My book consists of images that I have taken of the Womens Rights March in London on the 19th of January 2019, alongside screenshots I have taken from articles online writing about not only the Womens March in London but also about the marches that happened all across the world on the same day. I think this brings a unity between them all and shows that things like this are not just close to home, they happen everywhere, and we are all part of it. Some of the quotes didn't necessarily link to Womens Rights on first glance but in reality they are all linked in some way. I also included Twitter posts that people had put up showing the marches all over the world and what people are doing for them.
The Dummy
I created a very rough dummy of my book, showing which pictures I want to include and in what order. This helps me see what I need to change and develop to make it more effective. I thought closesly about what images I would pair together and with what text, so that they related in some way. I also thought about what order I wanted them to be in, grouping together the posts about different countries and making it easier to look at. I feel my book went well because I thought closely about how I wanted it to be laid out and what would make the reader gain the most from it. I purposefully included some images readers might find funny, such as the dogs, but also tried to portray a serious message, the message that these women are trying to get across.
At the end of my book I included the only text that I had typed up myself, 'Bread&Roses'. This name came from a speech given by Rose Schneiderman, addressing a crowd of mostly privileged women, following the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, one of the deadliest industrial disasters in U.S. history, killing 146 workers, 123 of which where women aged between 14 and 23. Rose told the crowd that the woman who labours has "the right to life as the rich woman has to life. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with". This happened in 1911, 7 years before women got the vote and 8 years after Emily Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union, the rise of womens suffrage. It is this that the march was focused around and the organisation stated on Twitter that it is to support "equality, justice and to end austerity". I wanted to reflect the message that so many people, men and women alike, had joined together to share and reinforce.
To improve my book, I need to look closer at how I will create it and the format I will present it in. This is important because it will help to reflect the message in a different, more interesting way, engaging the readers attention. I will also look at putting more of my photographs that I took in the book, to give a wider view of what was going on throughout the march and the different types of people who were there to support it.
Experimentation
I experimented with different ways I could present my aspects in my photobook. One of these was to print my text onto lined paper to make it stand out a bit more and indicate that it was a report. I like the effect on lined paper, however I decided to experiment a bit further and invert the text on the paper. I did this by taking a picture of the printed text and the uploading it to photoshop and inverting it. After printing them both out I was able to look at how each might work and on what type of background.
My Final Book
I think my final book went well and I got the effect I wanted. It took me a little while to decide what my best option would be and how I wanted to present it but I feel I have achieved what I was looking for. When I first made my dummy, everything was very 2dimensional and I wanted to find a way to make the text stand out and show that it wasn't just text that I myself had written out. I wasn't entirely sure on the best way to do this because all my texts came from online so it wasn't like newspaper clippings where I could just stick them in. Eventually I decided to print the quotes on lined paper because I felt that perhaps this would give more of the effect that I had taken them from somewhere/cut them out, not just written them myself. I thought about the placement of images together and what text to pair it with. I feel the placement of images is very important because it can create a different feel to the book and make more of an impact, for example where I placed a quote stating a march was called off over fears it would be "overwhelmingly white" next to an image of a black woman marching. I feel that some of my images came out a bit dark so to fix this I would need to increase the brightness before printing. This is something I didn't identify before printing the final book, but would definitely improve for next time. I made sure to include a variety of different types of images, both closeups and ones taken further away. This helped the reader to see the scale of the protest and how many people were there, but also engage with the individuals who were part of it. I think the book would however have benefited from a few different types of pictures, perhaps of portraits of other people and individual views on the situation happening around us. I feel that while this would have moved part of the focus away from the protest, it would really make the audience think about other peoples points of views and challenge and question their own thoughts and feelings.
Overall I feel my photobook came out well and I am happy with what I have made. While I feel it could need some improving, I do think that it portrays my message and gives people insight into the issues we are currently facing. After doing lots of research into the different types of photobooks and the way I could create mine, I think I have made the right decisions as to what my book looks like and how it was made. I will however continue to look into ways to experiment further with my projects and push my limits and boundaries.