of ‘truth, fantasy and fiction’, as well as the beautiful depictions of myths created by other photographers. My aim for this photo book was to recreate some of our islands most interesting history using beautiful and insightful visuals. By doing this I hope to bring these legends back to life in this colourful yet ominous series.
Legend says that a terrible dragon once lived in Jersey, killing people and burning houses all over the Island. The noble Sir Hambye of France heard stories of this dragon; he travelled to Jersey and cut the dragon’s head off!
As an island, Jersey’s culture, identity and history have all been moulded by the ocean. As such, it is no surprise that a lot of Jersey’s myths and legends take place on the Island’s coastline. Six of these tales are illustrated on this set of stamps, including:
Some fairies were associated with the home, but more often they were connected with the landscape, especially with features that seemed mysterious, like mounds and caves.
Many explanations have been given for the belief in fairies. Some thought they were supernatural creatures, like ghosts or spirits of the dead. Others described them as fallen angels. The oldest fairies on record were described by historian Gervase of Tilbury in the 13th century. He wrote a collection of legends and marvels that included stories of fairy creatures and apparitions ‘from a parallel world’.
Similar studies have been made into Jersey folklore that explore the important links between local myths, the Jèrriais language and place names. Jersey Place Names, by Charles Stevens, Jean Arthur, Joan Stevens and Collette Stevens, meticulously records and analyses place names cross the Island and includes several references to fairies and other supernatural creatures.
Before we developed an understanding of our prehistoric ancestors, Jersey’s many ancient dolmens and standing stones were associated with fairies and goblins, and for many people they still hold a powerful mystical quality. For example, La Pouquelaye means a goblin’s path or stone, and is used to describe a dolmen or other megalithic structure. The name appears connected with various roads and fields in the La Pouquelaye area to the north of St Helier. Faldouet dolmen, or La Pouquelaye de Faldouet, stands on Rue de Pouclée, and the variants of ‘pouquelaye’/ ‘pouclée’ also appear in field names in St Ouen and Trinity.
Other sites with fairy associations in their place names include La Cotte de St Brelade, one of Jersey’s most important archaeological sites. In Jèrriais it has been known as La Cave à la Fée a Ouiné (The Fairy Cave at Ouaisné). In St Clement the site of the well-known legend of the witches, an unusual outcrop of rock at Rocqueberg, is also known as Le Rocher des Fées (The Fairies’ Rock). The area around the impressive dolmen at Grantez in St Ouen has been known variously as Le Creux de Faitieaux, Les Petits Faîtchieaux and Le Mont ès Faitieaux (meaning fairy folk). These prehistoric sites were widely believed to have been built by the fairies and historian Giles Bois records that when the Société Jersiaise excavated the dolmen at Grantez in 1912, an elderly man from the parish challenged the workmen with the words: ‘Tchi sacrilège! Mais qu’ou éthez êticbotchi les faîtchieaux ous allez nouos emm’ner tchique dro sus l’vaîsinné!’ This translates as: ‘Such sacrilege! But if you have disturbed the fairies you’ll have brought such trouble on the neighbourhood!’ Here are some examples of the stories:
The Lavoir des Dames, St John. Hidden within the rocks at Sorel Point is a rectangular pool called Le Lavoir des Dames. In local folklore, any man who saw the fairies bathing there would be struck blind immediately.
St Brelade’s Church. Legend has it that when the church was built, all the necessary materials were collected together at the chosen site in preparation but the next day there was no sign of anything. The items were eventually found almost a mile away near the sea. The workmen moved the materials back again, only to find that the same thing happened the next day. They are said to have accepted this as the will of God and built the church where it is today. Explanations for the change of site include that the original site chosen by the builders was near a pagan shrine and the fairies didn’t want a church on their doorstep. Others said the devil was pleased to get the church built so far from the homes of most of the parishioners. Another explanation given was that God wanted the church walls to be washed by the sea and chose the lovely location where the church still stands.
Les Rouaux (La Belle Hougue Point), Trinity. Near Les Rouaux is a spring known as La Fontaine des Mittes. According to folklore, this spring could give sight to the blind and restore the hearing of the deaf. The guardian spirits of fountains and streams were called the naiads and people believed that they had powers of good and evil. Two of these nymphs, Arna and Aiûna, are said to have lived in a grotto at La Belle Hougue Point. One autumn evening, near the end of their joyful and peaceful life on earth, an angel guided them to a home beyond the stars. As Arna and Aiûna rose they were reminded of their happy time on earth and cried a tear of sadness from each eye. These pure drops of water could not be received by the ground and so became a spring with healing properties.
Belief in witchcraft was formerly strong in Jersey, and survived in country areas well into the 20th century. Witches were supposed to hold their sabbats on Fridays at Rocqueberg, the Witches’ Rock, in St Clement. Folklore preserves a belief that witches’ stones on old houses were resting places for witches flying to their meetings.
La Fête Nouormande: Every third year Jersey hosts La fête Nouormande, a folk festival centering on the Norman culture and heritage of the island, which attracts performers and visitors from Guernsey and the continent.
Dragon of La Hougue Bie: Legend says that a terrible dragon once lived in St. Lawrence, killing people and burning houses all over the Island. The noble Sir Hambye of France heard stories of this dragon; he travelled to Jersey and cut the dragon’s head off! Exhausted and wounded from the battle, Sir Hambye lay down to rest, watched over by his trusty squire. What Sir Hambye didn’t know was that his squire wasn’t loyal or trustworthy at all. The squire wanted all the glory for himself – he killed his master whilst he was resting then buried the body before returning to France. He told Sir Hambye’s wife that his master had been killed by the dragon and that he, the Squire, had avenged his death by killing the dragon. He also added that the dying wish of Sir Hambye was that the Squire should marry his Lady wife. What a terrible thing to do! One night after they were married, the Lady overheard the squire talking in his sleep, he admitted killing his master back in Jersey. The Lady had the Squire sent to trial where he confessed to killing Sir Hambye, and was sentenced to death. In memory of her husband, the lady travelled to Jersey and built the mound here at La Hougue Bie. On a clear day you can see right across to France.
The Black Dog of Bouley Bay: Many years ago in Trinity, people talked of a black dog that was the size of a bull with enormous red eyes that glowed like fire. He would walk the cliff paths around Bouley Bay at night, dragging its chain behind him. There were many rumours of the Black Dog, some said a sighting of him meant a storm was coming, where as others said he led lost travellers to safety. Others said that the Black Dog would chase people to scare them, but he would never hurt them. It is said that the Black Dog of Bouley Bay was a myth made up by smugglers to keep people away from the Bay at night so they could steal from Jersey without people noticing, but this was never confirmed as a dog’s howl was heard every night coming from the Bay. It is still said now that if you see the ghost of the Black Dog at Bouley Bay, it is a sign that a storm is coming your way.
The Rock in Bonne Nuit Bay: Once there was a beautiful, young woman named Anne-Marie who liked to skim stones on the beach at Bonne Nuit. One day, a sea-sprite noticed her, and as he watched her, he decided that he wanted Anne-Marie for his wife. But Anne-Marie had a sweetheart called William who worked at the stables nearby. The sea-sprite became so jealous that he decided to get rid of William and have Anne-Marie for himself. The next day William went to muck out the stable, and inside he found a splendid white stallion. Shocked, but pleased at such a gift, he decided he would ride it to show Anne-Marie. That night however, William dreamt that the stallion was dangerous, so he picked some mistletoe and took it with him when he went riding. As he rode across the beach towards Anne-Marie, the stallion turned and began to charge towards the sea – it was the sea-sprite in disguise, trying to drown him. William beat the stallion about the head with the mistletoe, and all of a sudden the horse stiffened and turned into rock. You can still see the rock in Bonne Nuit Bay.
The Faithful Black Horse: Long ago, Jersey was ruled by French soldiers. many islanders did not like the French rule, especially Philippe de Carteret, the Seigneur of St Ouen. As the French soldiera didn’t want Philippe causing trouble, they decided to kidnap him. Whilst Philippe was fishing in St. Ouen’s pond, the French soldiers crept along to capture him, but Philippe saw them, and leapt on his black horse. He raced towards his manor, but the soldiers cut him off. He turned into Val de la Charriere, but there was only one way out – across a deep wide ditch. His horse bravely jumped it, and just landed on the other side, and so Philippe continued towards home. Once he reached home, and was safe, his faithful horse collapsed and died. Philippe ordered that his horse be buried in his garden, and today you can see a painting of the black horse in St. Ouen’s Manor.
Witches’ Rock: Legend tells us of a fisherman called Hubert who was engaged to a woman called Madeleine. He used to go for long walks during the evenings after work, and one evening he walked towards Rocqueberg Point. He fell asleep next to the rock, but when he awoke the rock had gone – and was replaced by a magic wood with beautiful girls dancing round the trees. Hubert danced with them, and as he left he promised he would return the following night. When he got home, he told Madeleine about the strange events, and she warned him not to go the next night, but Hubert decided to go anyway. Madeleine told the parish priest about her suspicions, and the priest told her to take a crucifix and follow Hubert to Rocqueberg Point that night. When Madeleine reached Rocqueberg, she saw Hubert, merrily dancing, but there were no beautiful girls – just ugly old witches. Madeleine held the crucifix high above her head and ran towards the witches – who vanished, shrieking. Hubert collapsed, and the rock returned in place of the magical forest. Since that night the rock has been called Witches’ Rock.
MY FAMILY: Explore your own private archives such as photo-albums, home movies, diaries, letters, birth-certificates, boxes, objects, mobile devices, online/ social media platforms and make a blog post with a selection of material that can be used for further development and experimentation using a variety of re-staging or montage techniques .
Archives can be a rich source for finding starting points on your creative journey. This will strengthen your research and lead towards discoveries about the past that will inform the way you interpret the present and anticipate the future. See more Public/ Private Archives
For example, you can focus on the life on one parent, grand-parent, family relative, or your own childhood and upbringing. Ask other family members (parents, grand-parents, aunties, uncles) if you can look through their photo-albums too etc.
Family photo-albumsDigital images stored on mobile phones, uploaded on social media etc.
TASKS STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE:
Either scan or re-photograph archival material so that it is digitised and ready for use on the blog and further experimentation.
Plan at least one photo-shoot and make a set of images that respond to your archival research. This can be re-staging old photos or make a similar set of images, eg. portraits of family members and how they have changed over the years, or snapshots of social and family gatherings.
Choose one of your images which relates to the theme of family (e.g. archive, family album, or new image you have made) and destroy the same image in 5 different ways using both analogue and digital method techniques. Eg. Reprint old and new photos and combine using scissors/ tearing and glue/ tape. In Photoshop use a variety of creative tools to cut and paste fragments of images to create composites.
Produce appropriate blogposts with both family research, archival material and new photographic responses and experiments.
Extension: Choose a second image and destroy it in 5 new or other ways.
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Under Oath, 2017
Jonny Briggs: In search of lost parts of my childhood I try to think outside the reality I was socialised into and create new ones with my parents and self. Through these I use photography to explore my relationship with deception, the constructed reality of the family, and question the boundaries between my parents and I, between child/adult, self/other, nature/culture, real/fake in attempt to revive my unconditioned self, beyond the family bubble. Although easily assumed to be photoshopped or faked, upon closer inspection the images are often realised to be more real than first expected. Involving staged installations, the cartoonesque and the performative, I look back to my younger self and attempt to re-capture childhood nature through my assuming adult eyes.
Thomas Sauvin and Kensuke Koike: ‘No More, No Less’ In 2015, French artist Thomas Sauvin acquired an album produced in the early 1980s by an unknown Shanghai University photography student. This volume was given a second life through the expert hands of Kensuke Koike, a Japanese artist based in Venice whose practice combines collage and found photography. The series, “No More, No Less”, born from the encounter between Koike and Sauvin, includes new silver prints made from the album’s original negatives. These prints were then submitted to Koike’s sharp imagination, who, with a simple blade and adhesive tape, deconstructs and reinvents the images. However, these purely manual interventions all respect one single formal rule: nothing is removed, nothing is added, “No More, No Less”. In such a context that blends freedom and constraint, Koike and Sauvin meticulously explore the possibilities of an image only made up of itself.
Veronica GesickaTraces presents a selection of photomontages created by Weronika Gęsicka on the basis of American stock photographs from the 1950s and 1960s. Family scenes, holiday memories, everyday life – all of that suspended somewhere between truth and fiction. The images, modified by Gęsicka in various ways, are wrapped in a new context: our memories of the people and situations are transformed and blur gradually. Humorous as they may seem, Gęsicka’s works are a comment on such fundamental matters as identity, self-consciousness, relationships, imperfection.
Mask XIV 2006
John Stezaker: Is a British artist who is fascinated by the lure of images. Taking classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations, Stezaker makes collages to give old images a new meaning. By adjusting, inverting and slicing separate pictures together to create unique new works of art, Stezaker explores the subversive force of found images. Stezaker’s famous Mask series fuses the profiles of glamorous sitters with caves, hamlets, or waterfalls, making for images of eerie beauty.
His ‘Dark Star’ series turns publicity portraits into cut-out silhouettes, creating an ambiguous presence in the place of the absent celebrity. Stezaker’s way of giving old images a new context reaches its height in the found images of his Third Person Archive: the artist has removed delicate, haunting figures from the margins of obsolete travel illustrations. Presented as images on their own, they now take the centre stage of our attention
There are different ways artists and photographers have explored their own, or other families in their work as visual storytellers. Some explore family using a documentary approach to storytelling, others construct or stage images that may reflect on their childhood, memories, or significant events drawing inspiration from family archives/ photo albums and often incorporating vernacular images into the narrative and presenting the work as a photobook.
Rita Puig-Serra Costa (Where Mimosa Bloom) vs Laia Abril (The Epilogue)> artists exploring personal issues > vernacular vs archival > inside vs outside
Rita Puig-Serra Coasta, Where Mimosa BloomLaia Abril, The Epiloque
Carole Benitah (Photo Souvenirs) vs Diane Markosian (Inventing My Father) > family > identity > memory > absence > trauma
Carole Benitah, Photo-SouvenirsThis is the closet thing I had to an image of my father. A cut out of him in my mother’s photo album.
Ugne Henriko (Mother and Daughter) vs Irina Werning or Chino Otsuka > re-staging images > re-enacting memories
Use this simplified list to check that you are on task. Every item on the list represents one piece of work = one blog post. It is your responsibility as an A-level student to make sure that you complete and publish appropriate blog posts each week.
SUMMER TERM
WEEK 1: 20 – 26 June 1: CONTEXTUAL STUDY: Research the concept of Jersey’s Geopark – Mon 11 July 2: ARTISTS REFERENCES: David Hockney’s Joiner’s – Mon 4 July
WEEK 2: 27 June – 4 July 1: EDITING: Photoshoot from school trip
WEEK 3 – 4: 5 – 15 July 1: EXPERIMENTATION: Produce photo-collage: joiner 2: EVALUATION: Select 2-3 final outcomes and evaluate 3: FINAL OUTCOME: Choose one joiner and one single image and save high-res file into this folder.
WEEK 2: 12-18 Sept 1. RECORDING: Still-life images in studio 2. EDITING:Photoshoot fromstudio still-life
WEEK 3-4: 19 Sept – 2 Oct 1. ARTIST REFERENCES: 3D photo-sculpture 2. EXPERIMENTING:3D Photo-sculpture 3. DEVELOPING:Installation of 3D photo-sculpture 4. FINAL PRINTS:Installation of 3D photo-sculpture 5. EVALUATION:Installation of 3D photo-sculpture
WEEK 5: 3 – 9 Oct 1. ARTIST REFERENCE: SJPA Collections and Emile F Guiton 2. EDITING: Photoshoot from Green Island 3. ESSAY: What are archives? (Deadline: Wed 12 Oct)
WEEK 6-7: 10 – 21 Oct 1. CONTEXTUAL STUDY: Photo-zine research 2. DEVELOPING:Photo-zine design and layout 3. FINAL PRINTS:Save into folder here:
M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\Image Transfer\YR13 MY ROCK
Remember to include a range of sizes
A3 / A4 / A5 and black and white images too
File Handling and printing...
Remember when EXPORTING from Lightroom you must adjust the file size to 1000 pixels on the Short edge for “blog-friendly” images (JPEGS)
BUT…for editing and printing when EXPORTING from Lightroom you must adjust the file size to Short edge for “high resolution” images (JPEGS) like this…
A5 Short Edge = 14.8 cm
A4 Short Edge = 21.0 cm
A3 Short Edge =29.7 cm
This will ensure you have the correct ASPECT RATIO
WEEK 8-9: 31 Oct – 11 Nov 1. PHOTOZINE: Print, present and evaluate 2. PHOTO-SCULPTURES: Complete, photograph as 2D image and evaluate 3. FINAL PRINTS: Mount, frame and present – most include ‘joiners’, single, diptych, triptych, grid/ sequence of images 4. VIRTUAL GALLERY: Blogpost with an evaluation – include final prints above + 3D Photo-sculptures on plinths 5. BLOG POSTS: Complete, improve and refine – use Checklist here and Go4School tracking sheet.
DEADLINE: Fri 11 Nov We begin Personal Study Mon 14 Nov!
Making a Virtual Gallery in Photoshop
Download an empty gallery file…then insert your images and palce them on the walls. Adjust the persepctive, size and shape using CTRL T (free transform) You can also add things like a drop shadow to make the image look more realistic…
The summer project will be an introduction to our new Yr 13 photography programme based around the theme of ‘islandness’ that follows on from your Yr 12 heritage studies.
PHOTOGRAPHY & SCULPTURE Produce two creative outcomes based around a representation of Jersey rock from Geological Sites of Special Interest (SSI) and Jersey Island Geopark.
Digital photo-collage 3D photo-sculpture
David Hockney
Emily Allchurch
Felicity Hammond
Darren Harvey Regan
PLANNER: 4 week project
WK 1: 20 – 26 June EXPLORING > research & on location shoots complete the following blogposts
CONTEXTUAL STUDY: Research the concept of Jersey’s Geopark and its links with the island’s Geological Heritage and Sites of Special Interest (SSI). Consider also the protection of Geoparks in context of our current debate around the global impact of climate change and future sustainable development. See resources below and use images, video links and texts to illustrate your thinking.
ARTISTS REFERENCES. As inspiration for your photoshoot select at least two artists references. Explore, discuss, describe and explain key examples of their work relevant to your project and intentions. Follow these steps:
1. Produce a mood board with a selection of images and write an overview of their work, its visual style, meaning and methods. Describe why you have selected to study their work and how it relates to your project: MY ROCK
2. Select at least one key image and analyse in depth using methodology of TECHNICAL>VISUAL>CONTEXTUAL>CONCEPTUAL
3. Incorporate quotes and comments from artist themselves or others (art/ media /film critics, art/ media/ film historians, curators, writers, journalists etc) using a variety of sources such as Youtube, online articles, reviews, text, books etc. Make sure you reference sources and embed links in your blog post.
4. Compare and contrast your chosen artists in terms of similarities and contrasts in their approaches, techniques and outcomes of their work.
ARTIST REFERENCES – PHOTO-COLLAGING
David Hockney
David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. In the early 1980s, Hockney started to produce photocollages, which he called “joiners,” starting off with polaroid prints and later of 35mm, processed color prints. Using a large number of Polaroid prints or photolab-prints of a single subject Hockney arranged a patchwork to make a composite image. One of his first photomontages was of his mother. the images are taken from different perspectives and with slightly different lighting resulting in an effect similar to Cubism.
‘JOINERS’
David Hockney’s creation of the “joiners” occurred accidentally. He noticed in the late sixties that photographers were using cameras with wide-angle lenses to take pictures. He did not like such photographs because they always came out somewhat distorted. Working on a painting of a living room and terrace in Los Angeles, he took Polaroid shots of the living room and glued them together as a preparatory work, not intending for them to be a composition on their own. He realised this picture created a kind of story, as if the viewer was moving through the room. He began to work more and more with photography after this discovery and even stopped painting for a period of time. Hockney had always been interested in Cubism and the idea of multiple perspectives and viewpoints so this was another way for him to explore this way of looking.
These multiple images cause you to keep adjusting your viewpoint as your eye travels from print to print. For the photographer, it means that you can build up a single image that is many times wider in angle of view than the camera lens (the viewing angle of a standard 55mm lens for a 35mm format camera is about 45 degrees.
Watch clips below where Hockney talks about photography and the concept behind his ‘joiners’, such as: TIME, SPACE & VIEWPOINTS.
There are three concepts that are important to consider in relation to Hockney’s ‘joiners’. Make sure you discuss these concepts in relation to your analysis of his photo-collages.
TIME: a collage of many photographs extends time beyond the fraction of a second in a single image (exposure), that is, it takes more time to record multiple images and a ‘joiner’ may represent time over a longer period.
SPACE: space is an illusion, as the photograph itself is only a representation of the ‘real’ thing. Secondly, the collage can expand space by assembling many individual images together into a wider view.
VIEWPOINTS: The construction of a collage includes many images, each with their of point of view. Therefore, by definition a ‘joiner’ is a collage with multiple viewpoints.
Emily Allchurch
Emily Allchurch, born 1974 in Jersey, Channel Islands, lives and works in Hastings, East Sussex. She trained as a sculptor, receiving a First Class (Hons.) degree in Fine Art from the Kent Institute of Art & Design – Canterbury in 1996, and an MA from the Royal College of Art in 1999, where she began working with photography as a material. Since then, she has exhibited regularly in solo and group shows in the UK and internationally.
Allchurch uses photography and digital collage to reconstruct Old Master paintings and prints to create contemporary narratives. Her starting point is an intensive encounter with a city or place, to absorb an impression and gather a huge image library. From this resource, hundreds of photographs are selected and meticulously spliced together to create a seamless new ‘fictional’ space. Each artwork re-presents this journey, compressed into a single scene. The resulting photographic collages have a resonance with place, history and culture, and deal with the passage of time and the changes to a landscape, fusing contemporary life with a sense of history.
Watch film here where Emily talks about the process of making her impressive photo-collages.
Throughout 2020 and 2021, whilst largely confined to her home county of East Sussex due to the Coronavirus pandemic, Emily Allchurch took photographs on her daily walks in the local countryside through the changing seasons. This has inspired a new collection of landscapes, ‘Closer to Home’, not only in celebration of the natural world, but also as a reminder of its precarious fragility.
The works explore themes of landscape management and control, the threat from development, coastal erosion, invasive plant species and detritus, and how we interact with the landscape through tourism and recreation.
In her trademark referencing to Old Master prints and paintings, she has adopted the ‘Oban’ portrait format and near/far composition techniques used by Utagawa Hiroshige in his series ‘One Hundred Famous Views of Edo’ (1856-58), a love letter to his home city of Tokyo. However, in a departure from recent work, the compositions are her own, with the twelve resulting images forming a portrait of the East Sussex landscape throughout a calendar year.
Whilst some scenes capture more obviously aesthetic vistas, like the South Downs, others find beauty in the everyday, such as blossom flowering on an urban estate, and the unfurling of new weeds in spring. Both the cherry blossom and Japanese knotweed in these works offer lighthearted references to their Japanese inspirational origins.
Allchurch follows in the footsteps of a rich tradition of artists drawn to the beauty of the Sussex coast. A couple of the works reference specific paintings, namely her composition for May, which captures the same view of Fairlight immortalised in William Holman Hunt’s 1852 painting ‘Our English Coasts (‘Strayed Sheep’)’ which is in the Tate Collection, and her view of Beachy Head for August, which echoes that painted by Eric Ravillious, some 80 years ago.
The ‘Tower of Babel’ is a compelling motif with which to portray a city from a contemporary perspective and is a recurring theme in Allchurch’s work. The construction allows for multiple viewpoints and layers of history to be represented within a single structure.
As with all her works, Babel Britain is peppered with topical markers spotted in the environment: signage, graffiti, property developers’ advertising hyperbole, street art, and protest banners – all of which help to reinforce a message of political and economic uncertainty, as well as growing inequality of wealth.
Read more here about Emily Allchurch’s Towers of Babel series
In 2017, Allchurch began an exciting new collaboration with Karin Weber Gallery in Hong Kong. With an award from the Arts Council England / British Council Artists’ International Development Fund, she visited Hong Kong for the first time to collate a vast image library of the territory. Meetings and guided tours with local artists and academics gave invaluable insight into the challenges facing Hong Kong residents: lack of space, inequality of wealth, housing shortage, and pollution.
Loosely inspired by the 1595 ‘Tower of Babel’ by Flemish painter Lucas van Valkenborch, the resulting image, Babel Hong Kong 2018, also draws strongly from Chinese painting traditions in its multiple perspectives and meandering paths which guide the viewer through an unabashedly urban cityscape leading to misty mountain ranges in the distance. Shopping malls, temples, public housing, land reclamation, construction sites and congested expressways jostle for position on the lower tiers, whilst big corporations and the well-heeled seemingly rise above the pollution, and the clouds.
FIELD STUDIES: Geological Sites of Special Interest Thurs 23 June: Meet at Jersey Museum for 9:00 am (make your own way)
Activities: 09:00 – 10:00 Geopark – talk by Dr Ralph Nichols & Millie Butel 10:00 – 10:30: Coach to St Ouen Group A: drop off at L’Etacq and begin slow walk towards Le Pinnacle Group B: drop off at Battery Moltke walk to Le Pinnacle and return to make way towards L’Etacq 11:00 – 13:00 Explore SSI’s – Le Petit Etacquerel – Le Grand Etacqurel – Le Pulec – Le Pinnacle 13:00 – 13:40 lunch 13:40-14:00: Coach to Greve de Lecq 14:00-15:00: Workshop: Luddite Press (mono printing from rocks collected at SSIs? / or produce a number of cyanotype prints on-site) 15:10: Coach back to Hautlieu
IMAGES: explore the following
Landscape & views: rock formations along the coastline set against wider natural environments
Shapes & Form: Look for interesting granite that you may frame as rock face
Abstract & close-up: move in closer and look for textures/ patterns/ colourisation/ surfaces/ repetition within granite.
Photo-collaging: produce a series of images that overlap each other to form a much wider and detailed picture. (See Hockney and Allchurch for inspiration)
Narrative: Consider how to tell a story about Geological site and include a variety of images, including figures in a landscape
Here is a selection of images made at geological sites of special interest – Le Petit Etacquerel, Le Grand Etacqurel, Le Pulec and Le Pinnacle from my Jèrriais project: Becque á Barbe.
Becque á Barbe: Face to Face: a portrait project about Jèrriais – the island of Jersey’s native language of Norman French. Each portrait is titled with a Jèrriais word that each native speaker has chosen to represent a personal or symbolic meaning, or a specific memory linked to his or her childhood. Some portraits are darker in tonality to reflect the language hidden past at a time when English was adopted as the formal speech in Jersey and Jèrriais was suppressed publicly and forbidden to be spoken in schools.
Fri 24 June: Upload images to Lightroom – Save raw images from camera card on M:drive in a new project folder: MY ROCK – Import images into Lightroom – Create a Collection Set: MY ROCK – Create a Collection: Shoot 1 under collection set above – Begin to select images using P (pick) and X (reject)
HOMEWORK TASK: PHOTO-ASSIGNMENT
Revisit same sites, (or other Geological SSIs) to make more images, perhaps at a different time when the light is different, or at night using a tripod for long exposure
WK 2: 27 June – 3 July EDITING > selecting & adjusting images complete the following blogposts
EDITING:
Continue to select your best images in Lightroom using star ratings and/or colour labels.
Produce screen prints for each stage of your selection process and paste into new blog post: PHOTO-SHOOT
In Develop mode, adjust images both as Colour and B&W images appropriate to your intentions
Export images as JPGS (1000 pixels) and save in a folder: BLOG
Add a selection of your best edited images (8-12) to the blog post above and write an evaluation (see EVALUATION below for more instructions.)
ARTIST REFERENCES: Continue your case studies from last week and describe how your chosen artists references will inform the development of your work and further experimentation using a selection of your images.
WK 3 – 4: 4 – 17 July EXPERIMENTING > working with images & material complete the following blogposts
There are two different outcomes we would like you to produce:
DIGITAL PHOTO-COLLAGE: Construct a digital photo-collage using a wider selection of images in Photoshop – maybe this should be analogue too..
Experimentation: ‘Joiners’
Watch this video tutorial which guides you through the process of creating a Hockney inspired Joiner using Photoshop. Now experiment with the same process to create your own Joiners using this technique.
Here is a pdf on how to use Photomerge step by step
DESIGN PROCESS: Make sure you produce a blog post that show stages of your experimentation using screen grabs (digital photo-collage) and/or document your 3D photo-sculpture using camera/ phone. Make sure you annotate the various processes and techniques that you are using and also describe creative decisions and choices that you make.
FURTHER EXPERIMENTATION: Produce at least 5 different version of photo-collages. Make sure you save each new image/ experiment and add to your blog post with annotation.
Different shapes of your joiner – choose different set of images and styles in photomerge.
Adjust individual layers in Photoshop eg. different exposure values (contrast between bright/ dark tones), colour/ monochrome, delete/ add layers, different background, layer styles/ drop shadows, stroke etc.
Experiment with 3D Objects in Photoshop, such as Spherical panoramic, New Mesh layers, such as cone, cube, cylinder sphere, extrusion etc.
Incorporate Jerriais words into your photo-collage or photo sculpture – see Other Resources below for ideas
Consider Jersey myth and storytelling as part of the meaning behind your photo-collage or photo-sculpture
EVALUATING: Upon completion of your final outcomes and experimentation, make sure you evaluate and reflect on your creative development. Comment on the following:
How successful was your experimentation?
What references did you make to artists references? – comment on technical, visual, contextual, conceptual links?
How are you going to develop your project from here? – comment on research, planning, recording, experimenting.
What are you going to do next? – what, why, how, when, where?
PHOTO-SCULPTURE: Print selected images and work analogue using foamboard/ mountboard cut-outs to construct a 3D photo-sculpture.
Photographic installations which are site specific and 3-dimensional is very in vogue right now. Here are a selection of artists exploring the material nature of a photographic image (print, negative etc) and the idea that photographs can be sculptural.
Darren Harvey Regan
Entwining image and object, the work of Darren Harvey-Regan (b. 1974 Exeter) often sees a hybridisation of the conventions of photography and sculpture. As quietly humorous as they are frustrating his works challenge the viewer to distinguish where representation ends and the object begins. “The presentation of photographs in interaction with objects serves to highlight the inherent tensions within representation; between the photograph as an object and the image of the world it contains. In this way, I consider the photograph as being something not only to think about, but to think with.”
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“As a medium reliant on how the natural world appears to it, can a photograph ever be truly abstract? Yet what process is more abstract than collapsing mass, depth and time into a single surface?” – Harvey-Regan
In geology an ‘erratic’ refers to a rock that differs from its native environment, having been carried and deposited there by a long-vanished glacier. Similarly Darren Harvey-Regan in his latest series executes both the photographic and physical act of lifting something out of its context, playing on overlapping appearances and processes.
The Erratics (Exposures) presents images of natural chalk rock formations eroded by wind and sand. Using an old large format field camera, Harvey-Regan sought out the monolithic chalk forms of Egypt’s Western Desert, a vast natural parallel to the singular studio-bound objects that frequently recur in his practice.
Both The Erratics (wrest) and (chalk fall in white) use sculptural compositions made by the artist from chalk collected from the rock falls along England’s South Coast. By carving smooth planes and shapes into rough rocks, Harvey-Regan works with and against perception of its natural forms. In the photographic works – (wrest) – the chalk is shaped towards the two-dimensional image surface of the print, while in the installation (chalk fall in white), the perception of a flattened image surface is created within the three-dimensional forms themselves.
Harvey-Regan uses art historian Wilhelm Worringer’s essay Abstraction and Empathy as both a background for the work and as a means to consider the nature of the photographic medium. For Worringer, ‘empathy’ describes our need to connect to the visible world, identifying with it and representing it. Conversely, ‘abstraction’ is proposed as a means of coping with the overwhelming phenomena of the world by extracting things from their place in space and time whilst distilling them to purified line, form and colour.
Both abstraction and empathy are captured in these works and their photographic process. The forms exposed in their natural surroundings in Erratics (Exposures) remain curiously abstract while tending more towards empathy, while forcefully sculpted objects in Erratics (Wrest) are balanced on the edge of the organic and abstract.
Felicity Hammond is an emerging artist who works across photography and installation. Fascinated by political contradictions within the urban landscape her work explores construction sites and obsolete built environments.
The Space Between @ ART ROTTERDAM 2017The Space Between @ ART ROTTERDAM 2017
In specific works Hammond photographs digitally manipulated images from property developers’ billboards and brochures and prints them directly onto acrylic sheets which are then manipulated into unique sculptural objects. Here a few selected works you can use as case studies
Case Study:World Capital (2019) Ink jet prints on vinyl and dibond, wood, rubber, water, concrete, steel, acrylic
Conversations about the homogenisation of the built environment have taken many forms. From Walter Benjamin’s writings about the effect of capitalism on nineteenth century Paris, to Ian Nairn’s scathing review of the growing ubiquity of town planning, the crisis surrounding urban identity has been and will continue to be widely contested.
In World Capital the conversation turns towards the way that digital technologies have influenced the global image of the city. Offering a commentary on the role that the computer generated architectural proposition plays in the increasing uniformity of the urban realm, the work outlines the ways in which the proliferation of the virtual world has contributed to urban indifference.
Combining images used to market contemporary housing alongside relics of the industrial past, the work collides local history with the global image that supersedes it. Re-imagining the Great Thames flood of 1928 which destroyed much of the site of the exhibition (now known as London City Island) World Capital recalls the area’s industrial and troublesome past, propelling its history into the near future.
In her work, British artist Felicity Hammond confronts the social, political, and economic contradictions of the postmodern city, whose buildings and façades shape our collective identity and open up a future by obliterating the past. Hammond’s large- scale collages combine found images from glossy real estate brochures with her own photographs. They are reminiscent of apocalyptic historic images, but they never reveal the locations of the places they show or how they relate. Instead, the collages reflect the increasing homogenization of big cities, resulting from a process of urban development steered by power struggles between international real estate companies, profit-driven investors, and gentrification critics.
Lorenzo Venturi: Dalston Anatomy Lorenzo Vitturi’s vibrant still lifes capture the threatened spirit of Dalston’s Ridley Road Market. Vitturi – who lives locally – feels compelled to capture its distinctive nature before it is gentrified beyond recognition. Vitturi arranges found objects and photographs them against backdrops of discarded market materials, in dynamic compositions. These are combined with street scenes and portraits of local characters to create a unique portrait of a soon to be extinct way of life.
His installation at the Gallery draws on the temporary structures of the market using raw materials, sculptural forms and photographs to explore ideas about creation, consumption and preservation.
James Casebere: pioneering work has established him at the forefront of artists working with constructed photography. For the last thirty years, Casebere has devised increasingly complex models that are subsequently photographed in his studio. Based on architectural, art historical and cinematic sources, his table-sized constructions are made of simple materials, pared down to essential forms. Casebere’s abandoned spaces are hauntingly evocative and oftentimes suggestive of prior events, encouraging the viewer to reconstitute a narrative or symbolic reading of his work.
Caspar David Friedrich
James Casebere
While earlier bodies of work focused on American mythologies such as the genre of the western and suburban home, in the early 1990s, Casebere turned his attention to institutional buildings. In more recent years, his subject matter focused on various institutional spaces and the relationship between social control, social structure and the mythologies that surround particular institutions, as well as the broader implications of dominant systems such as commerce, labor, religion and law.
Thomas Demand studied with the sculptor Fritz Schwegler, who encouraged him to explore the expressive possibilities of architectural models at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where Bernd and Hilla Becher had recently taught photographers such as Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and Candida Höfer. Like those artists, Demand makes mural-scale photographs, but instead of finding his subject matter in landscapes, buildings, and crowds, he uses paper and cardboard to reconstruct scenes he finds in images taken from various media sources. Once he has photographed his re-created environments—always devoid of figures but often displaying evidence of recent human activity—Demand destroys his models, further complicating the relationship between reproduction and original that his photography investigates.
Further experimentation
Other ideas for constructing a photographic sculpture
Jack Dale
Robert Heinecken, Figure Cube, 1965
Lauren Pascarella, Photographic Sculpture
Joseph Parra
Jody Powell
Noemie Goudal
EXHIBITION: Create a miniature installation on the white table in the classroom with your various photo-collages and photo-sculptures and re-photograph it in-situ producing new set of images that play on a sense of scale & shapes, form & texture and reality & fantasy.
WK 3 – 4: 4 – 17 July EXPERIMENTING > working with images & material complete the following blogposts
WK 5: 18 – 19 July EVALUATING > presenting outcomes & reflecting – complete both digital and analogue photocollage – present 3D relief and write an evaluation – group exhibition in the streets: MY ROCK
3. PLANNING & RECORDING. Plan your first photographic shoots/ video recording in response to your research, concept and project. Your recording must be completed by Tue 29 Sept as we return to school after the Corn Riots bank holiday.
Export same set of images from Lightroom as TIFF (4000 pixels)
Experimentation: demonstrate further creativity using Photoshop to make composite/ montage/ typology/ grids/ diptych/triptych, text/ typology etc appropriate to your intentions
Design: Begin to explore different layout options using InDesign and make some page spreads for our newspaper (format: 280.5 (h) x 420 mm (w)
Alternatively design a photo-zine. Set up new document as A5 page sizes. This is trying out ideas before you begin designing photobook.
Make sure you annotate process and techniques used and evaluate each experiment
RESOURCES
What is a Geopark Every Geopark is unique. There are 169 UNESCO Global Geoparks in 44 countries around the world. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) seeks to build peace through international cooperation in Education, the Sciences and Culture.
“UNESCO Global Geoparks are single, unified geographical areas where sites and landscapes of international geological significance are managed with a holistic concept of protection, education and sustainable development.
A UNESCO Global Geopark comprises a number of geological heritage sites of special scientific importance, rarity or beauty. These features are representative of a region’s geological history and the events and processes that formed it. It must also include important natural, historic, cultural tangible and intangible heritage sites.
The UNESCO Global Geoparks celebrate the links between people and the Earth. Jersey hopes to be recognised as a unique place by being awarded Geopark status.
A Geopark is about more than rocks. Jersey is a strong contender for this special designation because of our Island’s exceptional geology and our important cultural heritage which forms the outstanding surroundings we enjoy every day. Whether exploring Jersey’s diverse landscapes or seascapes there is lots to discover and inspire you.
Jersey’s Geological Heritage – Sites of Special Interest (SSI)
The Island of Jersey has a geology that is significantly different to that of the United Kingdom and even from that of the other Channel Islands. Many of the island’s geological sites are of regional and international significance and some have attracted global attention.
In recognition of this, the States of Jersey has designated 22 of the island’s most important outcrops as Sites of Special Interest (SSIs) so that they may be protected from development and preserved for future public enjoyment and research purposes. The booklet below offers an introduction to all of Jersey’s geological SSIs with the aim of promoting knowledge of their existence to residents and tourists and highlighting their importance to amateur and professional scientists.
All the Island’s geological SSIs are covered here along with information about their location plus basic descriptions and photographs which highlight each site’s significance and its salient features.
The Aspiring Jersey Island Geopark Visitor Centre introduces the story of Jersey’s geological heritage and is the Island hub for information on exploring Jersey to see first-hand how geology has shaped and influenced the Island we know today.
GEOPARK AMBASSADORES
Geopark Ambassadors represent some of the organisations working with Aspiring Jersey Island Geopark. They champion Jersey’s unique landscapes and seascapes through their roles within our community and their passion for Island life.
Each Ambassador was asked about what makes this Island such a remarkable place.
Ralph Nichols – Geologist Société Jersiaise Lecturer, Teacher, Secretary for the Geology, Archaeology and Jèrriais Sections of Société Jersiaise. Favourite of Jersey’s Geology: Anne Port Bay to La Crête Point, St Martin. “My favourite geology is the Anne Port agglomerate and Anne Port rhyolite (Bouley Rhyolite Formation) with flow–banding, spherulitic rhyolite and columnar jointing. The columnar jointing at La Crête Point is similar to the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland but has no crater!”
Minerals are made from elements like silicon, oxygen, aluminium, iron and other metals. They are the fundamental building blocks of all rocks. As magma (molten rock) cools, minerals such as quartz and feldspar form crystals. The longer the cooling process takes, the larger the crystals. Minerals can also be carried through rocks by water, forming crystals as the water evaporates.
JERSEY SHALE FORMATION
The shales are the oldest rocks in the Island. You can see them in the west, across the centre and in the south of Jersey. They were formed by mud, silt and sand brought together on the sea floor about 600 million years ago. These sediments were transformed into rock by being pushed together, hardened and folded.
JERSEY VOLCANICS
Volcanic lavas and ashes can be seen along the north and northeast coasts of the Island. These andesites and rhyolites formed as a result of volcanic eruptions occurring 580 million years ago.
JERSEY GRANITES
Jersey is famous for its granites, which have been favoured as a building material for thousands of years. These major intrusive or ‘plutonic’ rocks were formed between 580 and 480 million years ago by molten rock cooling and solidifying between the Earth’s surface. They are only visible once the overlying rocks have been eroded away. The dark rocks known as gabbros are the oldest, and are rich in iron and magnesium. The true granites, visible along the northwest and southwest coasts, are lighter in colour, and consist of three main minerals: quartz, feldspar and mica. On the southeast coast, where granites have broken through the Earth’s surface into older gabbros, a mixed rock called diorite has formed.
ROZEL CONGLOMERATE
Formation Conglomerate can be seen along the northeast of the Island and is made up of beds of pebbles which have been cemented together. They were formed around 400 million years ago and are the youngest hard rock formation in Jersey. Conglomerate is also known as ‘pudding stone’ because the rock formation is made up of lots of pebbles, probably from eroded and worn mountains. Streams with fast flowing water carried the pebbles and sand down valleys and left them behind before they cemented together.
JERSEY’S OFFSHORE REEFS
Jersey is surrounded by offshore reefs bursting with marine life, Les Pierres de Lecq to the north, Les Écréhous to the northeast and Les Minquiers to the south. Local fisherman enjoy fishing around these reefs which often prove dangerous to larger ships.
HOW OLD IS THAT ROCK?
At low tide Les Minquiers reef is bigger than Jersey. On this large reef, the rock is mostly made up of types of granite. These granites have features older than the Jersey granites. Could this mean that Les Minquiers reef is older than Jersey?
SEA LEVELS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
The world’s climate fluctuates as a result of changes in the sun’s activity affecting the polar ice caps, the dome-shaped sheets of ice found in Greenland and Antarctica. These effects occur gradually over time, making sea levels change as ice caps melt or cool. This cycle of cold and warm periods has repeated itself several times over the past two million years. Since 10,000 years ago, sea levels have risen to make Jersey an Island once more.
GLACIAL
In a cold period, global temperature becomes cooler causing the ice caps to grow. This traps much of the world’s water, causing sea levels to drop as much as 200 metres. Just imagine the English Channel disappearing with Jersey and Guernsey as only hills in a vast coastal plain.
INTERGLACIAL
In a warm period, global temperature becomes warmer causing the ice caps to melt. Sea levels rise as freshwater is released back into the oceans. Evidence for past changes in sea level and the shifting of the Earth’s tectonic plates can be seen today in the many raised beaches in Jersey. The highest raised beach in the Island is at South Hill.
To explore the Island’s heritage of Jèrriais also known as Jersey French, our Island’s mother tongue, we have highlighted some special parts of Island life. This #landscapelanguage series can be found on Jersey Heritage’s Instagram (@jerseyheritage) featuring images by local photographer Lucy Le Lievre.
LES HUTHETS
Les Hurets is the often overlooked, rather bare headland on the north coast above Bouley Bay. This place’s name in Jèrriais, Les Huthets, translates to ‘high, rocky, stony and barren ground’…our ancestors certainly got that one right! ~ in life there are downs and ups ~ dans la vie y’a des flias et des huthes. ~
ÎLET
Where can you find this islet? Here is a clue…home to miner bees and at least two trees, this remarkable green-headed rock’s name in Jèrriais is îlet.
CAÛCHIE
Many bays around the Island feature a pier, or caûchie in Jèrriais. These extensions of the coast were mostly built in the 1800s to create protected pockets of water for seafarers. Today, our piers still prove popular for fishing, boating and more recently cold-water swimming. The caûchie at Grève de Lecq, pictured, was almost completely destroyed during storms in the 1890s.
ROTCHI
You can’t go far in the Island without seeing a large rock, or rotchi in Jèrriais. The correct word for rock in Jersey’s traditional language actually varies depending on which side of the Island you find yourself in! Can you guess if rotchi is for rocks in the east or west?
BOUAIS
Our language is deeply intertwined with nature. For example, tree is bouais in Jèrriais. In a small Island where timber is limited, the importance of trees to our ancestors can be seen every day in place names like Five Oaks or Les Ormes (or elms in Jèrriais). Today, trees remain just as vital as we realise their benefits to the planet and our wellbeing. The entire woodland ecosystem plays a huge role in locking up and storing carbon which is important in combating climate change. Research shows that within minutes of being surrounded by trees and green space, our blood pressure drops, heart rate slows and stress levels come down – spending time amongst trees is good for all of us.
FORT
As an Island, Jersey has always had to protect itself and the coastline hosts examples of fortifications from many different time periods. The importance of these defences can be seen in the similarities between language used then and now. For example Fort, is also Fort in Jèrriais. Fort Leicester, pictured, was built in 1836 to guard a certain bay in partnership with L’Étacquerel Fort to the east. The defensive position was named after the Earl of Leicester centuries before a fort was constructed. Today, both forts are available to enjoy as unique Heritage Lets.
BOUAÎS’SIE
In a small Island where timber is limited, the importance of trees to our ancestors can be seen every day in place names like Seven Oaks or La Rue de Sapins (sapin in Jèrriais means fir, spruce). Au temps pâssé (Jèrriais for in times past), wood from trees would have been used as fuel for fires to heat homes during the colder winter months. This practice continues today with more considerations and actions being made about replanting trees. These logs are from a wooded area, or in Jèrriais ~ bouaîs’sie.
USS’SIE
Features like an arch, or uss’sie in Jèrriais, can be seen around the Island in old buildings. This example is an arch at Manor Farm, La Route de Vinchelez in St Ouen – a farm which is still used today to grow delicious genuine Jersey produce.
GRANNIT
A building block of Island life – quite literally – types of granite, or grannit in Jèrriais, can be seen in almost every corner of Jersey. Formed hundreds of million years ago by molten rock cooling and solidifying between the Earth’s surface, this intrusive rock has stood the test of time. Jersey granites have been used as a building material for thousands of years. To build walls, slipways, places of worship, schools, houses and traditional farm buildings like the one pictured at Manor Farm, St Ouen. Look out for granite features when you are out and about.
GRAVYI
You can find gravel, gravyi in Jèrriais, in lots of places: gardens, driveways, indoor plant pots or stuck in your shoes! At sea, our ancestors even named the gravel banks, like ‘Les Graviers du Petit Port’.
BATÉ
As an Island surrounded by the sea, Jersey has a deep connection to maritime heritage. A boat, or baté in Jèrriais, was an essential possession for lots of our ancestors in order to make a living – catching fish to feed their families and navigating Jersey’s offshore reefs.
MONTÉE
This slipway, or montée in Jèrriais, at L’Étacq in the west of the Island was built in the 1860s. Most of the protective seawalls in Jersey were not built until the early 19th century – initially in St Ouen to prevent the ongoing loss of farmland. Slipways were constructed in each parish, designed mainly to allow access to the shore to gather vraic (seaweed) or to launch a small boat. The cobbles, or setts, used to build slipways were traditionally laid at a raked angle to prevent cartwheels and horses hooves from slipping. Today, the Island’s slipways give Jersey’s seaside a unique character and offer the perfect platform for a quick dip.
CORPS DÉ GARDE
As an Island, Jersey has a complex military history. Guardhouses, or corps dé garde in Jèrriais, were used by the local militia to keep a watchful eye over Jersey’s coastal waters and look out for smugglers, pirates or possible invaders. Defence posts like the corps dé garde located above Bouley Bay were built during the 18th century and can be found all over the Island.
L’ÊTACQ’SÉ
Head to the northern end of St Ouen’s Bay and you’ll find the Island’s oldest bedrock beneath your feet at L’Étacq, or L’Êtacq’sé in Jèrriais. This place name, like others in Jersey, is Old Norse for stack or large rock. It’s likely that Viking raiders did what we all tend to do – chose a fitting name for a new place according to a distinctive feature. For L’Étacq this is the stack which also has it’s own name Le Grand Étacquerel.
ISLAND SOUNDS
L’ÎLE FAIT LA VIE
As an Island shaped by time and tide, Jersey has a unique playlist. The music playing here is made up of sounds recorded around the Island. Listen. Êcoutez. What can you hear? Can you pick out all the different sounds?
Soundscape by Sam Hills.
WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO?
Sea waves and weather ambience from multiple locations, including: Green Island, Bouley Bay and Anne Port.
Harbour ambience from Gorey Harbour
Cave ambience from La Corbière
Farm ambience from Oakwood Farm (St Mary) and Les Cotiles Farm (Trinity)*
Farm animal noises from Oakwood Farm (St Mary) and Les Cotiles Farm (Trinity)*
Chruch bells from St Nicholas Chruch (St Clement)
Birds at Val de la Mare Reservoir
Molluscs at Green Island at low-tide
Seagulls at Green Island
Waterfall from Bouley Bay and Plemont
Fishing boat noises in St Helier Marina **
Jèrriais pâle entouor la fèrméthie en Jèrri – talks in Jèrriais about farming in Jersey ***
Sweeping at Les Cotils Farm (Trinty)****
Waxing a surfboard in St Clement
Fire crackling in St Clement
Clock chiming in St Clement
Footsteps in St Clement
Traffic in St Clement
* Sound by Time Le Gresley and Mick Binet
** Sound by Josh Dearing The Jersey Catch
** Sound by Winston Le Brun
**** Sound by Mick Bine
ISLAND LIFE UNDERWATER
LA VIE D’L’ÎLE SOUOS L’IEAU
Many Islanders have seen dolphins or seals around Jersey but what else lives beneath the surface? In Jersey, our seascape has lots of different types of seaweed that provide homes for some amazing creatures. The seagrass, kelp forests and maerl beds around the Island also all absorb blue carbon which help mitigate global climate change. Check out what happened when a few of these creatures got captured on camera by Samantha Blampied using some tasty bait just above the seabed. Watch Èrgardez this fantastic footage of cuttlefish, catsharks, stingrays and tope.
The Blue Marine Foundation (BLUE) is working to learn more about the Island’s seascape. Learn more about their Jersey project and other work on their website.
HISTORY OF GEOTOURISM
L’HISTOUAITHE DU GÉOTOURISME
Watch this video to see how people explored our Island in the past and how you can explore Jersey today. The video runs for 6 minutes 25 seconds. Film by Submarine Creative.
ACTIVITIES
There are lots of ways you can explore the Aspiring Jersey Island Geopark, here are just some ideas to get you out and about.
WALKING
You will find an extensive network of footpaths as well as winding country lanes, breathtaking cliff paths and beautiful beaches to explore and all within easy reach.
Walks can vary in length from short leisurely strolls to more challenging hikes along the cliff paths. Follow the links below to find a walk best suited to your level of ability. Some paths may be suitable for wheelchair users.
Walking is a great way to explore the outdoors allowing us to wander through Jersey’s spectacular landscapes, enjoying this Aspiring Geopark’s natural and built heritage. More information on walking in the Aspiring Geopark can be found by clicking on the links below:
Jersey Walk Adventures – Discover Jersey’s very own wilderness on foot with expert local guides who have explored this wonderful coast for many years. Revel in the stillness and expanse of an area that is covered twice a day by some of the highest tides in the world. Here marine life must survive the extremes of being submerged under water or marooned high and dry.
Jersey’s Countryside Map – From Jersey’s footpaths to individual ecological and geological sites of special interest (SSI) to our network of green lanes, Jersey’s countryside map invites you to discover the Island’s diverse natural landscapes.
Move More Health Walks – Enjoy short, easy and free walks run by Move More Jersey designed to improve mental and physical wellbeing and provide the opportunity for support and encouragement to walk. This is especially useful for those with lower physical ability or long-term health conditions.
Jersey Heritage – Explore the Island’s history and stories with a range of self-guided walking routes and audio tours.
National Trust for Jersey – The Trust maintain many local footpaths through a variety of the Island’s natural habitats such as coastline, valleys, woodland and heathland for the public to enjoy. Try one of their self-guided walks.
CYCLING
See the Aspiring Geopark on two wheels. Cover more miles by exploring the Island via Jersey’s cycle routes and green lanes. Enjoy taking in the sites from the slow lane or challenge yourself with an uphill climb, there are routes for all abilities.
For information and ideas on cycling in the Aspiring Geopark visit the following websites:
– EVie bikes – Sustainable transport, put some power behind your pedalling and hire an electric bike to cover more kilometres.
– Visit Jersey – Be inspired by Visit Jersey’s cycle routes and top tips for cycling around the Island.
STRETCHING
Find your flow in nature and return to your breath. Let your troubles float away as you reconnect with your body through gentle movement and perhaps testing your balance. More information on opportunities to stretch in the Aspiring Geopark can be found by visiting the link below:
Bunker Yoga – Celebrate the natural world and all of its cycles of life. Delia at Bunker Yoga aims to reemphasise the importance of this to others through the practice of yoga at locations that bridge the gap between indoor and out.
Explore the parts of the Aspiring Geopark that lie offshore. You could take in the scenery at your own pace on a guided kayak, test your balance on a paddle board or visit a deserted sandbank by getting a lift to the furthest corners of the Aspiring Geopark. Learn about how to explore the Island’s seascapes safely by looking at these activity providers:
Escape to another word and experience what Island life is like underwater. Dive into exploring Jersey’s surrounding waters by visiting:
Bouley Bay Dive Centre – Situated in Bouley Bay is Jersey’s longest established dive centre offering a full range of dive courses, equipment sales, rentals and servicing.
SURFING
Head over to the west coast of the Aspiring Jersey Island Geopark to watch the waves at St Ouen’s Bay. Well known across the Island as a surfer’s paradise take in this idyllic Bay from the sea waiting to catch your next wave. More information about surfing in the Aspiring Geopark can be found by clicking on the links below:
The Surfyard– Surf school and shop located right in the middle of one of the finest bays in Northern Europe, and at the heart of Jersey’s surf culture.
CLIMBING
Take yourself to new heights and challenge yourself. With one of the largest tidal ranges in the world, Jersey offers the perfect natural playground to practice climbing and coasteering. Discover a whole new landscape uncovered as the tide rises and falls every 12 hours. More information on climbing and coasteering opportunities can be found at:
Task: Re-cap on camera handling through a series of photo-games around ACTION, PLAY & CHANCE in preparation for school trip to St Ouen next week exploring geological sites of special interest (SSI).
Photodice (10 mins)
Photographic boxing match (10mins)
Ball games involving photography (10mins)
Metacognition: Consider how to acquire knowledge with a focus on ‘learning by doing’, encouraging a sense of experimentation without fear of failure.
Theory: Watch video on John Baldessari and consider his practice as a conceptual artist using photography to explore Action, Play and Chance.
Here is a link to a blog post with more about Baldessari amd other photogames:
Homework: Using camera settings from the Photodice game produce a shoot where you make 100 images based around the themes of ACTION, PLAY or CHANCE.
Blog: Produce a blog post with your best 6 images and evaluate your responses in context of John Baldessari and Conceptual Art. See Blog post here (upload on Blog 20.06.22)
