About Carolle Bénitah

She was born in 1965 and is aged 58 years old. Bénitah lives in Marseille, France. She is a French Moroccan photographer, who worked for ten years as a fashion designer before turning to photography in 2001, and now explores memory, family and the passage of time.  Often pairing old family snapshots with handmade accents, such as embroidery, beading and ink drawings, Bénitah seeks to reinterpret her own history as daughter, wife, and mother.

She began to become interested in her family photographs when flipping through an album of her childhood. She felt overwhelmed by an emotion that she did not understand. The photographs taken 40 years ago awakened a fear of something that was familiar yet also so unknown, causing her to feeling the need to add meaning to the photos. She wanted to explore her identity in this way, to help her define and understand herself more.

Her Work

She uses achieve photographs that she reprints and manipulates them using embroidery and sometimes even cut outs bits of the photo. The pictures are simple snapshots, purely taken for memories, memories which clearly mean a lot to Bénitah, in both a negative and positive way. In my project, I want to embroider on both new and old photos, using the thread as a representation of my grandmother.

Carolle Bénitah: Photos Souvenirs

“To embroider my photograph, I make holes in the paper. With each stitch, I stick the needle through the paper. Each hole is a putting to death of my demons. It is like an exorcism. I stab the paper until I don’t hurt anymore”

-Carolle Bénitah

Her most popular series, Photos Souvenirs, is an exploration of her memories from her childhood in Morocco and was worked on between 2009 and 2014. This series is made up of old family achieves, which she manipulates by threading beads and embroidering designs relating to her feelings towards each photographic memories. She calls the photos she finds “excavations”, and she starts by transposing them onto new paper. She mostly uses red thread and beads, but some of her pieces also include gold and black coloured material. They add a shine to her photos, and each design holds significance. She sometimes even manipulates the photos in a more destructive way, cutting out individuals and placing them elsewhere. Photos Souvenirs was exhibited at Rose Gallery, Santa Monica, in 2015.

Growing up in a traditional Moroccan household, Bénitah was expected to do many typically- feminine tasks. The embroidery she adds to the achieves hold a lot of significance, portraying how she was taught to sew as a girl, and was expected to continue the activity for her entire life. She uses this to portray her distaste of being a good girl, a good wife and a loving mother. Embroidery in itself is a calm activity, however, Bénitah uses it to show her anger and other strong emotions.

Image Analysis

In this photograph, Bénitah is about six years old and holding hands with her smiling brother, but an army of cockroaches surrounds the children, and their hands are bound together in a ball of red wool. Bénitah used a red wool to create the wool and black, for the surrounding cockroaches.

The photo itself is a simple, staged photograph, with natural lighting illuminating the young children’s faces. It is taken from an eye level view, however slightly above the children, indicating an adult took the photo. The area of focus is the bright red wool and it leads the viewers attention to the centre of the piece. The bright white outfits further bring the audience’s attention to the centre, as the white contrasts against the dull grey background. The photo has a shallow depth of field, further promoting the idea that it is an amateur photo, a family snapshot. Furthermore, the photo has a simple composition, the children simply being in the centre of the photo, the subject of the image. The cockroaches add a repetitive look to the photo, creating a representation of Bénitah’s feelings towards that moment. The bugs could be a portrayal of a threat, the wool signifying that her and her brother helped each other through everything. The innocent look on the children’s faces contrasts with the bold colours and shapes of the embroidery. The red wool could be a representation of love, the love she had for her brother which is what made them so close. Or it could be a portrayal of violence or even blood, perhaps suggesting that they were simply close due to a problem in the world or because they are family (the idea of being connected by blood). It’s interesting how Bénitah in cooperates such strong emotions into simple photographs, softening these harsh emotions by creating beautiful embroidery with her needle. At the time, (mid-1900s) society was based on very traditional values. Growing up in a traditional, catholic, Moroccan household clearly positioned Bénitah to grow up and become your typical women. Her pieces are a representation of how she disagreed with this concept, and shows her anger through the manipulation of photos from her childhood.

“It’s like an exorcism. I pierce the paper until I have no more evil”

-Carolle Bénitah

This is one of Carolle Bénitah’s most significant quotes, since it portrays the thought that goes into her work. She uses the needle to embroider her anger into the work, instead of keeping it bottled up inside. This is very inspiring, and I like the idea of conveying emotions through embroidery, both on new and old photos.

Carolle Bénitah’s link to Nostalgia

“I selected snapshots because they are linked to memory and loss”

-Carolle Bénitah

I think Carolle Bénitah’s work has a big link to nostalgia, however she shows both the negative and positive aspects of it through her art. She uses the embroidery as a healing ritual and calm her inner child. She also feels a mix of emotions when looking at the photos, which I think represents nostalgia perfectly, as I don’t think nostalgic feelings have to be completely positive.

Out of everything I have studied and responded to throughout this photography course femininity is the one I’m very passionate about and will continue to develop/expand my knowledge around this theme which will then allow me to interpret it in a creative way which I can then reflect that creativity into a photobook which ill design as my final project. When studying this theme in year 12 the aim was to find an artist that presented femininity as ‘innocent, young, caring, healthy’, Justine Kurland had produced some really good images which demonstrated those ideologies. However, to now develop this I will be producing images which will portray the opposite of those stereotypes, it will show how as girls specifically change (being older, meeting new people, understanding themselves, temporary happiness over long term happiness) focusing on all the problems/phases most teenage girls face. My photobook will have a nostalgic yet deep emotional feeling to it as it will show femininity in the past and what girls used to do when they were younger (nostalgic) and then compare that to how lifestyles change and how femininity is now interpreted, for me personally, and how things have changed (good and bad). I have already began forming a collection of pictures which ill use, mainly trying to get candid, random, raw images whenever I get a chance. I haven’t got a strict plan for where I will take my pictures, however, I know it will include a mix of candid and staged images… specifically documenting my friendship group and juxtaposing ‘girl pictures’ by Justine Kurland as her pictures had very bright colourful tones and majority of them where taken outside on fields, by lakes. Whereas my images will have more dark tones to create emotion and that sense of nostalgia from the past, its meant to demonstrate how girls change from what they used to do for fun in the past to what they now do for fun the difference is, is that the activities for young people to do in jersey are extremely limited now. My photobook will show what my friends and I do in our spare time and what its like to be a 17/18 year old girl in Jersey, juxtaposing with Justine Kurland’s images and story. Julia Margaret Cameron along side Justine Kurland is an artist I will also be including in my essay, Julia was the first photographer to capture femininity in 1868, this links to pictorialism.

Jim Goldberg is an American photographer who likes to focus a lot of his work on the neglected and ignored populations he takes time on these projects collecting thousands of photographs to make sure that the photos he choses represents his thoughts and views on the subject/ mater he is trying to get across, Goldberg uses film and digital cameras to create his book Raised By Wolves which shows a neglected and hurt population, his work is moving to his audiences as his work has been personalised by the people who he has included in it from people writing notes, drawings and dialog, this shows he is a photographer who wants to make an impact on people and wants to get people to speak up about where and who they come from.

Jim Shows his photos in many ways from scanning film and including the film negatives, peculiar layouts to full bleeds he includes multiple ways to show a story behind his work. Raised By Wolves is classed by some people as a novel with pictures whilst others see it as photographs which tell a story accompanied by text. For me personally I see it as both what you see tells you a story which you interpret and the righting tells you another story.

Jim Goldberg has inspired me in they way he layouts his images and presents them, they way he does it has meaning behind they stories they tell they are eye-catching and appealing o the audience, i also love the way Goldberg includes hand writing from the people he photographs i see it as a really good way to personalise work and create a mood around the work.

Meaning behind his work

Raised By Wolves is about probes the gap between dreams and reality in the lives of teenage runaways living on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles, and bout a neglected community which people don’t think about, and the youth which are getting lost in addiction and substance abuse, this project let the people be heard and seen when they hadn’t been before. Jim Goldbergs work always shows a divide in society predominantly focusing on the side which most people don’t see and making people see it this aspect of his work is truly moving n the sense he gives people voices and allows them to tell their story’s when no one else would listen.

Theo Gosselin

Theo Gosselin is a French photographer who was born in Normandy France, who only uses a 35mm and 55mm film camera. He likes to focus his photographs on freedom within his friends and family and does not like to stage any photos he likes to capture them in the moment and when they happen. “My friends and our lives became my principal subject, not as a photographer, but as a teenager who wants to capture memories just like everyone else.”

Gosselin grew up in a household surrounded by cameras as his parents were always taking photographs he first picked up a camera around the age of 14 where he didn’t fully understand the concept of taking a great photo but by him experimenting opened himself this incredible door to improve and explore his skills to improve his work and get him to the point he is now at creating and capturing these incredible inspiring and eye-catching images which hook the audience in.

Theo spent lots of time traveling mainly in America where he published his first book called  Avec le Coeur, meaning “with the heart.” which consists of photos of “everything he loves”, this is inspiring as many photographers fall into loopholes of taking and creating photos which other people will enjoy to see but not what they enjoy taking and what interests them. With Gosselins photos he waited till he got back home to develop them which built up the anticipation and excitement to see what his film reveals.

This image the rule of thirds as the main focal point is not in the centre third this creates a dynamic view on the landscape and the main subject being the female on the lower part of the image, leaving space for us to be able to see the landscape without distracting the audience from the main part of the image being the female she can be seen almost like a frame to the landscape as she almost colds around the frame of the image. The lighting makes this image in my opinion due to the way it highlights her hair and sculpts her facial features and highlights them. The depth of colour goes from dark to light creating a tunnel like affect.

Raymond Meeks is a photographer who is much more well known than Gosselin, his book Halflife reminds me of Gosselin’s work as they both photograph people around the water focusing on the youth of where they are, his work on the book was based around a lake near New York where is was a predominantly white lower class teenage boys, who wasted to show their dominance by jumping off 60ft cliffs whilst doing trick which allowed Raymond to get incredible unique shots, like Gosselin he also uses film to capture these incredible moments allowing a one shot wonder photographs, however Meeks work is taken in black and white film i think this really adds definition to his photographs as it shows the highlights, shadows and texture in his work. Raymond Meeks spent 3 years photographing at this lake as he found when he sat down in winter to edit them he would go from 80 strong photos down to 12 and found himself kept going back to get more to finish his book, where he let his son develop the layout of it as he created links between each images when laying them out. Meeks did not just observe the children at the lake but the energy which the lake held its self and how it became full of joy and excitement as soon as summer came around filling up with sunshine and warm air and how it bought people together from the same background and other backgrounds.

I like how both photographers capture a moment so simplistically and make it look so elegant, the images are freeing as they capture what youthful people should be doing living there life in an environment where they enjoy and are careless around.

My main inspiration for this photoshoot is Justine Kurland’s ‘Girl Pictures’ book. I believe that this book defines feminism very well due to every photo being very unique and capturing different types of people.

Justine Kurland’s main inspiration for this book was from a young girl in which Justine used to date her father. The girl was sent to live with her father after her mother kicked her out for skipping school and doing drugs. Justine then formed the idea of a photoshoot based on ‘alyssum as a teenage runaway’. In which she scouted for models outside various high schools. She also gained inspiration from a TV show about the tales of teenage delinquency.

Justine Kurland’s Girl pictures bring a sense or nostalgia. Every girl in each photo have their own story however come together to live a similar lifestyle. They live without a care in the world, and are truly living their teenage years. Therefore, many of the images in Girl Pictures were taken outside in locations that feel desolate or easy to overlook. They were often staged under bridges or beyond fences or on the sides of highways; places that feel synonymous with warnings.

Image Analysis:

In Justine Kurland’s image, Femininity is shown throughout by a topless girl standing in front of the mirror. This is a defining aspect of the image as it is the anatomy in which all girls have, however, many people view this as being provocative and vulnerable in front of a camera. However, Kurland has composed this image so that you are unable to see the camera and is

Whereas Justine Kurland portrays this image as empowering, as the subject has confidence within her own body to show it off . Another aspect within this image is the bright pink hand soap on the top of the sink counter top which is accompanied by a girl sat near it with a glossy pink magazine which she is reading. Femininity is shown further through the girl sat on the bathroom floor next to a bag which is spewing out with clothes, who looks like she is having trouble picking out her outfit. the image seems to have been taken at dusk due to the orange light shining through the window of the bathroom. However, the bathroom is light up very bright from the lights in the ceiling and above the mirror.

Celestial Echoes- Bye-Bye Baby- By Michelle Sank

Another artist that I have taken inspiration from is Michelle Sank , with her photo series ‘bye-bye baby’ and ‘Celestial Echoes’. These images deal with the notion of developing adulthood within the British society today. Bye-Bye Baby is exploring the way young boys and girls interpret their understanding of masculinity and femininity. Having left the purity of their childhood worlds, they seem to take on the trappings of the grown ups they mimic and the status set out in popular culture and the media. Celestial Echoes continues with this theme looking at this phenomenon within older adolescent girls.

Image Analysis:

The image above by Celestial Echoes is untitled, however, I think this is a very effective image which captures youth and femininity very well. In the foreground of the image, there is a young girl looking down at the camera which creates a sense of power. The lighting in the picture seems to be natural, but there is more light coming in from the left shown through the highlighting of the outer corner of her eye and the shadow which is created from her nose on her right eye. Celestial Echoes has also added bokeh (blurring) to the background which was most likely done by changing her aperture of her camera. Femininity is also shown through the young boys in the background of the image. By placing the girl in the foreground of the picture she can be viewed as more powerful, whereas the boys are perceived as smaller and less important.

MOODBOARD

STATEMENT OF INTENT

Our personal study project is based around the theme of nostalgia. Nostalgia is defined as ‘a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past.’ My interpretation of the theme nostalgia in my personal study, is going to be based on exploring my Polish heritage, and how my family in Poland applies to my own sense of nostalgia. Furthermore I will contrast this to my life with my family here, in Jersey. I will be using Realism, within Typology and artist’s such as Hilla and Bernd Becher in order to present my life through photography. In the book August Sander Face of Our Time by Alfred Doblin Sander says ‘Each of us knows a number of people, and we recognize them when we meet by specific entirely personal characteristics that they have. All the people we encounter are only individuals, and each person has a name as well as specific, unrepeatable, and characteristic token of identification’ this supports my personal study by showing my identity and nostalgia through my family.

The main purpose of my project is to take photograph’s of my family neighbourhood, this is to highlight the nostalgic feeling I have towards my family. This will include taking images of their houses and portrait’s of my family members. I will be taking documentary style images, some of my photos will be taken with flash, as I will be attending a family gathering in Poland which gives me an opportunity to take pictures. I will take pictures of the setting and surroundings where the dinner will take place, perhaps I will be able to find some objects that are significant to my family as well as images of my family during the dinner. Here I will also try to and take headshot portraits of my family members, inside and perhaps outside their house depending on the natural lighting, as I will not be using artificial lighting.

Realism within Typology is what I am referencing my project to. The term ‘realism’ can mean to depict things as they are, without idealising or making abstract. This will be presented by my documentary photography that I will take. As well as taking images of my family neighbourhood, I will aspire to also take images of the town I live in, Konstantynow Lodzki. Here I will try to take images of small landmarks that can be used as filler images in the book.

I will develop my project into a book form. This is so it can highlight each documentary image and tell a story through the layout of a book. I am yet to decide whether the images will be in colour or black and white, once the images are taken I will decide. However I’m more interested in colour, I will edit my images in Adobe Lightroom Classic. Within the book I will alternate between portraits and images of people and landmarks and place either in Poland or Jersey. In Jersey I will take images in places that are significant to me. I however won’t be adding any text within the book as my intention is for the images to speak for themselves.

MINDMAP OF IDEAS FOR PERSONAL STUDY:

MINDMAP OF IDEAS FOR PERSONAL STUDY:

Jim Goldberg, an American artist and photographer, is known for his work with marginalised communities. His photography, particularly his photobook ‘Raised By Wolves‘, reflects the neglect and abuse these struggling communities face, and how they as people respond to it in an unforgivingly realistic and direct manner. I want my personal study to portray a similar feeling, through images of people I’ve met travelling and while I was homeless, the main difference being that it reflects more my own perception of them, and what they did to help or support me.

Goldberg’s iconic style features monochrome portraits accompanied with handwritten texts from his subjects, telling Sean O’Hagan in 2009, “There’s a thread that runs through all the work that is to do with bearing witness, the photographs are about asking questions, though, not answering them.” This means that Goldberg’s work is more about being an observer of this suffering than a narrator, almost. It turns his images into a more personal account of each subject, allowing them to narrate their own stories, while Goldberg just provides them with a platform and the means to do so. I find this idea to be intriguing, although it wouldn’t necessarily work for this project as a lot of the people I was with I am unable to currently get in contact with them for one reason or another.

Goldberg states his photobooks, ‘Rich and Poor‘, ‘Raised by Wolves‘, and ‘Candy‘, as part of a trilogy, “All three books are about where I grew up, and how I grew up. The books represent a lot of the same themes about race, class, age, love, lust, betrayal–they’re tied together.” He told Magnum Photos. Similarly, I want this to be an underlying theme in my own work, that I create a narrative that hints at how I myself have lived and grown up, whether using subtlety or being direct.

Sources

https://jimgoldberg.com/

https://www.dobedorepresents.com/artists/jim-goldberg

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jul/03/jim-goldberg-rich-and-poor-photography

https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/art/jim-goldberg-raised-by-wolves/

https://www.magnumphotos.com/theory-and-practice/fingerprint-tracing-roots-jim-goldbergs-raised-by-wolves/

Michelle Sank

Bio

Michelle Sank was born in South Africa and currently resides in the UK. She is a documentary photographer whose work explores contemporary social issues. Her photographs have been exhibited and published extensively in the UK, Europe, Australia and Mexico, South Africa and the U.S.A. Her imagery is held in the permanent collections of Allan Servais, Brussels, Open Eye Gallery Archive, Liverpool, Société Jersiaise and Guernsey Museum, Channel Islands. She has undertaken numerous commissions for prominent galleries and magazines in Europe and the USA and her work has won awards in prestigious competitions including the National Portrait Gallery and the British Journal of Photography. Sank has four published books, The Water’s Edge – Women on the Waterfront; Becoming – a major monograph featuring her youth portraits taken over five years; The Submerged about the landscape and inhabitants of Aberystwyth, Wales and My.Self about the cultural identity amongst diverse young people in the Black Country. Sank’s work tends to be themed around certain groups of people for example, people who live in her neighbourhood like in her project Breathe or local workers in a certain region like in her project Insula. Most of the time, her images are environmental portraits, on the rare occasion that they aren’t, they are just of the surrounding area of the subject and not the person.

Her Work

As I can’t talk about all her photo projects, I will just mention some of my favourites by her

1. Insula

“Insula eschews a specific brief though the work responds to the wealth of nineteenth century portrait photographs within the Jersey Photographic Archive that it now joins as a powerful point of interpretation. The beguiling qualities of these new photographs call to mind the position that Lewis Baltz found for photographic series, ‘somewhere between the novel and film.’ As such, Sank’s photographs offer a visual poem to the island” – Gareth Syvret

I will be taking a lot of inspiration from this project as the style of photography is part of what I would like to do during my personal study. The main image style being portraits really says a lot, I think she wanted to show what the people of the island look like, more specifically in their places of work.

2. Sixteen

“What is it like to be sixteen years old in the UK now? This is the central thread running through the national project Sixteen where some of the UK’s foremost documentary portrait photographers collaborated in opening up conversations with young people about their hopes and fears, and who or what sustains them, giving prominence to voices rarely heard.” – Sank on the project

This project is one of my favourites as it focuses in on people who are around my age, showing their experiences of growing up in an isolated place, which I can relate to from living on an island for my entire life.

3. Bye-Bye Baby/Celestial Echoes

These images deal with the notion of developing adulthood within the milieu of British society today. In Bye-Bye Baby I am exploring the way young boys and girls interpret their understanding of masculinity and femininity. Having left the purity of their childhood worlds, they seem to take on the trappings of the grown ups they mimic and of the status quo as set out in popular culture and the media. Celestial Echoes continues with this theme looking at this phenomenon within older adolescent girls.

Image Analysis

In this image, the use of natural daylight is intentional, Sank is trying to show the subjects in the most natural way possible, whilst still having light on them, even the girl in the background of the image has light on her. Continuing on from this, even if the girl in the background is slightly blurred, you can still see her and her emotions. For me, I naturally get drawn, visually, to the girl in the background, I think the lighting in this part of the image is more visually appealing, I however do understand why the girl in the foreground of the image is there, she has a more “domineering” aura, it’s almost as if she had asked Sank to put her in the foreground of the image. Contextually, I think the two girls in the image could be sisters, I think the one in the background could often be overshadowed by the other one, making me believe that she could be the younger one, however their ways of dressing contrast this, the one in the foreground looks as though she could be the younger of the two based on her way of dressing, the one in the background is dressed much more conservatively, just a hoodie and jeans, whereas the girl in the foreground is dressed much more “out-there”, wearing a colourful skirt and top. Out of the two, the girl in the background seems to be more mature. About this project, Michelle Sank said “Having left the purity of their childhood worlds, they seem to take on the trappings of the grown ups they mimic and of the status quo as set out in popular culture and the media.” In my opinion, this image presents this ideology and statement very well.

• For my project I want to focus on youth, focusing on friendships, friendship groups, love, and freedom to link with the aspect of nostalgia and memories liked with them. This matters to me as friendships are a massive part of my life especially growing up on a small island where sometimes there is not much to do so we try to discover unfamiliar places and when we find them, we create new memories there which link to the place. I wish to develop this project by extending the number of photos I have and diving more closely into my friend’s life’s and what it means to them to be in a friend group, what they think a friendship is and what memories they have linking with friendship.
• I would like to explore the idea of creating a magazine or a hard back book to present my work. I will start my study by selecting and editing my photos which I already have and start taking and collecting more photos. The main focus of my project is going to be portraiture and some photos of landscape because it links with my view of nostalgia; as places links with memories, if possible,.
• My photographs will be taken outside using natural lighting with some being taken inside with a flash. The images are going to be in a documentary style looking at teenagers’ life and friendship on a small island and discovering the joy of friendships and what they men to people.
• the presentation of my book will be easy to follow, the images will be edited on lightroom classic; however, I do not want to manipulate the images in a drastic way I would like them to still look authentic I would just like to enhance the images to make them more eye-catching. To create the magazine, I will be using blurb to create the layout and pages.