Chris Marker, (1921-2012) was a French filmmaker, poet, novelist, photographer, editor and multi-media artist who has been challenging moviegoers, philosophers, and himself for years with his complex queries about time, memory, and the rapid advancement of life on this planet. Marker’s La Jetée is one of the most influential, radical science-fiction films ever made, a tale of time travel. What makes the film interesting for the purposes of this discussion, is that while in editing terms it uses the language of cinema to construct its narrative effect, it is composed entirely of still images showing images from the featureless dark of the underground caverns of future Paris, to the intensely detailed views across the ruined city, and the juxtaposition of destroyed buildings with the spire of the Eiffel Tower.

Le Jetee is about A man is sent back and forth and in and out of time in an experiment that attempts to unravel the fate and the solution to the problems of a post-apocalyptic world during the aftermath of WW3. The experiment results in him getting caught up in a perpetual reminiscence of past events that are recreated on an airport’s viewing pier.

Film and Narrative.

Le Jetee is told through still images, and archival images, the photos represent similarities of WW2 in the fact it is talking about atomic bombs as they were last used in WW2 as world war 3 hasn’t happened yet.

Film narrative:
Narrative film: A fictional or fictionalized story. As opposed to documentaries (non-narrative films).

What is a narrative?

A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional or fictional. Narratives can be presented through a sequence of written or spoken words, through still or moving images, or through any combination of these. A story that is told in a sequential order of events.

What is a film?

A series of moving images shown on a screen, usually with sound, that make up a story.

Zines are a type of magazine which is smaller than a magazine, they are a small production scale and self published, zines are a sequence of photographs placed together to usually tell a story, the purpose of a zine is to express your intentions in some sort of “pamphlet-esque” or “book-like” form, replicate that creation, then share.

My zine is going to show the audience how I see St. Malo in my eyes and the story behind what and who I saw whilst over there my photos are predominantly going to be in black and white with a few of which that will be in colour. I believe the minimalism of the black and which will show the age of the town and the the simplistic view on it, the idea that there is one main street.

Elizabeth Castle was built on a tidal island off the coast of Saint Helier in the 16th and 17th centuries when the power of cannons meant that the existing stronghold at Mont Orgueil was insufficient to defend the Island and the port of St Helier was vulnerable to attack by ships.

The castle was first used in a military context during the English Civil War in the 17th century. The Prince of Wales visited the castle in 1646 and again, but now as Charles II in September 1649, staying in the Governor’s House, having been proclaimed King by governor Sir George Carteret, despite the abolition of the monarchy in England, in February 1649. In 1651, a windmill was constructed half-way between Fort Charles and the Lower Ward. In the same year, the Parliamentarian forces landed in Jersey and bombarded the castle with mortars. 

Today, the castle is administered by the Jersey Heritage Trust as a museum site: among the historical displays are the Jersey Royal Militia Museum holding several centuries of military memorabilia. Every Sunday through the season when the castle is open, a team of historical interpreters recreate the garrison of 1781, at the time of the battle of Jersey. Displays are given of musket firing, cannon firing and civilian life.

The occupation : Elizabeth Castle remained in use up to and including the Second World War, when it was occupied by the Nazis. The occupation by the German forces commenced on 1st July 1940 and eventually ended on 9th May 1945 – Liberation Day.

My zine is based on the photographs i made in St.Malo, which i have edited to fit the aesthetic i am going for more, the majority of my photographs are in black and white with a small selection of them in colour.

I have taken inspiration for my zine by looking at online ones and by looking through older Hautlieu students past zines, the students ones were the most helpful for the layout as they had the same amount of images as the one i am making.

The process of making the zine is relatively simple as i know how to work indesign and therefor makes the process enjoyable.

The photos above are some of the photos which i have selected to go in my zine.

The narrative behind my story is interpretive as i am letting the audience create there own story as each individual sees things in a different way obviously for me the photos are set out in a way in which i want them to be shown and how i believe it tells the story of the people in St. Malo, i believe giving the audience the creative freedom to create there own story with my photographs creates better opinions and evaluations on my work as they are able to see it how they want to and there opinions aren’t confined.

The layout of my zine and size is:
width: 148mm
height: 210
pages: 16
orientation: portrait
columns:2
column gutter: 5mm
margins: top, bottom, inside, outside: 10mm
bleed: top, bottom, inside, outside: 3mm

We have been using indesign to create story boards of our images which we look in St Malo, I created two designs with different backgrounds on to experiment and see which one i preferred i liked working on indesign as i was able to play around more with the layout and placements on the photographs more than if i was to do it on powerpoint, i liked how we were able to chose the size on the page we wanted and were able to adjust the images to fit the page well.

My Designs

I have been experimenting with photoshop Ai by using photoshop beta here are some examples of photos which i have used ai on.

original photo

edited

unedited

Edited

This is what i typed in to get the result of the photo i had to generate it twice till i got an outcome that I liked, the idea behind the photo was to make it more busy as there wasn’t much going on in the photo i thought it looked a bit isolated and simple so there for i wanted to add more to it.

Photography was created in 1822 when the first photograph was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (pronounced “nyeps”). Photography was and still is seen as an art form as it is seen as drawing with light. Photography can be seen as an illusion as from the early days of photography in a dark room photographs have been manipulated to make them appealing or interesting, there has always been an idea that photography is theatrical as there has always been the element of people striking poses at the camera and the photographer zooming in and focusing on one thing and eliminating the other elements out of the photograph where for nearly all photographs have been manipulated, now a days we have technology which enables us to edit and manipulate our photographs even move editing things out, editing things in changes the photo and the dynamics completely which can make people question if there is an actual photograph which is true and doesn’t hide anything. Technology has developed so much in recent years there are generated images now which means people don’t even need to go out and take their own photos they are able to use apps and websites which have a code to create your images the benefits of artificial intelligence is that it can be a new form of creating art and photographs but on the other hand there can be some things of it which poses as a threat like the unrealistic ways it can pose ideologies around society and tings in general due to people seeing unrealistic things so often they won’t be able to tell what is ‘normal’ and what is real. Geoffrey Hinton resigned from his job at google as he was threatened by the power of ai as it could and does more harm than good. Photography can be seen as an illusion as all photos have been thought of each photographer has focuses on a main focal point for a reason on how they have envisioned the outcome of the image on the process of taking it and with modern technology things are edited in diverse ways to make it more appealing to the audience. 

Before the digital age of photography images were edited by manipulation which many people describe this is when photography lost its innocence, before the digital age images were edited by using dark room techniques which consisted of methods and techniques that involve manipulation directly to the print, such as retouching with ink, paint, airbrushing, or scratching Polaroids during developing (Polaroid art). Negatives can be manipulated while still in the camera using double-exposure techniques, or in the darkroom by piecing photos or negatives together. Some darkroom manipulations involved techniques such as bleaching to artfully lighten or totally wash out parts of the photograph, hand colouring for aesthetic purposes, or mimicking a fine art painting. 

The valley of the shadow of death is a photograph which is known for being manipulated in the early days of photography, it was considered the first “fake” photograph as the image content had been manipulated with the aim of conveying a different reality as to that which took place there photograph was taken by British photographer Roger Fenton in 1855 it was seen as the oldest photographs of warfare if it wasn’t manipulated. The photograph shows a desolate scene littered with cannonballs, some populating a ditch and some scattered along a stretch of road. The fact that this image was manipulated annoyed many people as it made people question the authenticity of photography and historical photos as they no longer trusted them as they did not know if they were real or not. In my opinion I believe that the image is really clearly done and it gives the audience a sense of what warfare was like but on the other hand I think it is wrong of the photographer to not have told anyone that it was a manipulated image and it was how he thought it would look like as he provided misleading information which has left people questioning not only photography and the truths about what a photo is but also history and if historians got this wrong and believed that it wasn’t a manipulated photo what does it say about other historical photographs.  

Since the digital age it has become easier to manipulate photos as technology has evolved so much that it is easy to edit photos quickly and make it look professional. It is easy to edit the truth as the editing process is so easy and so good that it makes it look real so people don’t know the truth and are constantly being shown fake things, photo manipulation changes the truth as you are able to make things smaller, larger, change the shape the list of things go on and on. Ai, has evolved in the fact that you now no longer have to take end edit photos to remove background to place them on a new image, the ai does it all for you and finds images by you just adding prompts to it, Dream Studio creates images for you give the website prompts on what you want in the image and then it creates it giving you multiple different options of the images. 

In my opinion a photograph can lie, and photographs have been lying for years from being edited in a dark room from now being able to edit them with a click of a button. These two photographs are great examples of photographs lying from looking at them without knowing the back story a person would believe that it is a fact of perfect timing and being in the right place at the right time is what captured these two amazing photos however it wasn’t the photo of the train was actually staged the photographer made the train reverse and stop multiple times to get the positioning of the building and the train perfect which in my opinion make the photo lie to the audience as to many people photography is about capturing the moment and the fact this photo may seem like it is capturing the moment is in fact now as it was staged. The second photo is in fact also staged the photographer created the whole photo he placed the cardboard photos and the shoes perfectly in place to create this shot of a ”homeless” person when in fact it wasn’t a homeless person everything was stages to audiences not knowing if a photo was staged or not this has a massive effect on history and historic photographs as how are we meant to know if these photos were staged or not when we can no longer find out from the person who created them. In my opinion I believe that ai is having a big effect on photography and the industry in many ways it is negatively impacting in in the sense it does not tell the truth gives people wrong impressions and does more harm than good however when ai is used as an art medium to create an interpretation of something with it being obvious are isn’t used in a harmful way I think it is a genius way to create art. In conclusion I believe that the future of photography could be in danger due to how fast technology is developing and changing and I believe that this will affect is as people may never know the truth about a photograph and what is it if it is all a lie. 

1254 words

We went on a school photography trip to St. Malo for the day where we spent the day taking street photography photos of people and places. St. Malo is in Britany France only an hour away from Jersey, the old town in St. Malo is surrounded by tall walls and stone buildings

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), a French photographer who is considered to be one of the fathers of photojournalism and masters of candid photography. He thought to capture the ‘everyday’ in his photographs and took great interest in recording human activity.

The Decisive Moment is a term coined by Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. It refers to the moment when all the elements in a photograph come together perfectly to create a meaningful image.

What is meant by the decisive moment?

The camera freezes time and fixates on the exact moment when photographic magic happens. This fraction of a second is called the decisive moment.

“For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to ‘give a meaning’ to the world, one has to feel involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.”

Henri-Cartier Bresson often used diagonals (the golden triangle) for composition. This technique is a mixture of the rule of thirds and diagonal lines, to draw peoples attention to the photograph. Imagine a scene where the subject lies on a diagonal line across the image. Now imagine another line intersecting with it. 

Bresson started his creative career by firstly falling in love with painting and drawing, but due to the lack of art supplies Bresson had he turned to photography and taking photographs where he found his passion.

Eager to join the fight against Fascism, Cartier-Bresson volunteered for the war effort and in 1940 was assigned to a film and photography unit in Metz, France. Captured by the Germans soon after enlisting, he spent three years in captivity. 

After two failed attempts at escape, he finally managed to reach a nearby farmhouse. He spent the rest of the war working to liberate others, and photographing the occupation of France with his beloved Leica camera. 

The American Office of War Information commissioned Cartier-Bresson to make a documentary about returning French prisoners (La Retour, 1946), which became the focal point of the artist’s first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1947. The museum planned the show as a retrospective, as Cartier-Bresson was thought to be dead. But the artist was very much alive — and was present at its opening.

Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.

Nostalgia is a word that comes from Greek and means a sentimental yearning for the past. It can evoke feelings of pleasure with occasional notes of sadness. Nostalgia can be triggered by many things, such as music, movies, places, or people. Nostalgia can have positive effects on mood, social connectedness, self-esteem, and meaning in life.

My nostalgic mood bored is based on my child hood growing up in jersey and the things i enjoyed and the events i used to go to every year, like Gorey fete and Liberation Day.