Task

EVALUATION: Upon completion of photobook/ film and presentation of prints make sure you evaluate and reflect on your learning and final outcomes. Comment on the following:

• Did you realise your intentions?
• What references did you make to artists references? 
  comment on technical, visual, contextual, conceptual?
• How successful was your final outcomes (book, film, prints etc)?

Evaluation

Throughout this project I have stuck with my main theme of my childhood memories. However, I have adapted what I wanted to do with my theme. To begin with, I didn’t want to include photographs of people but that changed after I looked through my families archives. I ultimately used a collage of old photographs in order to showcase how we each have our own memories, as well as creating a link to my essay on how photography and memories go hand in hand. To showcase the time of these memories, I made the collage on the back of the book focused on images of my grandparents and their lives while the collage on the front cover focuses on my parents lives. Moving on to the inside of the book, I changed my idea of slowly adding in more images since it ended up looking rather out of place, however I compromised on this idea by keeping blank areas throughout the book to symbolise how we only seem to remember key things or events from our past. Lastly, I changed how my images were edited. I had originally planned to have a mix of photos in black and white as well as colour, yet the contrast wasn’t effective and causing the images to lack consistency. Therefore, I ended up linking my images through the saturation which also connects to the idea of childhood memories as we tended to see the world in a brighter perspective.

Regarding my artists reference, Sternfeld, I feel as though I could of linked more to him yet I still feel as though the connection between each of our works are visible. Firstly, the theme of memory helps to present the similarities between the two even if we are focusing on different aspects of it. I also made some landscape images in his style, editing some to have lower exposure the same way he does. In order to improve my relation to his work I could add writing to my work about the images shown, it would also help to connect better to him if I focused more on landscapes overall.

Overall, I would count my project as a success. While there are ways to improve my work such as having more of a variety of images, like more archival photos, I would say that the presentation and final images chosen link and present exactly what I wanted my project to be about.

Contact sheet:

CHOSEN IMAGES FROM THIS SHOOT:

Image Analysis

This image originally had many dark shadows in it so I increased the shadows and blacks to make the image a bit brighter.

I like this image as the wall divides the image into a foreground and background and the subjects in the image are very central. I also increased the texture as the wall was quite blurred and I wanted it to be more defined.

With this image, I decided to decrease the highlights and increase shadows, texture and clarity. I did this because I wanted the hair and the background of the sea to be defined and detailed.

I compared these images as they are very similar but just slightly different. I like the above image as her hair is naturally moving in the wind and it also appears lighter which adds some contrast to the image. However after editing both images and comparing them, I’ve decided I’m going to choose the bottom image as it is subtle, there is too much going on with the above image. Also I think I may use this at the end of my book as the image is of a girl looking out to the sea, this suggests she is thinking of her next location to go, or just thinking about things. It brings all my images together and indicates the end of my photobook.

How have Julia Margaret Cameron and Justine Kurland explored what it means to be feminine in their work. 

Femininity is represented in several different ways – what it means to be feminine reflecting on how it’s changed from the past to the modern day. People have different perspectives and ideas on what femininity is and it can be represented and shown through photography, this can be seen very apparent now as there are increasingly different ideas on gender and how it is embraced. In my essay I will be exploring the way both artists Julia Margaret Cameron and Justine Kurland represent femininity through their work whilst also using Claire Marie Healy’s book girlhood as my main reference when exploring the ideas of femininity and specifically how images can depict deeper meanings. I’ve chosen these two artists as Cameron was the first artist to use the new medium of photography to explore femininity in the 19^th century. She upheld some aspects of the traditional Victorian woman, such as the ideal of motherhood, in most ways her photographic characters transcended Victorian gender views by defying convention and asserting their independence. Justine Kurland juxtaposes this as her work is seen as more contemporary and more relatable when referring to femininity. Kurland’s book Girl Pictures, involves photographs which were taken 20 years ago, and depict unruly teenagers in the equally wild landscapes of America. It is interesting how both Kurland and Cameron’s photography are almost binary opposite styles however were delving into the same theme and ideas, that is why I’ve chosen to study and compare their work. I think it’s important to explore how ideologies have changed around this topic and most importantly how a camera can capture and document a story around a topic. I will be responding to this research by making my own images using the same narrative/ theme, femininity, exploring what girls my age and specifically in Jersey, a small, limited island, has to offer for young people.  

Julia Margaret Camerons work links heavily with pictorialism, from the 1880s and onwards photographers strived for photography to be art by trying to make pictures that resembled as paintings. There are several different photographic techniques that can be used by pictorialist to make their images appear to be art such as manipulating images in a dark room, scratching and marking their prints to imitate the texture of the canvas, using soft focus, blurred and fuzzy imagery based of allegorical and spiritual subject matter, including religious scenes. Cameron was highly influenced by pictorialism however around her time, before 1850 photography was practiced by a few amateurs and portraitists. It was a time of great experimentation. As Grace Seiberling reports during the 1850s the comments of critics on photography exhibitions illustrate that there were few fixed standards for a photograph’s appearance. By the 1860s, however, when Cameron started her work, photography had changed dramatically. Thousands of professionals and amateurs had taken up the form. With the rise of commercial photography amateurs were pitted against professionals, photographs had to be clean, complete and precisely detailed. Although others had put forward the notion that impressionism might be artistic, this was a minority view. Portrait photographers used all the light they could get – resulting in rather flat-looking images, the subject matter of photographs for ‘professionals’ featured portraits, narrative and genre scenes. Photographs had become commodities for the masses rather than a novelty or an art form. Following on this inrush of professionals and their societies, journals, manuals, manifestos and criticism a group of amateurs started to create new kinds of portraits. Cameron may be said to be in this group along with Lewis Caroll and Clemintina Lady Hawarden. These three worked against now established conventions by experimenting with light, groupings, posing, negatives and printing. Soft – focus photography in the early phase of Camerons ten-year career was not only a creative experiment, but a political and even religious gesture. Cameron wished on the one hand to restore a line back to painters and early photographers and on the other hand to tie photography to eternal laws of nature and art, as she understood them. Referencing to Lewis Carroll (author of Alice and wonderland)  in the book girlhood by Claire Marie Healy she makes a reference to an image by Peter Blake, 1970, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and describes: ‘if girlhood is often thought of as a hole we drop into and scabble out of by our nails – hoping that we might emerge into adulthood unscathed from all its events – then what happens if we drop into that hole, following one of its most recognisable products as we go? Not through, but perhaps down…’ she states ‘I prefer to see Blake’s Alice as a girl who, like one dropped into the hole of adolescence, troubles easy definitions’ linking this to what it means to be feminine; images can create deeper suggestions about ideologies in this case girlhood.  

Peter Blake, Just at this moment, somehow or other, they began to run 1970, screenprint on this paper,24.3 x 18, Tate 

Justine Kurland’s work links more to a contemporary and theoretical style of photography. Kurland created a famous book called ‘Girl Pictures’ which involves images she took between 1997 and 2002, later creating and publishing the book in 2020. All the images show young girls that Kurland has found whilst on a road trip throughout West America in bucolic /natural environments. She used the style of Tableaux photography to ensure her images had a story behind them, the girls are almost always doing something as a group in the photos. I think an important reason as to why the book Girl Pictures is so put together and flows well is that Kurland did not plan to do this project, she was on a road trip, found teenage girls and asked if they would be in the pictures, continued to travel through America, and then left the images for about 20 years and came back to them during lockdown and created this ‘narrative’ around femininity and girlhood. The project can also be seen as very nostalgic for Kurland as she used to travel and practically live in her van, however not anymore, “Somehow, it’s detached from where you actually are, because the work itself took on a kind of form once I started working on these road trips. I had to sell the van to stop doing that because driving is so fun, and I regret selling it every day.” – Kurland states in an interview with Vanity Fair. In an essay that accompanies Aperture’s new bound collection of the work, she calls that van, which she drove around in at the time of Girl Pictures, an ‘invisible collaborator’. “I could find girls wherever I stopped, but they went home after we made photographs, while I kept driving,” she wrote. “My road trips underscored the pictures I staged—the adventure of driving west a performance in itself.” Not only can the project be nostalgic for Kurland, but also the girls who participated. Rebecca Schiffman, one of the girls who is now grown up, performed a song dedicated to the memory of another girl Kurland photographed, Lily Wheelright who died in 2007 at the age of 24. This project has so many deeper connections and it emphasises the theme of femininity and how emotionally connected girls can be with one and other, the book brings together a sense of community and love. Justine Kurland states: ‘I staged photographs of teenage girls as surrogates for myself in a fantasy of a coming world, one where solidarity between girls offered intimacy and protection, where girls were made stronger through the presence of other girls focused on teenagers because of their perpetual state of becoming – a latency that resounds with the freedoms and simple joys of childhood. I wanted to foreground girls’ lives, centring them by creating an all-female society. I employed the trope of the teenage runaway as a shortcut to freeing them from the cage of their suburban bedrooms and bringing them into a world of their own making, so we could get to the more difficult work of determining how we might be together.’ Kurland’s images give a narrative that the girls were running away which almost backs the stereotype teenage girls usually have which is being rebellious, however, the way femininity is displayed is not too radical, its simply just girls being free as the landscape offered its own drama. The girls built forts, made campfires, trespassed in abandoned buildings, explored highway underpasses and found swimming holes nestled between shady trees and pillowy patches of moss. The girls performed scenes of caretaking that became actual caretaking: feeding each other, brushing each other’s hair, walking arm in arm. Justine intended for them to playact a state of communal bliss.   

It is very apparent that both artists have explored what it means to be feminine with different approaches, different values and beliefs at the time due to the different waves of feminism. It’s important to explore where photographing what it means to be feminine originated from, Julia Margaret Cameron. Compared to now, how much ideas surrounding femininity have altered and the different ways it can be expressed. Cameron’s soft – focus pictorialist portraits of women in their long drapery clothing, just existing within the image, however the soft feminine features still being picked up… her large-scale close-up portraits were seen as a rejection towards conventional photography in favour of a less precise but more emotionally compelling kind of portraiture. Kurland’s images offer more to observe and analyse, she was able to tell a story throughout her photobook, what it means to be feminine is to be free, loving, caring and not so held down by the stress when transitioning from a teenager to an adult. The girls weren’t doing anything other than surviving as a group yet also as an individual in natural environments, this implies that that is what girls should be doing in an ideal world and where they are able to thrive the most. All of this linking to my response which is creating a photobook which illustrates what girls in my friend group do to ‘escape’ the stress which is usually overlooked by people close to us, the pressure that is suddenly put on us as we transition from teenagers into adults, and most importantly how limited young people are living on an island with nothing except each other and seasonally pretty beaches and lanes. Unlike Kurland’s narrative of running away young people in jersey can’t really run away unless they are privileged or aspire else were, the pressure of having to always be realistic when as a girl you can’t help but be deeply emotional about situations when all you wish to do is be free. ‘Teenage girls take in how things look: the way girls today might describe objects as simply ‘aesthetic’ or, in the words of something I saw on TikTok, their need to romanticise absolutely everything’ – Claire Marie Healy, girlhood. Using Jersey to the only advantage it has, I photographed me and my friends in natural environments just existing within the dramatic, gloomy dark landscapes.  

Here was my final layout:

This layout includes a variation of double page spreads, full pages, and bordered images. I think this works effectively as an entire piece because it is minimal but also interesting. I chose to put the sunset and walking away image as the final spread because I think these work well as closing images for the piece. I think the use of colour and texture has been well observed and incorporated. If I could change something about this, I would possibly have tried to create a larger range of imagery, as I feel as thought sometimes it becomes a little repetitive. However, I think I have managed to balance it well.

My final title was ‘just one more wave…’ because it is exactly what my dad says if asked how much longer he will be in the water.

You can view my final book here.

when choosing my final photographs I had to go through all my photos that I had taken through out all the night time photoshoot that I have been on there about 1000 photos that I had taken and I found about 100 that I thought would be okay for my photo book then I edited them and took away the ones that I didn’t like and I was left with 36 photo that I will be using in my photo I know the photos I picked are good and I think I really captured the night photography feel I enjoyed editing and making these photographs.

all these photographs are my favourite photo out of all my photo that I have edited for my photobook I will be printing these ones out and displaying them

Images selected to be in my photobook

I decided to name my book ‘Soul Sisters’ as it automatically tells the reader what the book is about and gives a background and meaning to the images. I chose the front cover to be my sister running down the sand dune because it is almost like she is running down the page which corresponds with the final image in the book where it is like she is running off the page to demonstrate that it is the end of the book.

I used a variety of layouts within my book to ensure the book had some character to it. I decided to have a double page spread for every other page as I wanted the book to flow and have some sort of consistency. I also, experimented with placing different images next to each other, creating juxtapositions.

I decided not to include my essay within my book as I didn’t think it fit the theme of the images well enough.

For the back cover, I chose a black and white image of an old rope swing because it links to the idea that it is a memory from mine and my sisters childhood. The rope swing on it’s own demonstrates how we have left these times behind us but the rope is still there which is most likely used by other children making memories like me and my sister did.

Overall, I am pleased with the outcome of my book as I think it displays the theme of nostalgia, femininity and childhood which links back to the work of Justine Kurland. My work linked back to Kurland’s work in a way as it explored the themes of childhood and feminist in what could be argued as rural landscapes. In my opinion, the images within the book clearly demonstrates my childhood memories that I have created with my sister, telling the reader a story. When taking the images and going back to the places that were once second homes to me and my sister, I felt a sense of nostalgia as everything was almost the same as when we used to go there. One thing that I would have changed would have been getting more portraits during the football pitch shoots. I also would include more childhood friends in the shoots which would show a real comparison to Kurland’s work.

Here is a link to my photobook: The Girls

Final Selected Images

By having my final images selected it makes it easy for me to place and move the images around the book. I choose to use the standard landscape layout as I have a mixture of landscape and portrait images. By having it landscape I can create a two page spread, as some of my best images are landscape meaning that I can display them bigger than some of my other images. I have also chosen to not have the same layout all the way through, this helps to create an ecliptic look with no uniform as some pages have a full bleed whereas others have a boarder around them. The way in which I have chosen to order the images almost as if it is telling a story, trying to match similar images and colours on the page. The way images are laid out helps to create different kinds of moods and feeling throughout the book. The image I have chosen for my front cover allows for me to have space for a title and my name.