A photo zine is a self-made, printed issue built of photos and captions. The term comes from the word “magazine”, as zines follow the style of magazines with headings, text, and illustrations put on a grid. An important feature of a photo zine is visual storytelling.
Inspiration
The inspiration I incorporated for my zine was taken from the photo above. I liked how the images looked with the boarder around them and replicated this in my own zine. I was also keen on the way they arranged their images, having their strongest image as the biggest and their most eye catching image as a smaller one since this distributes the viewers gaze.
In my zine, I would like to include these elements as well as adding my own personal touches such as increasing and decreasing the image sizes while rearranging them to get the best outcome.
A sentence – creating my experience of St. Malo in the form of a zine.
A paragraph – My zine will be focusing on the people of St. Malo as they go about their everyday lives. I’m focusing my zine on this as I believe it is important to stop and look around at other people as well as the world around us. We often get so caught up in our own lives, jobs and problems that we fail to recognize that each person we come across, not matter how brief it is, will have unique and interesting life experiences that differ to our own. Somethings we may come across we are able to relate to, such as walking a dog, while other things will inspire us to try something new, such as pier jumping. Either way, noticing how other people act and live out their own lives often helps us to reflect on our own experiences.
NARRATIVE:How will you tell your story?
I will tell my experience of St. Malo through the use of photographs. They will be focusing on the people I come across that stuck out to me.
I will make my photos in a mix of black and white or colour, depending on which helps the photos features to stand out more. I will also lay out my zine in a way that makes my best images stand out the most to make it more eye catching for the viewer.
For the St. Malo trip, we will be travelling from Jersey on the 14th of June at 7am and returning at 6pm. After arriving at the harbour in France, we will be walking to St. Malo then break off into groups and walk around the streets of St. Malo taking photos along the way.
Our main goal is to take some photos in the style of street photography, or in other words taking of people in the streets usually without their knowledge.
Select two images that have manipulated truth, one historical using camera technology, one contemporary using AI technology as examples to use in your essay
Research history, theory and context of both images thoroughly and make notes.
Read several sources (both online and on paper) to acquire sufficient knowledge and understanding
Provide a critical perspective by referencing different points of view from sources.
Select at least 2 quotes per image from sources you have read that is relevant to your essay question.
Use Harvard System of Referencing and provide a bibliography
Use key terminology specific to art and photography from the matrix/ sheet below.
plan
Hypothesis:Photography and Truth: Can a photograph lie?
Opening quote: to set the scene choose an appropriate quote from key texts or source that you have read and understood. Or select something Will Lakeman said in class discussion around ethics using AI in photography.
Introduction (250 words): Describe how photography from its invention as a new technology in 1839 was viewed as a threat to traditional artforms such as painting and drawing. Provide an overview of why photography (like all other art forms) is an illusion and a representation of reality (reflect on your essay earlier on the Origin of Photography). Explain what AI is as a new technology, and how it is already part of lives, give examples (Google, speech recognition, generative AI etc). Discuss both human and societal benefits and potential dangers of AI, again use examples such as Geoffrey Linton resigning from Google to bring awareness, or Sam Altman’s (CEO of OpenAI) being questioned by USA congress. Select one quote by either Linton or Altman and comment (either for or against). Introduce the two images that you have chosen as examples of the above.
Paragraph 1 (250-500 words): Describe how photography in the past (before the digital age) could be manipulated, both in-camera and in the darkroom (eg. reflect on Pictorialism’s use of chemicals and scratching surfaces in distorting images and earlier masking/ collaging technique sin the darkroom.) Provide an example of an image (see case studies below) from history of photography where the truth was distorted. Describe circumstances, context, different points of view and new discoveries or theories around the origin or meaning of your chosen image. Use either direct quote, paraphrasing or summary from sources and comment (for or against). Make sure you provide your own interpretation of the image too.
Paragraph 2 (250 -500 words): Describe how photography now since the digital age has been altering the truth from faking images in-camera to using image manipulation software, such as Photoshop. Provide an example of an image (see case studies below) produced using artificial intelligence that looks ‘real’, but are in fact a digital construct. Provide analysis of how generative AI such as DreamStudio, Midjourney or DALL E 2 has increased our ability to create new images that has no relationship with either photography or the truth. Use same formula as above and use either direct quote, paraphrasing or summary from sources and comment (for or against). Make sure you provide your own interpretation of the image too.
Conclusion (250 words): Compare and contrast how historical images in the past and digital images made today, using new technology such as AI, have altered reality and distorted truth. Refer back to the essay question and write a conclusion where you summarise in your own words both similarities and differences between your two image examples. Conclude with a statement on how you envisage the future of photography and AI image-making might change our perception of reality, and attitude towards truth.
Bibliography: List all the sources that you have identified in alphabetical order. Apart from listing literature you must also list all other sources e.g. websites/online sources, Youtube/ DVD/TV.
Quotes and referencing: You MUST reference some of the sources that you have used either by incorporating direct quotes, paraphrasing or summarising of an idea, theory or concept, or historical fact.
Essay
Can a photograph lie?
From when photography was invented, around the time of 1839, it was seen as a threat to traditional art forms because it could capture the world with much greater accuracy as well as being quicker than traditional paintings or drawings could. Photography is also viewed as an illusion and or representation of reality due to it creating the impression of depth, texture and motion even though it’s a flat image. We as photographers also have the ability to alter and manipulate said images making them appear different to what the reality of the image would look like. Moving onto more modern implications to photography, artificial intelligence has begun to help us in the aspect of altering our images. A photographer by the name of Will Lakeman also manages to include AI in his projects, he does this by inputting his own photo into an AI altering software and then it manipulates his image based around the prompt he gives it. From the very first type of artificial intelligence being created in 1951, it has developed and changed so much that it has now become a regular feature in our everyday lives, from using Alexa in our homes to simply googling anything. While AI certainly brings around many positives for society, such as being able to have information or communicate with each other at the press of a button, it also brings around a possibility of danger. For example, with AI practically providing free labour, many people will be let out of jobs if AI can replace them since it would be more cost efficient for employers.
Steve McCurry, Taj Mahal and train in Agra, 1983.
In the past, photographs were usually altered using what is known as a dark room. This would be a dimly lit area that would be used to develop images. The photographer would take their photos using silver halide light sensitive film in their cameras and would then process the film and use a machine called the enlarger to project light through the negative onto light sensitive silver halide paper to then make the image into a print. This was a very fine process and had to be done extremely carefully, often taking around 3 to 7 days in total to complete. The image above was taken in 1983 by Steve McCurry, an American photographer. In his picture we are able to see the train and people as the focus point of the image while the Taj Mahal in the background acts as a background. We can also see the lighting of and how sharp the image is on the whole, even the movement and steam being emitted. It is likely that McCurry altered the image someway using a dark room in order to get the picture in focus and more saturated and likely used the method of using a dark room due to the time period the image was taken in. However, the picture itself has some good photographic techniques such as the use of having a focus point. The picture is currently selling for £8,800 and is being featured among his other work regarding ‘social issues’. Currently, there are 44 pieces of work up for sale ranging between £3,000 to £15,000.
Boris Eldagsen. The Electrician, from the series PSEUDOMNESIA, 2022. Credit: Boris Eldagsen/Co-created with DALLE2/Courtesy of Photo Edition Berlin.
Photographs now days can be easily manipulated by multiple different software’s as well as by artificial intelligence, creating a problem for modern news outlooks since we can’t tell what’s true or what’s false. An example of how easily we can mistake fake images for real images would be in the photo shown above. This image was created by Boris Eldagsen using artificial intelligence. He entered the photo into the Sony world photography awards, a popular photography competition, and ended up winning first place. He declined the reward, however, admitting to having used an artificial intelligence software called DALL-E 2. Currently, there are many types of AI software’s which are used to either alter or create images, a few examples being dream studio, midjourney, etc. They work by you writing a descriptive prompt for the AI to follow, with it then searching through its database for any correlating images already there, then creating a new piece based around the images it found. The very fact that the images AI produces can be so realistic brings about more problems than benefits since you would now be able to forge fake images of anyone to ruin their reputation or even depict them doing something illegal. According to Will Lakeman, he said that ‘Artificial intelligence isn’t actually intelligent’, to which I have to agree. Since the software is only taking inspiration from the work of others and following the prompt you have put into it, it’s not thinking or acquiring knowledge which is needed in order for something to be deemed intelligent.
In conclusion, historical images and editing processes in the past have changed drastically compared to modern day versions, specifically from the development of AI software’s and how easily they can distort the truth. Referring back to the question, ‘can a photograph lie?’, it is my firm belief that yes, a photograph can lie. We have seen countless times though social media of certain images distorting the truth, even being done by high-ranking people, for example Stalin who would edit out certain people from photos with him after he was no longer aligned or allied with them. While there are some similarities between the past and present on how we alter our images, such as what we choose to edit (a.k.a lighting, cropping, etc) the main difference in my opinion would be the time it takes to alter said images. Now days, editing a photo is very simple and can be done in a matter of minutes however, historically it would take days on end and was a very careful procedure. In the future, I believe AI will become even more advanced causing the AI we use for photography to advance as well. Currently, there is a device in the works that would be inputted into our brains, supposedly allowing us to do everything we can do on a phone but by simply using our minds. If this were to happen and work, it would most likely affect photography negatively since we would be able to ‘save and replay memories’ in our head, making photography somewhat irrelevant.
Helen Levitt was an American photographer and cinematographer, born on August 31st 1913 and passing away on March 29th, 2009. She was well known for her street photography around New York City even being described as “the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time.”
She began photography when she was eighteen years old and in 1931 she learned how to develop photos in the darkroom when she began working for J. Florian Mitchell, who was a commercial portrait photographer. She also attended many classes and events hosted by the Manhattan Film and Photography League around the time she was exposed to the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Julien Levy Gallery, who she was also able to meet through the league.
Cartier-Bresson’s work became a major influence for her photography as it inspired her to change from her more journalistic and commercial approach to photography to a more personal one.
While teaching art classes to children in 1937 for New York City’s Federal Art Project, Levitt became intrigued with the transitory chalk drawings that were part of the New York children’s street culture of the time. She began to photograph these chalk drawings, as well as the children who made them for her own creative assignment with the Federal Art Project.
In 1959 and 1960, she received two grants from the Guggenheim Foundation for her pioneering work in colour photography and in 1965 she published her first major collection, A Way of Seeing. Levitt lived in New York City and remained active as a photographer for nearly 70 years. However, she expressed lament at the change of New York City scenery:
“I go where there’s a lot of activity. Children used to be outside. Now the streets are empty. People are indoors looking at television or something.”
William Klein
William Klein was an American-born French photographer and filmmaker born on April 19th 1926 and later passing on September 10th 2022. Klein was noted for his ironic approach to both media and his extensive use of unusual photographic techniques in the context of photojournalism and fashion photography. He was ranked 25th on Professional Photographer‘s list of 100 most influential photographers.
Klein trained as a painter, studying under Fernand Léger, and found early success with exhibitions of his work. He soon moved on to photography and achieved widespread fame as a fashion photographer for Vogue and for his photo essays on various cities. He directed feature-length fiction films, numerous short and feature-length documentaries and produced over 250 television commercials.
Despite having no formal training as a photographer, Klein won the Prix Nadar in 1957 for New York, a book of photographs taken during a brief return to his hometown in 1954. Klein’s work was considered revolutionary for its “ambivalent and ironic approach to the world of fashion”, and for his extensive use of wide-angle and telephoto lenses as well as using natural lighting and motion blur. The New York Times’ Katherine Knorr writes that, along with Robert Frank, Klein is considered “among the fathers of street photography, one of those mixed compliments that classifies a man who is hard to classify.”
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French artist and humanist photographer who was considered a master of candid photography. He was born on 22nd August 1908 and would eventually pass away on the 3rd of August 2004. He pioneered the genre of street photography,genre of photography that records everyday life in a public place, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment.
Cartier-Bresson was also one of the founding members of Magnum Photos in 1947, an international photographic cooperative owned by its photographer-members, with offices in New York City, Paris, London and Tokyo.
The decisive moment
In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book ‘Images à la sauvette’, whose English-language edition was titled ‘The Decisive Moment’, even though the exact translation of the French title is ‘images on the sly‘ or ‘hastily taken images’.
The decisive moment included a portfolio of 126 of Cartier-Bresson’s photos from the East and West. The book’s cover was drawn by Henri Matisse, a French visual artist.
For his 4,500 word philosophical preface, Cartier-Bresson said “There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment”. He applied this to his photographic style too, even saying “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression”.
The photo Rue Mouffetard, Paris, taken in 1954, has since become a classic example of Cartier-Bresson’s ability to capture a decisive moment. He held his first exhibition in France at the Pavillon de Marsan in 1955.
Popular quotes from Henri Cartier-Bresson
“Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.”
“Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing a meditation.”
“I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to ‘trap’ life – to preserve life in the act of living. Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.”
“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition in a fraction of a second the significance of an event, as well as the precise organization the forms that give that event its proper expression.”
“A photograph is neither taken or seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.”
“Photography is, for me, a spontaneous impulse coming from an ever attentive eye which captures the moment and its eternity.”
His photos
Henri Cartier Bresson: China 1948-9, 1958, p. 78
Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Harlem (1947). Photograph: Magnum Photos
Wed: ANALYSIS > review the exhibition and write 500 words incorporating knowledge and understanding from talk by Will Lakeman > 1 blogpost
Writing frame: How does the exhibition make you consider the theme of Nostalgia? How has childhood memories inspired the imagery? Describe photographic techniques used, including AI in the image-making process. In what way are AI images a representation of dreams? Choose one image and analyse in more detail, considering form, concept and aesthetics. Make a final value added judgement on the exhibition as a whole, ie. do you like/ dislike it – provide examples for or against. Would you recommend it to others? If so, why? Include illustration such as installation images from the exhibition. Include also at least one quote from Will Lakeman’s talk or associated publicity material and provide a comment.
Essay
Will Lakeman’s ‘playtime’ project is heavily based around the theme of nostalgia that he felt when visiting Fort Regent as a kid, since it use to be his favourite place on the island. Lakeman’s images try to recreate the emotions and visions he had of the fort as a child, attempting to bring the now run down and abandoned areas of the fort back to the bustling, full of life place he loved. He succeeds at this goal through the help of artificial intelligence and adjusting his images on Photoshop until the image coheres with how he remembers.
The playtime exhibition makes me consider the theme of nostalgia, since some of the images Lakeman has created make me feel a sense of nostalgia too from spending a lot of time in fort regent when I was younger. For me, I feel as though I relate more to the images of swimming pools or water the most, again mainly due to me swimming often as a young child. For Lakeman, the images he created were all in some way inspired by how he viewed the fort as a child, even stating that one such image was created as a reminder from a time when he had begun to hallucinate by the swimming pool.
The process Lakeman used to create these images, was to take the photographs in person using his camera and then alter them using ai and prompting the photo to be how he wants it to be. If the images were not going in the way that he wanted, he would edit them in photoshop, enhancing or changing areas before putting it back into the ai. I think that the ai images created feel almost dreamlike, in a sense they’re not realistic but also not too unrealistic. While most images created by ai are colourful and dreamlike as depicted in Lakeman’s project, some ai generated images have the ability to feel almost uncanny in a way.
Overall, I really like the playtime project since I think the whole idea of introducing ai into our own images is really interesting since it means we can create anything we want in the image. I also think that using ai to recreate past emotions and feelings from childhood is a really unique way to use ai and is something that I would like to see more often.
Analysis of image:
This image emits the feeling of being in a galaxy, surrounded by stars with areas of bright colours contrasting against the darkness. I really like this photo, as you can see the resemblance to its real-life counterpart through the lighthouse. The picture also looks more like a painting than a photograph due to the ai altering it, however I still really like everything about it, and I think the painting look just adds texture. I also really like how many details are in the photo, from what looks to be satellites in the top right corner of the image, linking back to the space theme, to the implications of waves at the bottom of the picture using brush strokes.
Over all, I am very proud of how my final images turned out. I think giving the pictures boarders was the right call as it makes the final pictures look more appealing. I also like that I created a variety of images, some with colour and others without since it helped me learn some new techniques during the editing process of the images. In my opinion, however, my strongest pieces came from the lighting project. This is mainly due to the fact that they are, to me, the most visually appealing since they focus solely on the model without any distractions in the background of them.
Did you realise your intentions?
For me, I had a basic idea of where I wanted the project to head but my ideas weren’t set in stone and sometimes changed throughout the project. An example of this was when I changed my idea about the border on my photos, originally planning to not add them at all but later deciding that border would frame the image making it more visually appealing. What I did know was what, who and where I wanted to take my images throughout the projects which didn’t change.
What references did you make to artists references?
I did try to focus my image on multiple artists such as Shannon O’Donnell, Cindy Sherman, etc, but my images were always following the basic ideas of their works, taking my own twists and interpretations on the concept of femininity vs masculinity. A good example of this would be how I presented femininity in my project compared to how my chosen artists did. Their images often focused around either women empowerment or typical ideologies of women, where as my images mainly concentrated on stereotypical things often associated with being feminine, hence the abundance of flowers and nature. While this is slightly different to the artists I selected, I still kept the overall theme of what is considered as femininity throughout my photos similar to what the artists did. On a more visual side of the project, I experimented with the use of black and white images to match the old timely look presented in my artists work, as a result making my images more moody and dramatic than their colour counterparts.
Is there anything you would do differently/ change etc?
If there were anything I could change or do differently it would probably be to experiment more with the mounting part of the project. While I think that using the foam board as a border is simple yet appealing, I think that I should of changed a couple of the mounting styles to be window mounts or used card instead of foam to have more of a variety for my images. Another thing I would change would be to print out more images, since I had a tough time picking out my best images from each project. Finally, I would of liked to focus more on the artists style, while I enjoyed and liked my own pieces, I still feel as though they don’t entirely link to said artists and if I were to do this project again, I would like to create more of a noticeable link between them.
How did you find the project?
Overall, I really enjoyed this project and feel as though its pushed me to do better. I enjoyed all the research that went into it too since personally the whole idea of femininity vs masculinity is something that genuinely interests me. I was a fan of the lighting project too as it helped me learn new techniques for how I take my photos, and I just think that the colourful images turned out well on the whole. Lastly, the environmental project was one that I felt went well, since my images showcased the natural environment of her room, however, I would of liked to take images else where, perhaps at school or her work.
