Jade Birchnall

Jade Birchnall is currently in her final year of her Photography Degree at Manchester University, who previously studied on our Photography course at Burton and South Derbyshire College. She came in and gave a talk about her work as well as presenting some of her images/series and gave us an insight on how going to University has changed the standard of her work and the way she works. 
Jade's Tumblr (website coming soon)

The projects she showed us were all portrait ones with very few still life images. She said herself as well as in her written artist statements why she shoots so many portraits and why she felt she'd developed this style and why it was important to her work and her as an individual. During her talk, she answered the question, 'Why Portraits?'. Jade feels that portraits tell you stories about the subject, draw you in and you're able to connect with the person as well as reveal 'part of a persons mystery'. We were also told about why she preferred to shoot on film, that it made you really think about what photos you take and how you take them, that it's much less disposable than digital photography.


The first project that got her focusing more on portraiture, was 'Yesterday Is Gone', Birchnall took such a strong interest in it because the subject was her Grandma, who'd been recently diagnosed with Senile Dementia which is something that had really effected her and her families lives. Yesterday is gone is a mixture of images as well of recordings of conversations she'd had with her Grandmother. The photos documented her Grandma and gave an insight into how she lived her life, the recordings went really well with the photos and made it feel a lot more personal. The recordings were done without her Grandma's knowledge and this made the content more honest and the clips selected fitted really well and made the photos have an even stronger impact.


Birchnall went on to another project called, 'The Little Sisters of the Poor', although she has a lot of images for this already it's a continuing project that will eventually be put in a publish book. The photos consist of portraits of residents and workers of an old peoples home that is maintained by a group of Catholic Nuns. The portraits show peoples personality and how isolating life in a home can be and how vulnerable they feel. It also looks at the theme of faith and religion. 
Through starting to do this she got in touch with another group of Nun's who were enthusiastic about her photographing them so she began doing that and expanding her project.


Some of Birchnall's Images.
(all of these images were found on her Tumblr, link at the top) 

                                                 

One of the few still lifes, from her project at the home. I think this photo fits well with the theme of her work because of the chair being empty and on it's own it portrays feelings of loneliness and isolation well.

          I really like this photo as it's slightly different to the portraits of the other residents I saw. This shows a happier, more upbeat side when you compare it to the others. His expression as well as the party hat add to those feelings and make it quite a hopeful image.