Collaboration: Sequencing

VISUAL LITERACY which shows how some photographers have allowed colour to influenece the sequencing and pairing of the photos in their books. This is something that we had decided would be the best way to sequence Kristinas photos because if we sectioned it into the different areas that the people are from for example, then it would become very repetitive and unengaging and stimulating for the reader of the book. 

Sanne De Wilde 

The Island of the Colorblind.

"The Island of the Colorblind.In the late eighteenth century a catastrophic typhoon swept over Pingelap, a tiny atoll in the Pacific Ocean. One of the sole survivors, the king, carried the rare achromatopsia-gen that causes complete colorblindness. The king went on to have many children and as time passed by, the hereditary condition affected the isolated community and most islanders started seeing the world in black and white.Achromatopsia is characterized by extreme light sensitivity, poor vision, and complete inability to distinguish colors. Achromats in Federated States of Micronesia adapt to their reduced level of visual functioning (due lack of recourses like sunglasses and tinted lenses) by using visual strategies such as blinking, squinting, shielding their eyes, or positioning themselves in relation to light sources.Portraying the islanders that by their fellow Micronesians are described as ‘blind’ resulted in a conceptual selection of images that mask their eyes, their face, or their ‘vision’ and at the same time invites the viewer to enter a dreamful world painted by colorless and colorful possibilities. Color is just a word to those who cannot see it. What if the colorblind people paint with their mind, how would they color the world, the trees, themselves. Initiating my visual research in FSM I tried to find ways to envision how people with achromatopsia see the world. I tried to see the island through their eyes. Daylight is to bright to bear, moonlight turns night into day, colors dance around in shades we cannot imagine. Imagine flames lighting up in black and white, trees turning pink, waves of grey. A rainbow revisited. The islanders often refer to green as their favourite color, growing up in a lush environment, living in the jungle. But green is also the color that the most common kind of colorblindness (deutaranomaly, five out of 100 males) can’t distinguish. I learned that the color the islanders say to ‘see’ most is red."

Lorenzo Vitturi - Dalston Anatomy

"Dalston Anatomy is a book project, a multi-layered installation, and a visual celebration of the Ridley Road Market in East London. Vitturi recognised the market as a unique place where ‘different cultures merge together in a celebration of life, diversity and unstoppable energy’ and was inspired to capture this place before it transformed beyond recognition.

Residing in the area for over seven years, Vitturi visited the market daily and witnessed the local community, economy and the very nature of the market changing around him with striking acceleration. From this complicated process of transformation stems Vitturi’s compulsion to collect and picture the objects found at the market.

The objects were left to rot, manipulated with pigment or deconstructed and then rearranged in compositions and photographed against discarded market materials before and after their collapse. The ephemeral nature of these sculptures mirrors the impermanent nature of the market itself, while the reconstruction and placement of these totem-objects in the exhibition space reflects on constant cycles of production, destruction and recreation."

Taking this researchon board we began tolook at the pairings and orders that we could lace theimages within the book. This was achieved by having each of the photographs physically printed so that we could lay them out into groups, figure 1. The process was long and very well thought out because Kristina had to choose the strongestimages first so that these couldbe the full bleed images of the ones that wouldnot be paired with any other image. The ones left over would then need to be paired based on the colours within the image. We also experimented with the placement of the food images which then played a big part in the sequencing as these were the most colourful images, meaning that the others were then placed accordingly.

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The food imagery is much more colourful than the portraits which have a high percentage of black. Continuing with the sequencing based on colour, each of the food images being used were paired with a portrait which matched in terms of colour. Figure 2 shows a pairing that we made and the process in which we did it, was by laying out the printed images and then checking on screen that they matched as closely as they did when printed. Figures 3 and 4 show the different ways in which we tried to place them together still in keeping with the  layout of the rest of the book. As it was a new type of photo and pairing it seemed important to try out a new type of image layout. The portrait was placed on the left in figure 3 as it will be seen first, but then the readers attention will be left on the right full bleed page of food. This is effective and encourges the reader to think what relevance the placement of this food within the book has and how the lives of the Balinese are impacted by how they get food and the amount that is available etc. We then thought about layering the photos so that the food would be a double page spread and then the portrait would layer over the top on the left. Initially we liked this a lot, but then we came back to it a few times and decided that figure 2 worked better visually and conceptually. 

fig. 4

As an experiment we reduced the size of the food image (fig. 4) so that it matched the layout for the rest of the book to see if it had the same impact. As it is the introduction of a new element we decided that this would have more of an impact if it took on a new layout design style. 

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Figures 5 show the other pairings in the style that we decided to use, effectively taking the colour from the food and then looking for this within the portrait that it is paired with. 

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Figure 6 shows an image that Kristina decided would need to be one of the full bleed images because it is one of her stronger images. The placement of the subjects within the image has proven to be a problem in terms of the margins and the centre of the book. The woman on the right would be lost in the margin of the book. Figure 7 shows a solution to this problem, moving the image across to the right so that the text can then be on the left. This does work, but in terms of the conventions of a book it breaks it but without a strong enough reason to do so. 

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Figure 8 shows the comparison of the text being left aligned vs. right aligned, proving that the right aligned text visually works better for the compostion of the images on the page and reads easier.