Photography Inspiration: Jamie Shovlin

After pages and pages of annotations, with hundreds of photographs and detailed edits; it's safe to say my photography exam has spiraled out of control, unaware of my power I have created a shocking tale of truth and mysterious fictions.

With this monster of a piece my teacher steered me in the direction Jamie Shovlin to clean up the beautiful mess I made.

The above photo is an example of his work, entitled, 'Naomi V Jelish'. A fictional character of Jamie's imagination, her life story told as if it were true.

"Naomi V Jelish's life story is one of pathos and tragedy. 

Her strange tale is explained to visitors on labels, in newspaper cuttings, photographs, school reports and through personal mementoes. 

Naomi showed great aptitude for art in the face of complete indifference from her family and school. But in 1991, a few months after her father drowned, Naomi, then 13, her mother, and her four siblings mysteriously walked out of the family home in Gravesend, Kent, and despite extensive police inquiries, none of them has been seen or heard of again. A cutting from the Kent Messenger discloses that in September 1990 Naomi won "the prestigious North Kent Student Art Prize". 

In August the following year the paper reported that police were concerned because the family had vanished. Neighbours said the family seemed "cursed". David Jelish, the head of the family and a road mender with Kent county council, had drowned while saving one of the children, another child had recently survived electrocution and Vanessa, the children’s mother, was suffering from a stress-related illness following the death of her youngest son in 1989. 

A book accompanying the display at the Saatchi Gallery goes on to say that Naomi’s precocious drawings were recovered from the abandoned house some time later by the late John Ivesmail, a science teacher at Naomi’s school who had befriended the family. Though beguiled by her sketches, he waited until 1999 to show them in a small exhibition in Gravesend. 

Soon after, he passed Naomi’s pictures to a friend, a young artist called Jamie Shovlin, who curated an exhibition of the drawings, along with all Jelish memorabilia recovered from their house and the newspaper cuttings. 

The story of Naomi is moving, but it is a hoax, the products of the imagination of Shovlin, 25, from Leicester, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, who spent three years creating the fantasy. 
He produced the drawings, the cuttings, the school reports et al in order, as he explained, "to test the boundaries of ambiguity". 

Naomi V Jelish and John Ivesmail are anagrams of Jamie Shovlin. 

Text by Nigel Reynolds"

Such great ideas from imaginary women, might give it a go.

Joyfully Light

Things That Made Me Smile This Week

Some of the Fun Things From My Week

Music: Whether it was on the bus at full volume on the way to school; whilst writing this blog post or during photoshoots at school, music has been occurring a lot lately. From Hozier to Halsey, My Chemical Romance and Blur. The choices have been endless thanks to the new earphones I kindly received. Fancy a listen?

Photography.  Halsey - Drive, this one is a great tune for long journeys and has inspired some of the pictures that I'm using in my photography exam. These first few photographs were not taken by me, but of me. Captured by my talented sister, who's idea it was to take the pictures like this. She was inspired by similar images on the internet. Kate used a bright hard light with thick red tissue paper over the top, it was precarious and shot in the school corridors because the studio was in use. Not at all glamorous, with this particular shoot being in a double lesson it meant half way through there would be a flood of students walking past us. Halsey - Hold Me Down, this song is one of Halsey's classics that came from her first ep Room 93. Halsey - Colours, when you listen to this imagine it, all the colours, painted in my photography book. That's what I've done, the starting point of the exam that I chose was called, 'Here and Now'. I chose it because out of the seven or eight there was to choose from this one gave me the most freedom. Halsey - Young God, this one is fitting because I had the opportunity and creative freedom to pretty much do as I pleased, with in reason of course. So I quickly got to work painting my passions and capturing the world around me. For the Here side of the exam I was going for 19th century mugshots and trying to display the lives of the people who were less privileged than myself. Also showing that these people in history that have shaped our past, that they exist. This is because the people examining my work may have forgotten the lives of those who came long before them. As for the Now I've gone for a more modern and colourful tumblr song lyrics approach like the photographs here. All of the inspirational images come from pinterest and instagram for now, but I haven't seen tumblrs offerings yet so some might come from there later in the exam. Credit for anything that isn't mine of course goes to the original owner/ photographer.

Hidden Gems. Center Parcs the annual adventure into the woods. This year I took my camera, I've only just looked through them and here are some of my favourites. Halsey - Strange Love, have a listen to one of my favourite songs to go with these different photographs. The second one was a portrait photo but they always look better landscape, so if you really want it the other way round - just turn your head and look at it. Halsey - Is There Somewhere, because I couldn't care less if you think I should have turned that picture around and it's a song that doesn't seem to care. as well as a very good song, Well Done Halsey!

Badlands. It's been one of the biggest inspirations for my mocks, photography, the mood, themes, the emotion and all of it. Take a look.

"Hello, and I'm sorry

A salutation and a farewell

I don't have much time

This Times New Roman is going to fly from my fingertips like a plague of moths

The hollow black letter shells crunched into the ground like the skin of a cicada

This is all that's left, and you can do whatever you want with it

Keep it to yourself or let it serve as a warning

This city is disgusting; a corpse of what it used to be

The people are filthy, gluttonous

Ruled by the power exchange of sex from the hands of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie

The tops of the skylines buzz with the lacklustre enthusiasm

The ground level is caked in dirt and rust and grime

And the people that dwell there wake and rub the filmy layer off their lukewarm eyes

There are some here I love

Some who fear me

And some who wish I was dead

I didn't ask for this

No one asks for this

You're born into it

You grow up oblivious and sheltered

And one day the evil realities of this place hit you square between the eyes like a perfectly aimed bullet

If this were a movie

I would ride off in some blood red sunset down a stretch of desert road into the wasteland that keeps us captive here

But this isn't a movie

These are the BADLANDS...."

More photoshoots coming your way, soon.

Joyfully Light

To The Golden Age

The Edits

The beauties were taken by Kate and I over a three day period, you know the stories, the fashion and the laughs but you might not have seen. The Edits.

Taken from my new instagram account @historyphot0s.

Short but sweet, feel free to follow my new account.

Joyfully Light

Nature in Photographs

Flowers and Animals

That  was going to be the title but i thought the nature one sounded a bit better. The flowers were from last week when Kate and I went to an old stately home and gardens. It was extremely hot and there was chickens in the car park. We weren't allowed to film or take photographs inside the house but you could in the gardens, hence these lovely flower pictures. The animals were from a country walk into town with Kate. We went on a quiet public footpath through the farms and fields. I don't have as many pictures of the animals because Kate kept jumping into the shot, also because it was very warm so we didn't stop for long.

Do you like these daily blog posts?

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