The Last of England

The last project we were set at uni was called 'The Last of England'. We were asked to focus on an aspect of England that has changed or is different from the traditional England we know.

I decided to focus on tea, more specifically tea parties. The traditional, formal gathering for drinking tea and eating cake at a tea party has long changed. 

These gatherings that were to celebrate birthdays, Royal Weddings, etc. have been abandoned and forgotten.

I wanted to show this idea through photographs, so with the help of my mum, we set up a tea party scene in the dining room.

I wanted the scene to look as if the tea party had been abandoned half way through. So half eaten cake, tea barely sipped and napkins scrunched up, all add to the effect of this little gathering being abandoned in a hurry (for a reason we do not know, this is left up to your imagination) and never returned to.

Below are some of the original photographs I took of the party scene.

I wanted to represent the tea party as if it was a forgotten memory, something that is no longer around.
So, taking inspiration for a number of old photo albums I have collected, I decided to age each photo in Photoshop and place them into an old-looking photo album.

Below are some of the aged photos, I used old photographs as reference for the scratches, over exposure etc.

I then printed the photos out and placed them into the photo album I made by hand.

Do excuse the awful photos, I took them very quickly just before hand-in, so didn't have a great deal of time to take some nice photos unfortunately.

I was quite please with this outcome, although the photo album could have been better quality.

Hope you enjoyed seeing these.

Julie

xx