Budding artists present photographs at St. James Centre

Saturday 15 April 2017

A group of six young photographers is holding an exhibition, named "Six Seasons" at St. James Youth Centre after they spent the week working with Tanja Deman, Archisle International Photographer Residence.

Known for her imaginary landscapes, Tanja Deman spent the week with the six budding photographs and took them around the Island to teach them photographic and photo collage skills.

Tanja took the young artists around the Island, from the harbour to Plemont as well as Beauport Bay, Noirmont and Grosnez. Places she said "...show the cultural and geological heritage of the Island, while portraying it in a very picturesque way."

At the opening of the exhibition, the artist told Express: "This is excellent. I think all of the students have found their own voice. We all went to the same locations and each came up with something different."

From landscapes to close-ups of poppies or pigeons, to surreal photo montages, and from black and white to coloured photographs, it is true the six students - Leon Brown; Leah Finch, Alex King, Kieran Lee, Jude Luce and Jasmine Therin - came up with a variety of point of views. Each also took something different from the experience.

Kieran Lee (17) explained: "I didn't want my week to go to waste, so I put it to good use and signed up for the workshop. Tanja was a lovely person to work with and she taught me a lot about manual settings on the camera. I also hadn't been to Beauport before so it was really fun."

Leah Finch, whose photograph was used on the exhibition flyer learned more about the work that goes into the photograph before you actually press the shutter. "Tanja gave us a lot of advice. She told us to think about how we feel about the place and how we want our photographs to look like. I hadn't realized that before, it helps give a different meaning to the photographs. I learned how to work backwards from what I want the photograph to look like to the actual shot!"

Archisle Photographers in residence run workshops with different audiences during their time in Jersey something that Leah thinks is really positive. "Jersey is a small place so it is really good to have different advice from different people." She, like others, is already thinking about joining the next workshop. Jonny Briggs; who is this year's second photographer in Residence, will be running one from 29 May to 2 June.

The "Six Seasons" exhibition is open today (Saturday) from 12:00 to 15:00.