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.
