On the Tuesday 13th of June 2017 I visited the Societe Jeriaise archive presented by Karen Biddlecombe and 2 other photographers: Jonny Briggs and Tanja Damen who both base their work on Dadaism, Surrealism, Fine Art, Documentary and Narrative photography, and archival imagery both cross referencing psychology, psycho-analysis and philosophy too.  Both photographers were very different in terms of the styles, methods and techniques adopted in their work.

I very much enjoyed the day, learning about the purpose and concepts of archives and how we can compare and contrast the idealized images of then and now.  What I particularly found interesting was at what life was like back in the 19th/20th centuries and how it documented a realistic picture of life back then.  Reinforcing this is how the unique preservation methods of these photos are used as they would of in those times giving us a sense of perspective of not just the value but more so the adoption of historical techniques in today’s world.  Back then it seemed that many photographers incorporated a sense of realism in their work, contrasting with many of today’s work which takes a more varied approach. I liked how these images were so well preserved through a variety of methods that are unique to each photograph.

The Archive contains over 80 000 images all from when it started in 1840.  Among these images from the decades it paints a picture of how the photographic interpretation of the island has evolved over the years, and I can put this within a wider context knowing that myself I can compare my work to older generations work.

What particularly struck me was the historical photographic methods used in processing these images.  The first method was known as daguerreotype and most commonly used but was very expensive.  A much cheaper alternative method was albumen from egg whites and was the first commercial method of producing a photograph.  Later in 1854 the carte de visite became a populer use of albumen, rising in popularity in Paris and America.

After Tanja’s talk, she wanted us to explore eye soar buildings that stood out to us in town.  Here we were starting to develop our own relationships with the environment, shooting and presenting it in a way that shows our feelings towards these ugly buildings.

With Jonny, under the idea of emotions on quite an intimate and personnel level, we made sort of adaptions of the same photographs from the occupation that we did using hand techniques.  This included scratches, tears, folds etc.