Assignment 5: my brief

My client is the London Irish Centre (LIC).  The centre is based in the heart of Camden Town and looks after the welfare needs of new immigrants to London.  Over the years its work has grown and it has become a ‘home from home’ for all things Irish in the capital.  In 2014 LIC will be celebrating its 60^th birthday and as part of those celebrations they have commissioned me to provide images for an exhibition at the centre.  These images will also be published in a 60^th birthday celebration book. 

The purpose of the assignment is primarily educational.  The exhibition needs to explore the Irish people’s contribution to London looking at how and why they came to the city, the work they did and their daily lives.  Is there a lasting legacy from the first migrants to the city? It should also examine how the immigrants became part of their new society and the challenges they often faced – prejudice, poverty and discrimination. 

In keeping with the celebration of LIC’s birthday this piece of work needs to be a celebration of Irishness and the complex history of immigration to London.  The migrant’s story needs to be told – the positives and the negatives.   The story has to be accurate and informative so both Irish and non-Irish will get something from the images. 

It is essential that the images take on a hint of nostalgia and capture some of the essence of what it is like to leave your home and become foreign.  This project is not looking at the state of immigration today but at the history of Irish migration to London. 

Next steps

After reading the brief I started planning the project in more detail and produced a more specific outline for this work.  I made a decision to use text alongside the images to further enhance the concepts I want to communicate to the public. 

These are the themes I set out to explore:

·         The New Departure.  Leaving home, the home that was left behind. 

·         Tools of the trade – tailors and construction workers

·         Building the country’s infrastructure – canals, railways and roads

·         Famine and the potato

·         Drinking culture

·         Music and the craic

·         Prejudice

·         Religion

In addition to the images I decided that text would accompany the images to enhance the narrative.  The text would come from a variety of sources including song lyrics/poetry to political quotations.

 

I chose not to include people themselves as subjects in my images preferring to focus on the aspects of their lives and their belongings.  I felt that this would enable me to build a better picture from an historical perspective.  Without people, there is a sense of timelessness to the images.  They are harder to date.  I also felt that I could focus the viewer’s attention would be distracted by people and modern settings. 

In line with this, I chose to produce a series of black and white images.  I felt that the historical setting I wanted to create would be better achieved in monochrome.  Our history books are full of black and white images and I wanted to copy that effect. 

By avoiding the use of colour I feel that the viewers will be better able to focus on the subjects.  I want to create a dark mood in the images and I feel that black and white will better equip me to do this.  Colour can evoke moods and I wanted the images and the subjects to be able to stand alone and be more hard hitting. 

Another point is that colour fades with time like our memories and when we reflect and look back on our lives we rarely see events clearly with every colourful detail. These images are presented in a form of flashback to the past, the viewer is shown a series of memories from the past.