Quintessence is a group exhibition which celebrates 5 years of the Archisle, which is a Jersey contemporary photography program made through the  Société Jersiaise Photo Archive.  The Archisle connects photographic archives to contemporary photography and experiences of Island life through the work of Jersey and international artists. Jersey is a small island but with internationalism, photographers are more socially and politically aware and have made many connections outside of the Island. To highlight the importance of connections and influences in this exhibition, Quintessence, the photographers have been asked to nominate someone who inspired their own work. “We do not travel alone; we take with us the histories, knowledge, influences and ideas of others; others we have met and other places we have known.”

We visited the exhibition on  Tuesday 8th of December, when I first walked into the room, the first thing I noticed was the way the photographs had been displayed. I think that the display looked professional and I like the way the photographs had been laid out because it flowed well visually . I noticed that there wasn’t any labels letting the viewers know who made the photograph, however there were booklets which included this information. I think that it would have been more user friendly to have the artist names with the photographs.I found myself constantly looking at the booklet and the photographs to try and find the artist which after a while became a hassle. I preferred this exhibition to the exhibition for 125 years of the JEP I think it was more visually attractive. In the JEP exhibition there was short paragraphs with each photograph explaining what was happening in the photo.  In this exhibition there was no explanation, when confronted with this question, Gareth the curator said that this was done deliberately so that the viewer would be intrigued by the context of the photo and do some further research into the meaning, rather than just looking at it once and never referring back to it.

My favorite photograph from the exhibition was the photograph by Finn Larson called ‘Al Gore Was Here’. I found this photograph visually attractive and I like the composition of the three smaller separate photographs had a line going through them which led my eyes from one photograph to another.  This photograph was simple but I think that’s what made it good. It was not until I further researched into this photograph that I understood the meaning behind it. Behind the photograph of what looked like a beautiful landscape, there was actually a rubbish dump hidden, which are at completely to different ends of the spectrum.  Often place are portrayed to be ‘ touristic-ally appealing’ but we rarely ever get to see the other side. I think in this photograph Finn Larson was trying to illustrate this divide, I think he achieved this in an intelligent way These photographs were the only ones displayed however he had a newspaper style booklet with photographs of the dump behind this landscape. After I found out the meaning behind the photographs I questioned why Finn had broken the small photographs that went together into three rather than using it as one, we then thought that he could be using the ‘breaks’ in the photograph as a metaphor for breaking the public’s perception of these ‘touristic-ally’ attractive places.

One of my least favorite photographs from the exhibition was the photographs by Iury Toropstov, called ‘fairyland’. I chose them as my least favorite because I didn’t really find any connection with the photographs and I didn’t think that they were very visually attractive. However I think that the portrait of the girl was quite powerful because it presented her as a beautiful mystical ‘creature’ which ties in with fairyland, however if you look closer she had bruises and cuts on her arm, showing that shes dealing with more deeper and serious issues that what she is presented to be. I also like the idea behind ‘fairyland’ and how it links in with Jersey’s history, however I don’t think the combination of photographs were strong or appealing enough.