Creating documentation of my feeling of nostalgia through childhood memories.
A paragraph
Creating a documentation of what I find nostalgic through exploring my heritage and nationality. I am taking photographs of family and landscapes in both Jersey and Madeira. This is to recreate childhood memories and portray my family story in the form of a photobook.
Design
How you want your book to look and feel: I want my photobook to have a storyline. I want it to look like a documentation of my family, and I want the divide between my life in Jersey and my life in Madeira to be clear. I photographed the natural pools of Porto Muniz, which I want to include as a double-page spread in my book. This will be used as a metaphor for travelling across from Jersey to Madeira, creating this divide and separating the images.
Paper and ink: Hardcover book with premium paper and lustre finish
Format, size and orientation: Standard portrait format (20cm x 25cm)
Title: I wanted to choose a Portuguese word for my title, as my book is mostly consisting of photographs I’ve taken in Madeira of my family and family home. I’ve chosen the word Saudades as it refers to a feeling of melancholic longing. I thought this fit with the nostalgia theme as ‘nostalgia’ also refers to a longing, but of the past. This is to communicate how I miss my family in Madeira as well as the island itself.
“To collect photographs is to collect the world” Susan Sontag (1971), On Photography
I am going to explore childhood through ‘nostalgia‘, I’m doing this because I used to look at my parents photo album a lot during my childhood and loved seeing the connection between my parents and how close they were with their friends and family. I would also wonder if my life would be the same as theirs if I was their age. The feeling of ‘nostalgia’ can be interpreted in many different ways. The definition behind nostalgia is a positive, wistful, or longing sentiment that one experiences when they are reminded of something from the past. The artists that I will be analysing are Yoshikatsu Fujji and Sam Harris, the reason for this is because Yoshikatsu’s book ‘ Red strings’ includes the photos of his parents when they were still together during the time Fujji was a baby. The other artist I will be analysing is Sam Harris as in his book ‘The middle of somewhere’ he uses snapshots to capture the moments with his kids before they leave their home and start to travel, the aesthetics and snapshot that Sam Harris presents in his book is the theme and technique I will be aiming to protrude in my photo book.
Yoshikatsu Fujii expresses the notion of family and relationships in their work through their images and how they presented them in the book. Yoshikatsu Fujii’s book ‘Red Strings’ refers to the divorce of his parents, he presents the book by splitting the book into two sections one for his father and the other for his mother showing two sides to his life. The book is stitched together by red strings, the Japanese theory that when someone’s born there is a red thread that is tied to them, an invisible red thread that connects two people that are destined to meet and be connected in their lives regardless of place, time, or circumstances. This red string may stretch or tangle, but never break; however for Yoshikatsu Fujii’s parents they weren’t connected by red thread or it came undone/ broke. Around 1870 the Japanese photographers travelled to Europe and the United States to learn about the new medium which then led to photography spreading quickly in Japan. The early years of photography in Japan was the desire for Japanese photographers to copy the west’s style, this was until the Japanese photographers gradually developed their experience and began to create their own style. Japanese photographer are still managing to evolve their style and techniques by exploring new themes and aesthetics. The themes found throughout the Japanese culture show the identity of the individual based on their place of birth and social group, family plays a big role in the role of the Japanese culture as they value not only their current family but generations of their ancestors.
Yoshikatsu- Red Strings
This image I chose from Fujii’s book ‘Red Strings’ contains three people, two children and their mother. The black and white photo was taken at the beach during the day, even though the photo is in black and white you can still tell that it was taken during the day this is because you can see the light in the sky and if the photo was taken at night you wouldn’t be able to see anything unless there was a flash being used. I feel like the image being in black and white shows more depth and emotion than the image being in colour. In the image it appears as the mother is trying to show the children something by pointing to the corner which makes us curious as to what they are looking at.
The book ‘Red Strings’ was motivated by the divorce between his parents but also the love that they used to have while Fujii was growing up. The book shows how Fujii dealt with the separation of his parents and presents the strong emotions by using archived photos with letters from his parents. The cover of the book has his parent’s wedding picture stitched into the book with a red string that represents the string that used to tie his parents together, however their heads aren’t included in the photo which could indicate the divorce of his parents and how they aren’t married anymore or live the same life as before.
SAM HARRIS
Sam Harris uses snapshot aesthetic to capture the raw moments in his life with his wife and two daughters. Sam Harris’ book ‘The middle of somewhere’ shows the past memories of his daughters before they leave their home and life behind to start travelling to Australia and India. Throughout the book he mainly takes his images outside which means that his images would contain natural light from the sun, there are also some imagery of still life photos of objects like shoes, animals, letters etc and some close up shots. Sam Harris’ book is like an ongoing visual family diary as you are looking through their memories by the images and the notes they have written you can get a sense of warmth from the connection and love between his family and him. His work was to celebrate childhood, family, love and their surroundings at the time.
I decreased the exposure and highlights in this image as it was originally very overexposed and the highlights were bright. I also noticed that the blue tones in the image were very overpowering, the blue trousers and sky in the corner were strongly saturated and did not match the rest of my images so I tempered with that.
These three images are very similar, I edited them all but I am going to compare them to find the final image I want to use. I would put them next to each other in my photobook, however they are a bit too similar, if they had slightly obvious differences I’d pair them up. I also like how there is an obvious foreground and background. This is exaggerated by the luminance of the sky in the background but it also correlates with the blue trousers and brings the image together.
This is one of my favourite Images from this shoot. I feel it is one of the strongest as well. I started with straightening the horizon. I then decreased all the shadows and dark tones and increased the grain in the image
These two images I compared as they are also very similar but I feel they will look good next to each other, they display the theme of girlhood in my work well.
A sentence – An exploration into my childhood memories, as well as a look into my linage.
A paragraph – My story will begin with a showcase of old photographs which depict my family in black and while. To then link the story back to my memories I will add some blank photoshoots or blank areas to show my lack of memory of this time.
Design: Consider the following
How you want your book to look and feel – I plan for my photobook to look like a mix of memories, gradually having more photos over time to symbolize that we are able to recall more memories the more recent they are.
Paper and ink – I would like to use a semi glossy paper to help the images stand out as well as having my photos be in colour.
Binding and cover – The cover of my book will be a hardcover, showing a collage of old images that I found in my families archives
Title – The title of my book will be ‘Through the eyes of a child’
Images and text – The text in my book will be ‘courier std’ at the size 13.4, the cover text however will be ‘eras bold itc’ as the bolder font helps the title to stand out against the more crowded background. I also added a pink tint to the title as it helps to preview the pink theme throughout the book
Cover editing
I edited the covers using publisher, turning my archive images into black and white before rearranging them in a collage. I plan on putting image one on the cover of the image since it depicts my parents and more recent photos while putting image two on the back cover due to it mainly being of my grandparents.
Selecting – I flagged all the images I wanted to choose to edit using ‘X’ and ‘P’
These are the photos I am going to edit from shoot 2:
Basic Editing
I used the preset ‘Flat and Green’ for these images because it means I can start with a basic edit. Each image will have the same colour and hues to start with, keeping a consistency throughout my images. I don’t want any to look as if they have been edited drastically different to each other. Kawauchi’s snow images are very white and exposed, I attempted to do this but less intense because I want to keep my editing style included.
I rated the images from this shoot with red, yellow and green so I can choose which images are the best.
Red Images (unedited or images I won’t use)
Yellow Images (ones that I might use but I don’t think are the best)
Green Images (photos that I will use in my photobook)
Moodboard of my final basic edited images
Further Editing in Photoshop
I want to do further editing on some of these images, adding light orbs and sun beams because when I took this shoot the lighting was not the best.
I experimented with ‘Filters > Render > Lens Flare…’ to add a light orb.
For this edit I duplicated the layer, added the light in a place where orbs were ‘created ‘reflected’ at another point on the image. I then used the Polygon Lasso Tool to select half the image. I then created a layer via copy. I hid the duplicated layer, and blended the seam with a low opacity eraser. This leaves some small orbs in the corner, subtly adding to the nostalgic sense.
Editing process of a handful of photos in my Fort regent photos collection for my upcoming photobook.
Fort Regent, what was once an iconic leisure centre, full of excitement and fun, is now a mere fossil of the past. While it remains open, Fort Regent hasn’t received much attention for the past few years, the hallways and corridors which used to have echoes of children laughing and cheering are now silent. The jungle gym which used to be full of children, empty. And all the cafe’s and restaurants, closed. Fort Regent, since it peaked many years ago, has only declined and will likely never reach the point it used to be at ever again. I wanted to go up and take some photos to revisit some old memories and to show the aging of the fort.
The sign above is my best example, the moss on it has been collecting for decades and started to cover some of the words too, I adjusted the colours a little to exaggerate this. In addition I made sure the trees behind it were visible too, to give off a more dead look. Of course I changed the lighting levels to bring the sign out more and darken everywhere else as it is the main subject.
I wanted to darken this image to bring the coloured light out more, this light would constantly change colour and I always used to like it, so I wanted this photo to show that.
This is a collection of posters, about shows and events that would take place at the fort, since not many things have happened lately a lot of these posters are very old. I wanted to darken this image and make it look like a torch is being shined on the posters, to almost make it look as if the viewer is looking into an old dusty cupboard full of old pictures.
I wanted to make the lights in the hallway brighter and more vibrant, to reflect that of how I remember them when I was younger. I also remember the very dark ceiling and a bunch of random tools and gear left out in the hallways.
I made sure to zoom in on the party room, and to make the entrance slightly darker. This was in attempt to convey the idea that the room has not been lit for a very long time because the party rooms are, as far as I know, not used very much these days.
This is my Virtual gallery for my nostalgia mock. I did this by uploading my images onto the website art steps and then positioning them around the gallery.
