Background research on Peckham
Around the start of the 19th century, Peckham was a small village that was surrounded by fields. The Grand Surrey Canal was used to get to Portsmouth from the Thames. It was built from Surrey Commercial Docks to Peckham before the builders ran out of funds in 1826. They used to ship wood for construction. It was then brained and backfilled during 1970. Peckham never used to be an administrative district until the 19th century, when Rye Lane was one of the most important shopping streets in south London. The area now consists of people from different multicultural backgrounds.
Statistics for ethnic groups in Peckham from the 2011 Census:
- 50.4% Black/African/Caribbean
- 29.2% White
- 9.1% Asian
- 7.1% Mixed/multiple ethnic groups
- 4.3% Other ethnic groupFirst reccie to Peckham
On the 15th October me and my group went on our first reccie to Peckham to explore and discover the area and take some photos. We went to places such as Rye Lane, Peckham levels, Peckham library and Surrey Canal Walk (which used to be The Grand Surrey Canal). We also explored buildings where small studios and cafes were held in as well as different clubs that were run by locals.
After visiting Peckham we decided to do some research on the peace wall because we found it interesting since the messages that were written on it were from the locals that live there. Reading their messages on the wall gave us ideas and inspiration of what kind of images we want to take for the project.
The peace wall was started by four members of Peckham Shed Theatre Company. After the incident with the broken window outside Poundland, a board was placed to cover the window and people wrote on post-it notes about their emotions on the situation and their feelings about Peckham. When it came to replacing the window, people did not want the art of the original peace wall to go. So then the permanent peace wall was made which is next to Peckham Library.
Artist inspiration 1: Alex Prager
We wanted to base our images on the peace wall but we didn’t know how. Then I remembered one of Alex Prager’s projects, which is a photographer we saw during one of the Photographers Gallery exhibitions we went to see. Her project ‘’Compulsion’’ was what inspired me to use the post-it notes as part of our work. She uses different eyes that pair with a specific image and we wanted to use that idea by us picking a post-it we like from the peace wall and base our image on that note we picked and put our post-it note next to our final images.
Artist inspiration 2: Banksy
Banksy is an anonymous street artist. His work surrounds the topics of dark humour, political and social commentary. His works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world. The reason I looked into Banksy is because I wanted to do research on vandalism and graffiti since there are constant debates on Banksy and if he's a vandal or not. In my opinion he should not be considered as a vandal because his work can benefit this society where the media hides the truth and covers it up with news that does not benefit us such as drama within celebrities. Banksy shows important meaningful messages in his work which is what I respect about him as an artist.
Artist inspiration 3: Nicholas Goodden
Nicholas Goodden is a photographer and writer based in London that specialises in visual content for global brands including FTSE100 companies. I liked his graffiti images because he takes images of graffiti that is bright and bold which stands out in streets. Goodden has shown the positive aspects of graffiti by collaborating with adidas ultra boost and take photographs with graffiti in the background of the images he took for the shoe collection. Can could allow people to be more open about graffiti and not consider it as vandalism.
Second reccie to Peckham
We went on another reccie to Peckham on the 8th November. This reccie was more clear because we had our post-it notes picked so we knew what kind of images we wanted to take, whereas during the first reccie we were just taking images of whatever was there since we didn’t have a clear idea of what images we were going to take. My post-it note says ''We should keep the community spirit, we must not encourage vandalism.'' I decided to take images of graffiti around Peckham and random stickers that were stuck on public property.
Rosie McGinn: World's Strongest Man
4 November- 12 December Picnic Gallery
When we were on our reccie to Peckham, we wanted to explore the area so we went into a small shopping centre and saw Rosie McGinn's World's Strongest Man.
Editing
The total of images that I took in Peckham was above 230. During our editing session in class I first edited it down to 23 images. Then I edited it down again to 10 images.
I edited the images down again further to 5 then to 3 images.
After editing our images further down we decided to do some rough diagrams of potential ways of displaying our work.
Class reccie to Peckham Levels (curating)
We went to Peckham Levels to know where each group's work will be allocated and measuring how much space we will be taking on the wall. For my group we used 350cm of the wall, it was originally meant to be 250cm but we needed more space so we added on a bit. We needed to see how we were going to order our images because one of the images were portrait so we needed to try out different ordering to see where the portrait image would look best. we decided to put it between two landscapes. The images are going to be 84cm x 60cm since we are going to be printing in A1. We are also going to be adding out post-it notes next to our images since that's what our images were based on.
Group statement
After curating we decided to start writing up our group statement so we have an idea of what we are going to write. Then we chose a day to complete the statement. We chose to do this on google drive because we could see what everyone was doing and there was a chat on the side where we can communicate with each other allowing us to help each other out. We tried writing it out in different formats but then we decided that our original area was the best fit for the exhibition.
Instagram takeover
Instagram is one of the best ways for a photographer to promote and share their work to the world. Each of us had an allocated day and time to post three images on the Ravensbourne photography Instagram account. We decided that it would be best to post our post-it notes alongside the other two images and make all of our notes be in the middle so it looks neat and organised. I added hashtags related to the exhibition and our group area (Peckham). To spread the word around about our exhibition we also put posters around our university for other students to see and come and our own social media accounts.
Printing our images
Before printing our final images for our exhibition, we retouched them. For retouching I changed the blues in my image to green with the selective colour tool on photoshop, I also enhanced the giraffe's colour by changing it to bright orange using the selective colour tool as well. Another thing I did was increasing the contrast using the curve tool. We then changing the image size to A1 on photoshop since that's the size we wanted all our images to be. The image on the left is the original and the image on the right is the retouched version.
