Mirrors and windows was a photography exhibition consisting of 127 photos at the museum of modern art in New York 1978, created by John Szarkowski. The exhibition was created because Szarkowski wanted to categorise photos into two categories.

Mirrors: are photos which mirror the photographer’s feelings/what they are trying to portray.

• Words which associate with mirrors are: personal, expressive, subjective.

• Some photographic examples include: Self Portraiture and Tableaux photography.

Windows: are photos which act a window for the viewer so they can view an image which is documented as what the photo actually is in reality.

• Words which associate with windows are: real, documentative and objective.

• Some photographic examples include: Candid, Documentary photography and Natural landscape.

Szarkowski described the exhibition as “a fundamental dichotomy in contemporary photography between those who think of photography as a means of self-expression and those who think of it as a method of exploration.“

Example of mirror photos

This photo could be seen as a mirror because it is staged and the photo is taken in the view of the photographer, Nan Goldin, and is of people he knows.

Example of window photos

This photo is an example of a window as it is just a photo of a landscape by Ansel Adams the photo documents the landscape and it is what it is shown. As it is all subjective it could be a bit of a mirror image as Ansel Adams had a passion for Yosemite national park and he could be trying to portray his passion for the landscape and scenery of the park by taking this photo to show his view of the park.

I started with experimenting with a front cover for my zine I wanted the colour scheme of my zine to be blue and white because it reminds me of the sea

for my first page I wanted to do a comparison of the harbour a long time ago vs today I started by creating the layout with placeholder shapes.

I started by designing the layout of four images and then chose the four I wanted. I ended up swapping the top right image to the one in the screenshot above, from one I took of the new quay, as I wanted the page to look more vibrant and the original photo looked out of place.

Back cover

For the back cover I originally wanted to have an image of the old harbour, however it sadly didn’t look right, I couldn’t position it correctly so it looked good and there was too much blank space. I ended up starting again and using a different image this time a portrait image which would fit better which I also wanted to use on the zine. Overall I am much happier with how it turned out and think it looks a lot better than before.

Thankfully I could use the image more appropriately as a double page spread because I needed another two pages because I had 18 pages and I needed 20 so it would print without any blank pages. Because the image is a panorama it is wider that a standard landscape image so it was a lot better having it stretched out across two pages.

STORY: What is your story?
Describe in:

• 3 words: Saint Helier Harbour
• A sentence: What goes on at the harbour
• A Paragraph: I wat to tell the story of what happens at st Helier harbour and the life of it, in general and have sections dedicated to parts of the harbour such are people and places.

NARRATIVE: How will you tell your story?

• Images: I will use images from both the photoshoots at the harbour as well as archived images.
• Archives: I want at least one page comparing the harbour to what is is today as it is important to focus on its long history. I will use photos from the photo-archive for this.
• Texts > Write a short introduction or statement about your picture story, image captions
• Typography: For the font I want to use a unique font to help my zine stand out, but not a font which is too over the top. I can use the font for my title for the zine which I will display in large on my front cover.

Mood board

creating a concept zine for laying out and sequencing my photos

I printed out the photos I wanted to use for my zine and created a rough layout to help me decide what photos to use and where they will go in my zine. It really helped when I was creating my actual zine as I knew roughly what and were my photos will go.

Me and Tama Walked around the Old harbour, the English & French harbours and the Albert pier, taking a total of 263 photos along the way.

Below are the photos I flagged as pick because I felt like these images stood out more compared to my other photos. It also made it easier to add colour labels to help me select my beat images. The photos with the blue colour label being environmental/portraits and and purple having more of a topographical approach.

Selecting the best images from the shoot

After a lot of time and consideration I narrowed it down to eleven photos which I felt were the most interesting and related to the St. Helier harbour. Now I am going to begin the editing process

The editing process

I edited all my best images. Below are the ones I edited the most and experimented with. The other images I did minor adjustments such as cropping and slight changes to the colour or tone as they didn’t need much and I didn’t want to overedit them.

For this photo I change it to black and white to experiment to see if it suited the photo and it did so I kept it like that.

Edit 2

For this edit, I cropped the photo to make it more centred and did some selective colour on the yellow and blues. I also increased their vibrancy because as when I was editing this photo those colours stood out.

Edit 3

The first thing I did when editing was to crop and level my image. Afterwards I slightly increased the contrast which made the pier look better and more darker and I decreased the temperature of the image which gives it a blue tone which quite I like.

Presenting my best images

Evaluation & Analysis

Overall I found the first photoshoot I did at the St. Helier harbour was successful, it would have been nice if the sun was out a bit more, however I am pleased with how I captured the harbour life.

the photo was taken at the end of the albert pier in a small room where a harbour worker/master would have once sat. The photo is black and white and contains no colour, the photo also fully uses natural light provided by the two windows which creates a nice shadow on the table. The toy dog is in the centre of the image as it is the main subject and takes the place of where a harbour worker would have once sat, it also gives the centre of the image a softer texture, compared to the rough walls and solid desk. The photo contains a wide tonal rage with dark black areas of the shadows and light white areas where there is a lot of light, there is also a wide range of different shades of grey which is due to the contrast of all the levels of light.

Photography turns the ordinary into the extraordinary…

Camera obscura

The camera obscura is a natural phenomenon where rays of light entering a completely dark room form an upside down image of the outside of the room on the opposite side of the room the light is coming from. This technique has been used for thousands of years to trace images way before photography was invented in 1839 making it the starting point on the concept of photography.

Joseph Nicéphore

Joseph Nicéphore was originally interested in lithography which is a form of printmaking but eventually went on to try and to capture photos. It is unknown when but after years of experimenting with different chemicals he wrote a letter to his sister in law in around 1816 which suggested that he managed to capture small images on paper coated in silver chloride however the images he created were negatives. He describe the process as “The discovery I have made and which I call Heliography, consists in reproducing spontaneously, by the action of light, with gradations of tints from black to white, the images received in the camera obscura.”

The oldest surviving photograph by him, and the first ever photograph that exists, is called View from the Window at Le Gras, and was taken around 1822-1827. This breakthrough lead him to partner up with Louis Daguerre in helping to create Daguerreotype.

The Daguerreotype

The Daguerreotype was the first commercially available photographic processes invented by Louis Daguerre in august 1839, which allowed images to be physically saved. The process was long and tedious which involved polishing silver plated copper until its surface was like a mirror while treating it with chemicals so the metal became light sensitive. Afterwards you would put in in a camera obscura box and then treat it with more chemicals, the proses was expensive and very time consuming, however with it being the first way to commercially take physical photos and was a massive milestone in the history of photography.

Robert Cornelius

Robert Cornelius was the first person ever to take a ‘selfie’ (self portrait) in 1839 using the Daguerreotype, just months after it was invented. It was not an easy task as Robert Cornelius had to determine that the lighting, in his families garden, where he took the self portrait, was good enough and then stand motionless in front of the camera for around 10-15 minutes for the cameras exposure to take him in.

The Calotype

Henry Fox Talbot was also a major founder of photography and invented the Calotype in 1840, an improvement of the Daguerreotype, which was a technique of putting photographic paper in a camera obscura box, which would produce an invisible negative image which when put in a chemical solution in a dark room would produce a negative image which could be used to produce clones of an image. This process was an extreme improvement to the Daguerreotype as it allowed images to have a shorter exposure time as it would usually take ages to take a photograph due to the exposure needed, It also meant photographs could be printed on paper instead of metal and you could make multiple copies of the image.

Julia M. Cameron

When Julia was 48 she got gifted a camera by her daughter which was the beginning of her photographic legacy. She began taking photographic portraits of people, in 1864 she took a photograph of a 9 year old girl which became her first successful image and that year she ended up being elected to the photographic society of London, making her a member. Her photographic technique of taking soft focus portraits was criticized at the time however those photos have paved the way for modern portrait photography and are now highly valued. She described photography as: “The camera has become to me, a living thing, with voice, memory and a creative vigour.”

Henry Mullins

Henry Mullins was a professional portrait photographer who started his career in London in the 1840s and moved to Jersey in 1848 because it was cheaper to produce photos here. While he lived in jersey he took over 9,800 of portrait photos of Islanders in his photography studio in the Royal square, St. Helier.

What was the involvement of Jersey mariners in the Canadian cod-fisheries and the Transatlantic carrying trade?

In the 15th Centaury, Newfoundland in Canada was discovered. the waters around it contained lots of cod which was great for fishermen.

In the 16th centaury tens of thousands of fishermen were traveling across the ocean to fish for all this cod including fishermen from the Jersey and channel islands. by the late 16th Centaury The governor of jersey stated that “islanders were saved from starvation by the arrival of a cargo of fish from the colony”

Fact: One Jersey islander who obtained a licence to sail to Newfoundland from the government to fish for the people of jersey was fined 300 crowns after he sold the fish to the people of St. Malo instead.

By the 17th centaury where trade routes were being set up with the rest of Europe, America and Canada, fishermen had set up bases on the coast of Gaspé, Canada. This is where they would salt the cod so it would be preserved till they got back to their countries.

Which ports did Jersey ships sail to and trade with?

What type of goods did Jersey merchants exchange for cod-fish?

In Mediterranean countries cod was of high demand so cod was traded for: wine, brandy, dried fruit, citrus fruits and salt. There was also a demand in Brazil where the cod was traded for coffee and sugar.

To what extent, has the island of Jersey benefitted from its constitutional relationship with Britain and the legacies of colonialism based on a slave plantation economy during the first Industrial Revolution (1760-1840)?

• No 9 Pier road, is known as the ‘Merchant house’ and is a Victorian townhouse which was built by Philippe Nicolle in 1818 using money he inherited from his great uncles involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. The building is now part of the Jersey museum.

• John Frederick Gibaut was a Jersey man who owned one of the largest sugar plantations, ran by slaves, in El Salvador during the mid 1800s. It ended up going bankrupt around the time slavery was abolished.

• TW: Peter Pierre, Thomas Mallet and Parry were jersey men who sailed with the captain John Kimber, in 1797 from Gold Coast to Barbados with 409 Slaves. Sadly one of the Slaves passed away on the boat and the captain was accused of killing her because she refused to dance naked.

In summary Jersey benefited economically from the slave trade due Jersey men who had businesses involving the trade and ship masters whose boats were used to capture slaves.

Source

First I started by creating the layout for my spread by using placeholder text for the text areas as well as starting to fill in the images such as the establishing shots. I also created the Headline and chose an appropriate font for it.

Version 1

For this I added the text in and the photos. I might change some of the photos to see if I can improve. but for now I’m going to experiment with the background.

Version 2

For this one I experimented by making the background the French flag as St. Malo is located in France. I did this because I wanted to experiment with having a simple colour background instead of an image which I will try doing next.

Version 3

for this I got one of the photos and put it as the background. The text was hard to read because the background is also in black and white but I lowered the transparency a bit and it looks better and makes the text a bit easier to read.

Version 4

Final Designs

Out of all the designs I feel like these ones are the best outcomes. I replaced the image of the boat on the first two page spreads to make it fit the theme of the images and designs. Overall I am really happy with how it all turned out.

Brief analysis

Picture story: Mood Board

Analysis of a picture story

Selected photos

Below are the images from the photoshoot I selected based off of how good/successful I felt they are and ones that best fit the decisive moment. n.b. Some of the photos I selected may have been taken by Tama as we were taking photos together.

Edits

For this photo above I made the photo black and white except for the subject (Tama) and the house in the background, this makes the photo more interesting than the whole photo being in Black and white.

Edit 2

For the photo above of the man on the roof I cropped the photo to make him more lager and centred as well as applying a black and white with a higher contrast, as Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photos are in black and white and I wanted to incorporate his style. I decided to go a step further and add a Vignette which gives the photo more depth and tone and in my opinion makes the photo look a lot better.

Edit 3

For this photo of the lady sitting on the stairs I did selective colour for the lady to make her stand out as the subject of the photo as well as providing a contrast to the whole image being in B&W, I also cropped to image to make her look closer in the photo.

Edit 4 & 5

I edited this photo of the pigeon by cropping it to make the pigeon more bigger and centred as well as making the background black and white so that the pigeon stands out. I also added a vignette which isn’t incredibly noticeable but creates depth, it works really well on black and white candid photos. I like this photo as I try and be a bit different by capturing the deceive moment for the pigeon instead of just for people.

Edit 6 & 7

In the photo above of the man looking at the parking meter I experimented with blur by adding a Gaussian Blur in the background and made it black and white. I added a vignette and lowered the saturation of the person and the parking meter to make the colours blend in with the background more.

-Choosing a final image-

Henri grew up in a wealthy family, he was initially into art with him starting to paint at just five years old. in 1927 he went to a boarding school called the Lhote Academy which was ran by a cubist painter and sculptor called André Lhote. Henri Described André as his teacher of “photography without a camera.”

In 1929 Henri Cartier met Harry Crosby who had an interest in photography and gave him his first camera and they would take photos together, which was the awakening of his photography legacy and gave him an interest in it.

His work

The Decisive Moment

One of the things Henri was famous for was coming up with the concept of the decisive moment, He described it as “There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. 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. That is the moment the photographer is creative, oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”

In summery Henri is basically saying the decisive moment is the moment in candid photography when the composition is all perfect and you take the photo which can never be naturally re-created again, making it a once in a lifetime photo.

Image Analysis

The photo which Henri Cartier-Bresson took was at the Gare St.Lazare train station in 1932 and captures a man trying to jump over a puddle. The photo uses the rule of thirds, with the man jumping over the puddle being in the last third of the image and the man standing in the background being in the middle third of the image.

The photo is in back and white and contains no colour but there is still good a contrast between black and white, especially in the reflections in the water. Furthermore the Water also gives the bottom half of the image a smooth texture which contrasts with the top of the railings in the background, as the top of the railings look quite sharp and pointy.

There is a bit of shape in the photo. The roofs in the background create a triangular shape which makes the photo more interesting to look at compared to if the roofs were flat. The railings/fences in the photo create diagonal lines which gives the photo a bit more depth. They also help distinguish between the foreground and background of the photo.