After the review...

So Wednesday we had a review day, which was extremely helpful, even though I was nervous as hell! But I took in my tracing paper maps I've been working on, which consist of coloured dots for peoples houses and lines between them indicating that families path of houses as it were. Lecturers seemed to like it and understood what I was getting at, but unsure of exactly what I was going to do next. One lecturer said they almost looked like constellations, which really made me excited as I LOVE space! It completely fascinates me and I love to just think about it and how uncomprehendingly big it is! So I started to think about this and quite a few ideas have popped into my head as to what I can do next now. I'm in the process of scanning in my tracing paper "constellations" and have been playing with putting them on top of existing family photographs, although I'm not sure about the results (I would have put an image on here but it's not letting me for some reason).

Another idea that has come to me has been to pierce holes through existing negatives of the family and try to print them. I have no idea how this will turn out but it's worth a try, and the results could be interesting. It also means using the darkrooms which I havent done in a long time but I may as well use them while I have the chance.

The third idea I have is to create these constellations on black paper by piercing them with a pin and putting them in a lightbox (or a window for now just to test) and see what it looks like. If this works then making an entire "night sky" of my families house paths could look really good.

I'm really glad my lecturer mentioned the space thing as now I can involve a real passion of mine into my work. Not that photography isn't a passion, but space is just...woah!

Third interview and email response!

Third interview with my mums sister done today. Meant to get one done with my nan as well today but she was out. Will do it later this week. But the interview went well, going with much the same trends as I mentioned in my last post. These being meeting in the Working Men's Club, and then moving outside the area and back again.

And the email response was from my Uncle (on Dad's side) in Southampton who I don't see a lot. Found out some good stuff from him also, including how he ended up in Southampton instead of in the Leigh Park/Havant/Portsmouth area, and also that my cousin now lives in France with her partner and young baby. Turns out that not everyone met in the working men's club either! My uncle was working in Currys, and my auntie began working as a Saturday girl and his workmates bet him that he wouldn't ask her out, and he did.

Have emailed another auntie on my dads side, and will email my other uncle as soon as I find out his email address from my auntie. Then it's just my nan to interview and I'm done on the interview front.

Visually, I'm still working on my map with the dots, considering using different layers of tracing paper or acetate for the individual families within the whole family. I'll experiment and see what happens. Getting a huge pin board tomorrow as well so should be able to work better with the map being on that.

That's all for today!

Second Interview

Second interview went well this afternoon. Finding a few trends already, even though this is only the second interview! For example my parents met in the Working Mens Club in Leigh Park, and so did my aunt and uncle. After telling this to my mum, she then told me my other aunt and uncle on this side of the family also met there.

Also found out that my uncle's parents met in much the same way as the aunt and uncle that we don't speak to anymore did, with his dad being in the navy, being stationed in portsmouth and then met his partner (my uncles mum) while there. Funny how being in a naval area makes people meet in extremely similar ways like that. And also where the Working Mens Club is, is at the end of the road my mum and her sisters grew up in, hence why most of them met their spouses there I suppose.

Another thing cropping up is people moving away into the portsmouth area because the rents are cheap, and then when people decide to have children, then moving back into the Leigh Park area for the bigger houses.

Funny how people follow the same paths in life, no matter how different they are.

Family Mapping

Here are a few photos of my "family map" as it stands. I've done it all today and had much fun with sticky dots! The coloured dots are:

• Red - Mums side of the family
• Green - Dads side of the family
• Blue - Mum and Dads separate birth homes and family homes
• Yellow - Mum and Dads houses together and my family houses (ie. our current house and also my brother and fiances house)

The areas shown here are Leigh Park (where most of the dots are), Waterlooville, Cosham, Gosport, Portsmouth and Southsea. I shall be getting colour photocopies of the street map I've been using soon to make the same thing with the map underneath, however I'm liking the "blank map" at the moment.

I will start to draw some lines between all these dots soon to link people together such as each of the separate families within my whole family, which house people grew up in etc. Let the spiders web begin!

I'm also going to look for a large pin board to put this on as I think it'll be a nice idea to link it all with threads of varying colours instead of drawn on lines which could end up looking messy. But I will experiment with drawn on ones untill then.

First interview complete!

I have just conducted my first interview with my family, this one being with my parents. Was actually quite nervous to do it weirdly, but now I have the first one out of the way the rest should follow soon. (Probably nervous because I was recording it and didn't want to hear my own voice to be honest.)

Very glad that the Dictaphone seems to work fabulously! Well except when the cat decided to jump on it and make it all muffly for a second or two. But hey couldn't exactly shut the cats out for it...not for an hour! Plus they are part of the family so they count!

Was successful and found out lots of information that I didn't actually know before, such as the family name "Smith" only came about because my Grandad Smiths Grandad, I think it was, had the middle name of "Melrose" which had something to do with the navy, which he was in. He decided he hated the navy, so moved into the army and changed his name to "Smith" hoping he wouldn't get caught. But apparently he did get caught and in those days, that was seen as treason so he got publicly hung. But ever since then, the family name was "Melrose-Smith" but my grandad decided to drop the "Melrose" bit when it came to his own kids.

Also found out that my parents have only ever moved as far as Southsea in Portsmouth, and then came back to Leigh Park because they needed a bigger place because my Mum was expecting my brother, so they applied for a council place and ended up back in Leigh Park, closer to the family again. And also found out that if I was a boy, then they wouldn't have moved out of that place as it would have been OK for two boys to be in the same room together, whereas because I was a girl, it wasn't, therefore they moved to the house that I then grew up in for eighteen years.

There is so much more information that I found out in my hour (yes a whole hour) long interview and I hope that the next ones with other members of the family such as Aunties and Uncles will reveal more.

So I'm very pleased this is all underway now!

Questions to ask family members

Here are some of the questions I want to ask my family before I head back to Uni in January. I'm sure will arise during the interviews but these are just a starter.

• Where are all partners of blood relatives originally from?
• Has anyone moved to the area from somewhere else?
• Where are grandparents originally from?
• How did partners meet? Where?
• Has anyone ever lived anywhere else? Where? When? Why?
• Has anyone ever had a job or career outside of the area?
• Where did family members go to school?
• Has anyone ever wanted to live anywhere else and why?
• If family members of the previous generation to me had gone to university, would they have been more tempted to move away?
• Which members of the family do people see the most?

How strange...

I've plotted my family members on a map today, and all of this who live in Leigh Park, the Warren and West Leigh all live in a line pretty much. It's very strange but kind of cool! I shall post a photo of it up soon for you all to see.

In other news...not much is happening. Need to get my head down after the weekend and Christmas is over with.

I have a...

...dictaphone on the way! Yay! Decided that if I'm going to do all the interviews with my family members...I better get a record of them all somehow. So my lovely dad has ordered me one from Sony at trade price which is about half retail...WIN! I should have this by the end of the week so interviews can begin soon! Another possibility is if we decided to have an exhibition with our final year work, I might consider playing these back to accompany the work. Or have them all on separate headphones. Not sure, but it's an idea to start thinking about I suppose.

A little update on things

So, today I've had the lovely 3 hour train journey back home to Havant! (Yay!) Which means..I can finally get going on my project! It'll probably take a few days to get properly going though, but I plan to ask my family members a series of questions each to find out why they live where they do and where the partners came from etc. I also want to begin looking at "artifacts" shall we call them, that were my Grandads, such as a tea set he brought back from one of his trips with the navy (I think) and a log book from when he worked on fixing peoples boats. Still not entirely sure why, but they're interesting and all part of the past, so will be good to look at and possibly photograph.

Dissertation wise, I've began reading some books about family photography and I've become quite interested in the snapshot and how it has developed over the past 10 - 15 years. For a start digital photography has wildly increased the amount of family snaps taken, but not many of these are actually printed and then put into the albums we're so used to seeing. A point came up in a seminar recently that it could be seen that Facebook is the new family album, which is an interesting thought that I may look into. It's definitely true to an extent. I've lost count of how many people put family photos up of important events such as weddings, births and parties.

So all in all, on track to begin everything...FINALLY!

Family ties

I began writing a little something in my artist statement to try and figure my ideas out a bit. Here it is, unfinished and extremely rough at the moment. But if it helps my brain, then it's all good!

Family is an interesting concept if you think about it. There are the blood relatives, but then there are the partners of these people who enter into the family. When it comes to my family, we all live relatively close to each other, but what I’m wondering is, have any of these non blood relatives had to move to be part of this. I know my cousin has married a Canadian, my brothers’ fiancé had moved from another county, but I want to find out if anyone else has moved like this. I also want to find out if there is some deep underlying factor that is holding everyone so close. It could be something as simple as everyone went to school in the area. Jobs could be a factor, and maybe the lack of people from my parents’ generation going to university has just prevented people from moving away. I know that me going to university away from where I grew up has made an impact on where I may decide to live and it’s definitely entered my mind that living in Wales is now an option.