Bournville: My Chocolate Story

     I have spent half of my life consuming chocolate completely ignorant or at best, nonchalant of the often long journey it often makes to get to Big Joe’s Supermarket from God knows where. Only that Big Joe isn’t exactly big and there is nothing super about his ‘market.’ It is a small shop tucked in a building on the street corner owned by “Big Joe” who ironically is a dwarf and my street’s jester.

But who is talking about sizes here when Big Joe’s Supermarket has a variety of my favourite tasty treats. I eat the chocolate and often leave the very ‘important’ task of noting where it came from to the scientists at NASA or well, to be patriotic, members of the National Assembly back home in Nigeria.

I must warn you that this story is strictly about chocolate and photography and not one government organisation or one shop and its owner on the corner street of my home in north central Nigeria. Did I hear you say “chocolate and photography, what do they have in common?” Plenty; especially if a chocolate factory is located in the same city where you are doing a master’s programme and it happens that photography is one of the courses the school has on its menu.

 Coming to Birmingham September 2013 for my master’s programme literary opened my eyes to a lot of things; one of such things is Bournville and the Cadburys.

Bournville is a village in Birmingham, England and is popular for its associations with the Cadburys and the Cadburys chocolate business. From an early age, I had been fascinated by Cadbury’s commercials especially that of its most popular product in Nigeria, the Bournvita food drink. I had sung and mimicked the characters on television as they churned out tempting videos that caused me to salivate.

what Bournvita looked like during my childhood days.

What Bournvita looks like now.

I armed myself with a disposable camera and headed to Bournville; Bournville being the case study for my option module 'Photography and the Archive.’ I went round Bournville taking photographs. For my advance practice one, I was making lino prints of female forms and figures of African women on paper. 

African female form of a lino design on paper

Linocut is a technique in printmaking whereby a relief design is cut out of a sheet of linoleum using a V-shaped chisel or gouge with the un-carved areas giving a reverse image of the parts to be seen. This linoleum sheet is then inked with a roller called brayer and then the imaged is imprinted unto paper or fabric.

I selected a few of those A6 sized photographs I had printed out and thought to rather make these lino prints on some of the pictures of Bournville rather than just paper. I also tried making lino prints on the negatives from the photographs I had taken.

negatives i made lino prints on

I selected a few of the photographs I had of Bournville. Though some of the images were out of focus and since it was a disposable camera (I was not quite familiar with) I could understand why the images turned out of focus.  I started with the images I thought weren’t so good not to risk losing them (in a bid to avoid re-printing more pictures), I soaked some of them in water for about a minute and some I did not put in water. I then had two figurative images I had cut into an A5 sized lino sheet images of African women. One was just a face embedded in the map of Africa the other was an African woman dressed in traditional attire. I started with some green ink I rolled unto the lino sheet and then imprinted these images unto some of these photographs I did not soak in water. And rolled up some red ink and imprinted the images on the photographs I soaked with water.

     the lino sheet design of African women

                                              

The photographs that were not soaked in water tend to produce sharper figurative images of the linocut just like you would have seen on a clear white paper just that there was an image at the background. Still using the same linocut images for some of the photographs that were soaked in water and owing to the fact that I did not reload more ink unto the linoleum after I imprinted these images, the imprint on the photographs tend to look like lines and patterns rather than a more defined figurative image. The patterned-like images that formed on the photograph made the photo quite interesting and had this feeling of uncertainty of what the images on the surface were. This worked quite well.  Also the red ink worked quite well, possibly because some of the images were of autumn palettes of warm natural earthy tones and maybe because it is a complementary colour to green.

one of the soaked photographs

For some of the images that were not soaked in water came out with a more defined figurative image though might have looked good but that was not the effect I intended to achieve. Also I figured that a wide surface of linoleum that has not been cut out or carved out would create a flat area of just colour which made it quite dull and uninteresting. Other colours like blue, black and yellow didn’t sit well on the photographs as the tones were quite dark and strong almost seemed to make the image look and feel heavy. Yellow on the other hand gave it quite a dull finish.

one of the un-soaked photographs

       After several tutorial sessions and with an individual tutorial session with Stuart Whipps, tutor for 'Photography and the Archive’ he advised I look into the works of Gerhard Ritcher and Yinka Shonibare also I could possibly research decorative patterns from areas where cocoa came from and then work on that to imprint these patterns unto these Bournville photographs, since it could produce a similar effect to what I wanted to achieve with these Bournville photographs.

some African decorative patterns

The final body of work was to have pattern-like streaks over images of Bournville looking at Gerhard Ritcher’s work on over painted photographs where he painted over photographs using oil paint and this created such a mysterious feel to the photographic images beneath the paint.

Gerhard Ritcher's over painted photographs

Looking at Yinka Shonibare’s works because of his use of African fabric known as Ankara which is quite colourful and patterned, since cocoa is also grown in some parts of Africa and in Nigeria (where he is originally from).

Yinka Shonibare's work.

Gerhard Richter's works on over painted photographs influenced my work because he painted over photographs using oil paint and this created such a mysterious feel to the photographic images beneath the paint a similar effect to what I was aiming to achieve.

Looking at Yinka Shonibare’s works because of his use of African fabric known as Ankara which is quite colourful and patterned  gave me an insight to certain patterns I could look into and incorporate into my lino cuts, since cocoa is also grown in some parts of Africa and in Nigeria (where he is originally from). 

 After a total of over 40 images of both photographs and postcards,which I imprinted upon, I discarded the initial figurative images of African female forms and also discarded the images that had excessive  ink and details on it.