Extra layer

I still feel like the work needs another layer in it to smooth it all out a little bit. I think that a photo of the sea would help to smooth the sky and the sea and kind of merge it all into one. I don't want all of the layers to stand out as being layers so they need to merge together a little more.

I have this image:

Which I Photoshopped the boat and birds out of to make this:

Which sits perfectly as a merging layer to smooth things out and make it look a lot neater. It makes the colours more milky which stop one standing out more than another.

Extra layers

Looking back through my images of the roots trip and gambia, 2 things stood out as being important. Most of the images I took were of the trees and relics of the island as that is what interested me and engaged me at the time. However I also took these 2 images:

 I can't remember what this flag stood for and I can't find it online - I'm an idiot and my brain is like a sieve at the moment. But it was joined with a statue which represented the end of slavery, so it is something to do with the abolition of slavery and a symbol that The Gambian people would not be slaves again. This is a really important thing to The Gambians, as well as important to the roots tour and the history of the town and island. Therefore, it links in really well to this piece of work.

The island still has these cannons around the edge of the island, which are obviously not needed but are an integral piece of history linked to the island. I pressume that they are the same ones that were there when the slaves were there, but nobody told us that and we weren't told any different. They are eroding, but I thought they were quite beautiful pieces of work and created a juxtaposition against the idyllic seascape.



When I placed both of these images into the work, it created a distinct line down the middle of the tree. I didn't want to stretch either image to full size, so i placed them both on one sheet. I really didn't like that the join was so visible through the tree, so I edited them in Photoshop so that it was just the cannon and the flag.

This works much better like this because there are no protruding lines down the middle of the page looking ugly. It is more smooth and when layered it looks a lot neater and more considered. 

Too thin..

If my work is just the 2 layers of fabric and a layer of text on the middle then it will be really really thin and will probably look a bit crap to be honest.
I need to find things to bulk it out a little bit. It needs to be things that are related to the island and the slaves and important to it all the support the imagery that is already there.
If I add something to it that is not related or important then it will completely change the meaning of the project.
I need to look back through the images that I took again and see what stands out.

Decision

I have decided that the front and back of the piece will be the main tree image printed on fabric. It will create a sort of sandwich with them both and all the layers will be trapped inside.

I am still trying to figure out how I will join it together. Perhaps if the front and back in fabric I could sew them together, this will literally trap the layers inside. However, it takes away the ability for viewers to handle it and see the layers individually.

But.. the more I create of it the more precious I think it is becoming, the layers being fabric and acetate will be quite fragile I think and so if people are touching it multiple times, will it get ruined really quickly ? Especially the acetate, there will be finger marks all over it which will show up all the time when the light is on it.

Maybe my idea will have to change slightly so that it is just one piece, and cannot be taken apart.
After all.. it is representing The Gambian people who I said hide their 'layers' so if it is representing them and they don't show them perhaps it should be the same in my work that you can't see the layers.

Text

I read through the first half of 'Roots' again and marked all of the pages that mentioned the Baobab trees. This is because the Baobab trees are the main point of the piece, they are what drew my attention to the island so instantly because they are what have been there since the slaves. 

I was surprised when I realized that there are only 9 pages which mentions the trees. The book however doesn't talk very much about the island that I visited, because it was only a holding place so the slaves were quickly shipped in and out of there, from where they were captured to the slave owners who were purchasing them. 

 

I scanned them all in and then using Photoshop I cropped down so that I  could join them together to make one page of text to layer into the work.

The way that the printers work in university, I had to print onto paper and then photocopy onto the acetate. These are some of the test prints:

The first one I tried just randomly placing them on the page.

I didn't really like it like this because there is not really any structure, the rest of the piece is really structured and it looked a bit odd with the text randomly placed. It looked pretty thoughtless.

 

 The second image, I placed the text into columns on either side of the page, so that when it is layered with the other images the text would sit around the tree.
This worked a lot better than the randomly placed text.

To make it stand out more under the layers I circled the word 'Boabab' with a red ring each time it is on the page. I like the way that this looks because it just makes it bolder than the rest of the text and under the other layers it brings back the meaning of the work.

Change of idea made clear

I have just finished writing my dissertation, and it has really struck me and made me consider a lot of things. I really want to respond to this through my practical project. I hope that my dissertation and practical work will sit alongside each other and sort of answer one another.

In my dissertation I talked about and researched how African children are portrayed and stereotyped through the media in the Western world. To be honest, the whole thing really touched a nerve with me and just got me so wound up. I think this is a good thing though, because now I want to react to it, and I want to do something to change it. I think that because I have been to Africa twice now, I have really made a connection to the place and the children. Seeing the same people both times I went, I feel like they are my friends now and naturally when you hear or read something bad about your friend it gets your back up and you want to defend them.
Well.. this is how I feel and through my images I want to do them justice, I want to show the children in a way that is truthful, but also makes people not feel sorry for them, I don't want somebody to look at my images and say 'aww, poor children.' I want them to say 'wow those children are beautiful.' Am I making sense?

I just feel so passionate about this and I want to get it across visually.

The children are happy, they may not have the things that we have but their okay with that because they don't know any difference. Well they didn't until Westerners started visiting and showing them difference and making them feel like they are being felt sorry for. The children play with what they have available to play with, we might not find it safe.. but is that because our government has put in place so many health and safety regulations that we are scared to do anything at all.. they don't have health and safety officers breathing down their necks on everything. They're food might not be 5* but they don't need it to be, they are happy just having some food to eat.. whatever it might be. Whilst out there, I never heard a single child moan about the food that they were given to eat, or about what they were wearing because they just were so thankful and grateful to have what they do have. Again, they don't know any different. They all live in close-knit villages where everything is shared and they pretty much are one family. It is not like their friend has something and they can get jealous, no, they all share everything. And they all live in the same conditions so no house is bigger or better than another, they are just the same. To be honest, pretty much identical - because they are literally just shells - 4 walls, a floor and a roof. That's it - oh and a blanket on the floor to lay on when it's bed time.

It's a totally different way of life, but that doesn't make it wrong. The standards of living are just, different!

I want to show this in my work... the only difference visually between my images of Gambian children, compared with a project of British school children.. is that the children in my photographs are Gambian and live in Africa.

Back to it

I have to confess that this work has taken rather a backseat over the past couple weeks because all of my attention has been on getting my dissertation finished and handed in.

Now that that has been handed in, I am ready to get back into this project and get my final piece made. This I think is the most exciting part, it's the fun part. Its the part when you can physically see it all coming together and it is really really exciting.

Gathering information about the children

I am still in contact with many of the teachers that work in the schools where I photographed the children whilst I was in The Gambia. I have emailed them the photographs of some of the children and have asked them to provide me with the child's name and possibly age or school year.
I would like to use that information as the caption with each photograph and for those children that are from the villages and surrounding areas, it would be too difficult without returning to find out that information so I will possibly use quotes from the people I have sent questions too, or something from the charity mission statements or from my dissertation research.

Hopefully I will be successful in that and be able to provide names for the photographs. This will also add the connection between image and viewer I hope. It will allow the viewer to know that small bit of information about the child they are looking at to make that slight connection.

Contact Sheet

 

These are all of the portrait images I have to choose from. There is a total of 99. Some of them cannot be used because they have one of the volunteer group members in the background, this gives a sense of 'the other' which I don't want to obviously portray. Although it will come through in a small sense if people know that I, the photographer am white and female. There will always be that lingering over the image but I hope that it does not over power the images.

Some of them the children are slightly blurred or are not really smiling, more looking puzzled or just blank emotions. They look very similar to the images we see day to day of African children, which I don't want to show as part of my project. 

I will sort through these images and get rid of the ones that I know I definitely don't want to use in this instance, and then will spend time with those that are left and make a decision on the strongest images.