Monthly Archives: July 2017

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Planner & Tracking, Research and analysis

Family and Environment Artists

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Tom Pope

Tom Pope was part of the international Photographers in Residence in 2015 as part of the Archisle Project. This brings international photographers to Jersey to work and exhibit their photography,  awarding a bursary of £10,000 for an exhibition into to the culture of the Jersey which these works enter the Archisle Collection at the Société Jersiaise  Archive for the future public.

Pope was born in Bristol, in 1986.  Tom Pope studied Photography at Swansea Metropolitan University and received his Masters in Photography from the Royal College of Art in 2011. His works are presented around in the National Museum of Wales and National Portrait Gallery.

His artistic practice is  based within performed photograph where Pope’s playful and whimsical approach develops situations using performed gestures of social interaction. Within these settings the public become entwined with the act of taking photographs as a social event where spontaneity and chance are encouraged.  Pope’s work isn’t purposed for a community but essentially creates a sense of community through the act of making art through  improvised events and social intervention.

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This photograph I chose responding to the issue of enviornment, because to me it shows quite a strange but yet personnel relationship with the girl and her environment.  Firstly, the diagonal line s created by the shadows and floor tiles, suggests that the environment isn’t necessarily that stable a place.  Interestingly, the girl appears to be clinging on as if sort of her life appears to be at risk of some sort.  This therefore suggests that the girl’s environment isn’t normal, and she is trying to make it as normal as possible.  This is emphasised by the colour of the girls clothes which is black, and her body composure, refusing to show us, suggesting there are particular complicated emotional ties associated.  This is reflected by the fact that the environment appears quite hostile and unwelcoming, for example – the fact she is sort of showing so much affection towards something so lifeless, and also the sharpened bold shadows that are displayed almost appear quite hostile.  Essentially I like this photograph because it shows the complicated relationship one can have with the external environment in which it lives within.

Michelle Sank

Michelle Sank was born in Cape Town, South Africa. Leaving there in 1978, she has been living in England since 1987. Her images reflect a preoccupation with the human condition and style, and anything else that encompasses this.  Therefore this can be viewed as a sort of documentary, encompassing issues around social and cultural diversity.

I like this photograph because for me, it strongly represents the idea of family quite strongly.  I have personally known this pair of twins in the past, and I have come to know the similarities and differences that perfectly portray the idea of family.  For example, in terms of appearance they may be very similar through looks and style.  However the differences encompassing these two are arguably what brings them together.  I particularly like how the composition presents the idea of a strong bond between the two.  For example, the lighting isn’t too harsh but warm, and that reflects the atmosphere and feelings of each other.  Furthermore I like how the background, not necessarily the most beautiful beach and buildings shows how their sister relationship, may not always be perfect, but it is what it is, and so through the fact how each other appears comfortable, this shows their relationship is special to them.

Essay writing

Whose Archive Is It Anyway?

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The definition for archive is: “a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.”  Archives come in different forms, each having different purposes which we can use to explore others purposes, along with our own through the use of public, family and personnel archives.

The public archives are used for the study of Jersey in many forms. Publicly funded libraries from the Government are important in preserving the identity of a place in order for us and future generations to explore. Due to public archives being open to such a diverse audience, this means there is a diverse collection that can be used for a wide range of purposes.  The collection of historical records compiled from a range of sources paints a picture of each differing viewpoint on the context of the world at that time.

“What is the source’s purpose, what is it trying to show and how accurate is it?”  Are the questions that we can consider and allow us to delve into the uniqueness of each bit of historical material.  In doing this we can assess what relevance the archive has on each person today, and how they can possibly relate to it.  In this respect, the public archives purpose is to enhance our understanding of where humanity has come from, how far it has come, and how from this we can guess where we are going as a generation.  This incorporates a lot of relevance as one day, our lives and memories will be locked into an archive for future generations to look at us the way we are looking at these older generations, which of course then becomes a matter of perception.  Today’s ideology of perception arguably has a completely different meaning than back when the archives stated in the mid-19th century.

Regarding the features of society, when there wasn’t room for much more than the very dominating, traditional culture, now there is an encouragement for individual and freedom of expression of culture.  This contradicts the culture of the archive in a sense that, we are essentially living with the opposing shadow of traditionalist culture over today’s freedom of culture.  Interestingly, issues at the time of the mid 1800’s have to now show developments in areas of life and also the struggles in life.  Arguably these struggles as each generation has passed have helped grow into a certain rebelliousness that has led to the free culture that we live with today.  So therefore, we must in a sense be somewhat thankful for those who have preserved history in the archive, who may have documented the good’s and bad’s of their own times.  For examples works depicting issues of poverty in the 19th century, and further more modern times, have evolved and essentially undermined traditionalist culture and taken us closer to where we are now.  Therefore we can perhaps use todays issues, to predict how through the archive will record this and impact future generations who in turn will develop and impose their own culture on top of ours.  Essentially, the role of the archive is a repeating cycle of past cultures that determine where future cultures are going.

In contrast, the purpose of a family archive is to preserve the history of our own family’s lives on a more personal basis.  This leads us onto why as humans we are interested in pursuing such a task.  Of course, unlike a public archive which is designed for everyone’s benefit, a family archive is of more sentimental value, designed to show the history and through this the relationships, the struggles, those special moments through time in order so that we can relive those times, and remember our feelings towards a preserved moment from a family archive.  Within my own family, the family archives, represent a bind compilation of moments that show my family’s special moments.  Each member of the family upon viewing these images, has a personnel emotion that is connected to that emotion, and when as a family we come together to discuss these emotional attachments towards a captured significant moment in my family’s lives, we can empathise with each other’s viewpoints.

Interestingly family archives essentially strengthen families’ bond, by enhancing our memories of the past which unites us as we enter into the future.  By recording our time together as a family, apart from it strengthening our relationships, we can use family archives to show the evolution of how our own family changes.  In this sense, as children grow up, become parents and have their own kids, family archives can allow us to explore the cycles of that which we go through in life.  In a sense, the family is always developing and evolving; however with this idea of cycles repeating themselves, it shows that once the circle has gone on a full cycle and we come back where we started with children of our own, we can compare the changes from when we were children ourselves.  In a sense, in the short term, the value of an archive is to bring a family closer together to enhance their relationships, and in the long term can be used to show the difference between each cycle of life and therefore has a purpose that repeats itself but is all the more significant.

Referring back to the point of family archives representing the sentimental side that archives hold is important.  We find value in anything our family has associations with.  Arguably family archives are more than just associations, they holding special, personnel and intimate memories at the heart of the family.  When sometimes we don’t take into account of an individual, but of a collective group, which allows us to unlock and delve into our family secrets, that is essentially categorises the nature of our family itself within a wider context of the society in which we live in.  This is comparable to the public archives which display, a wide variety of society, allowing us to paint a picture with all these.  However in this sense, it shows a limited picture of wider society, with a strong perception from the family’s lives and point of view and shows rather the life of society, predominately of the family’s lives within a wider context of the bigger society.

On the issue of family archives presenting a limited perspective, interestingly we are more selective of what we include in our archives.  For example, if we want to present the dynamics of the family, it hardly shows reality as each photograph trying to capture the type of family who we want to be, essentially missing the undesirable sides to the family.  This means that it is important like with the public archive to recognise a sort of family identity, an especially so with a family who may have lost identities and as time goes on like with the idea of cycles, can understand the foundations of the family.  An example of this is through time our imagination on past events can affect the historical side of what actually happened, and so through the family archive, its value allows us to ensure that we have a stronger grounding in our own family’s character and nature.

On the other hand, personnel archives which in a sense derive from the previous archives are originally have been much more intimate and private to most people. However nowadays the terms are changing, where personnel archives are being shared with others, and personnel archives are now about photographs which we don’t want to share. Now it seems to be a matter of how we want to appear, which strongly contradicts how public and family archives function in terms of their purpose. With private archives, now becoming more like public archives, with this, private archives are arguably taking the roles of public archives as they are being opened to everyone. Interestingly, the photos that are kept are often photographs that don’t want to be shared, are photographs that tend not to be focused on how others would perceive them and judge the, hence why they aren’t shown. Arguably unlike family and public archives which are slightly linked, with the opening of public archives this shows how society is interested in how they appear, lacking a sense of authenticity.

Furthermore, private archives are almost unintentionally stored. For example, as photographs are taken to be initially shared, and photographs that contradict how that person wants to be appear are stored and not deleted. This means that personnel archives are taking the form of photographs how we may not want to appear, but in reality aside from social media, that is how we look in person. This contrasts how a family archive works which emphasises the idea of how we can look back on memories to be rebuilding family foundations of who the family’s identity is, because nowadays a personnel archive stores the photographs representing who we are avoiding to be as perhaps it breaches the norms of society. This means that as were are essentially, hiding from ourselves of who we really are, undermining the role of a family archive in bonding who a particular family is, dictated by each individuals character, however each individuals character is being influenced by their own personnel archive resulting in a changed family life. Interestingly there appears to be a link with the idea of a public archive here, where like through time there was a certain culture barrier that restricted much than traditionalist, conservative culture that is similar today, with people only, accepting the same culture of everyone else.

Planner & Tracking, Research and analysis

Grosnez Trip

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On Tuesday the 20th June 2017 we went on a trip with photographer Tanja Deman to Grosnez and explored around towards L’Etacq.  I was very much influenced by her style on this trip, where she explores space and her environment, which I incorporated into my work taking photographs of long and short backdrops.  This way it gave me a scope to explore and capture how man has impacted the land through the various forms.  For example the long shots, showed how man has impacted on the land from a wider perspective of the surrounding environment, whereas the shorter shoots show how mans inventions have been much more intrusive and invasive as we can reveal the finer areas of the land.  With my work, I hope to create some photo collages relating to a series of work relating to Tanja’s guidance and instructions.  I categorised my work into themes that I explored during the trip.  These included:

I was heavily inspired by Tanja’s work, but strongly from this developed my own particular style.  For example: I wanted to explore the historical side of mans impact on the land, and how it has changed through the years and what the aim or ambitions were of constructing these projects.  For example all buildings generally had a common purpose of defence, but projects like Grosnez castle or Nazi bunkers, the surrounding context around these buildings that impacts the way they were built, I am wishing to explore and shoot.  I want to mention the fact that a lot of these buildings, very brash and dominating, the contrast between the people who ran these projects who were humans with emotions, is very important to link. 

 

Independent Study

1000 word essay- whose archive is it anyway?

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All quotes were taken from text by theorist David Bate: Archives, Networks and Narratives 

An archive is a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people. They are used to preserve memories and fulfill the human desire of never forgetting the past. However, ‘archive photographs not only record objects and events, they also produce a meta-achieve, with meanings that can be mobilised in other times and new contexts.’ Most state governments, schools, businesses, libraries, and historical societies maintain archives, these are usually public archive. Every day individuals and organisations create and store information about their personal and business activities, which ‘has expanded exponentially since the invention of the internet.’ Photographs are particularly important for providing an insight into past lives, events and forgotten places, however not all photographs accurately represent the truth. In reality the photographs taken are highly influenced by the perspective of the photographer. However, it is more important to ask ‘what does the image do?’ or mean to a person rather than ‘is it true?’ because it could represent a human memory and culture even if it contains biases or misrepresentation.

Societe Jersiaise, which is our local photographic archive includes over 80,000 historical images. The collection provides visual record of the developments of Jersey landscapes and social history dating back to 1840’s to more current images.

In the text by David Bate’s he explains how Museums and Art Museums usually used archives and collections of public and private artefacts for display aiming to ‘serve particular interests, whether personal, cultural, regional, national, international or global.’ Museums can act as ‘repositories of cultural memories’ of the past and they organise historical narratives of culture. This have actually inspired Tanja Demans work, ‘Temples of culture’, which was created in 2014. It is a photo collage series examining different public institutions that collect, preserve and exhibit knowledge and culture such as theatres, libraries, museums, art pavilions and galleries. These are spaces of public education, accessible to all citizens, and function as a cultural mechanism for shaping society.

Photography often performs a ‘double role’ within institutions such as museums, photographs can function as both ‘a collected artefact’ which is put on display and as a way to ‘collect the museum band its artefacts’ since the photograph is a ‘form of archive’ in its own right.

Photographic archives are valuable for contemporary photography and art because of the idea that the most successful art and photography understands the history to predict the future. Many contemporary artists and photographers have used photographic archives as the starting point of their work by re-interpreting the histories and challenging the images by constructing new narratives. In this way archives can become a way to rethink what happened.

David Bate’s mentions Susan Hiller’s collection ‘Dedicated to the Unknown Artists’, which is a collection of 300 postcards. They were all of the coast around Britain. They are all black and white and have been hand-tinted. The photographs are all of ‘waves crashing over different parts of the coastline.’ The pictures became a part of an archival display of ‘how culture sees itself.’ Hiller’s work suggests that these images are ‘worthy of attention’ and she also celebrates the  authors of the postcards as ‘unknown artists’ which raises the question of their status as part of cultural and social memory. Hiller’s work seems to question whether these humble, anonymous   postcard images tell us anything important about a popular concept of the British Isles and the collective ideas they represent. This piece of work has changed how this art work has been viewed as postcards often are places ‘on front of a fridge, propped on a shelf or mantelpiece, stuck on a wall or on a door.’ Now, after this art work was displayed people view this differently.

In present day, the internet and new forms of technology has changed our archiving experience. This is because of the ‘wide availability of mobile phones and camera’ which has begun to transform the speed and quality of ‘visual recordings’, which has increased the quantity. This has led to people taking and storing their photographs digitally and publishing them online on social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc. This is a different type of archive as this is seen as your own private and personal archive. Your personal archive will be produced according to the ‘particular interests of those involved.’

Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher described ‘archive fever’ as a contradiction at the heart of the idea of conservation. Conservation is ‘driven paradoxically by the possibility of forgetting. Since human memory is limited and  not infinite the retention and registration of impressions within photographs has come to be associated with  the idea of remembering and the desire to return to something beyond the capacity of conscious memory.’ William Henry Fox Talbot anticipated the purpose of photography as an archival practice, ‘useful as a museum in itself.’ Photography is now clearly a highly popular means to ‘register information and to record impressions.’ The human memory is very complex and is not easily ‘reducible to simple binary opposites’ like past and present, true and false, reality and fiction. By consigning memory to  ‘documents, texts, images and objects’ this relieves the human brain of the burden of recording and remembering things accurately.

All in all Archives have various different purposes, I have learnt that it is important to question the images presented infront of you with ideas about the accuracy of the information within the photograph or if it has been influenced by personal experiences or viewpoints. Archives are valuable to contemporary artists as they use pictures from years before as their starting point. I will definitely consider using archival material to help me in my personal study as I like the idea of connecting the past with the present and future.

 

 

 

 

Independent Study, Instruction, Research and analysis

Whose Archive is it Anyway? (Essay)

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Whose Archive is it Anyway?

An archive is something I had only encountered this year – I had never looked or even come across an archive before the start of year twelve, however, I am now fully aware of their purpose and function. I find this crazy that I had never come across the archive that Jersey holds after seventeen years of living on the island, and, with such a rich history, there is such a vast amount to document on the islands history – which archives such as Société Jersiaise and Jersey Archive from Jersey Heritage do so well. I am now very eager to research into the concept more and hopefully use and expand my own archive of my own life to benefit my progress through year twelve. An archive like the Société Jersiaise was founded in 1893 by a number of prominent islanders who were interested in the study of its history, its language and antiques, so set up the program, in order to aid their knowledge – in-turn helping islanders of today understand Jersey in more depth, and I, for one, am thankful for this.

The official definition of an archive, taken from Google, is ‘a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.’  Synonyms of the word include records, accounts, papers, documents, files and history. In my opinion, history being the most important or one that stands out most – because an archive essentially holds history of a location or of someone. An archive can be a document, a certificate of birth, an image from several centuries ago or an object that holds significance to someone. I really like the idea of an object holding much importance to someone, because, for me, there is something very pleasing about having something physical to touch because all our sense can play a part in remembering specific moments of your life and an object can bring back much nostalgia for someone – I know it does for me anyway! This is perhaps why so many photographers nowadays create a photobook, or in fact several photobooks because it is much more pleasing to have your work physically published for people to look at and then keep.

My mum has kept, since I was a little child, even a baby, a memory box or what we like to call my ‘special box’ as it holds all the things that relate to the special moments in my life and therefore, my mum and dad’s life. This box contains objects such as my first pair of shoes, my birth certificate, pieces of artwork I completed when I was child at nursery and my first strands of hair etc. This takes its place in the loft for whenever I or my family feel like they wish to reminisce about thoughts that bring back happy memories – not away to be forgotten forever – it is in there for security, which I feel is something very important with photos – because touching something physical can give you a warm feeling – in my instance, love. So, we all have our own archives, whether they’re public, social or personal, we all have our own documentation of our life and it can be digitally on our phones or physically but in any instance, it can be used to bring people together as I feel photography is a strong concept that has the potential to act as a cohesion tool between the people we love. Actions are so quick – they happen and then they’re gone but taking a picture of a simple action provides a snap shot that can be kept forever.

I have made a short video to accompany this essay. It consists of me talking to my mum, almost interviewing her and asking a her few questions about my memory box and why she started it in the first place. The video is intended to give you more of an insight into our archive and why it exists. My mum reiterates throughout that she has kept all the photos from my childhood as well as special objects for me to look back at when I’m older – this idea sticks with me strongly and my mum emphasizes it constantly. She also said that “if you have ever had children of your own, you can compare what you looked like when you were a child to what they look like”. This notion that I can carry this idea of documenting my whole life through to when I grow up and have kids of my own is very true and encompasses the whole being of what an archive is – is that it is supposed to provide a place where memories and nostalgia can live long in the memory of people to then compare and contrast different lives from a completely different decade or even centuries. My mum also said that she took the photographs of me when I was child on an old film camera, which is what they had back in those days – they did not have digital DSLR cameras so used disposable ones where you would get the film developed. However, this introduction of digital cameras has sparked interest in photographic practices and it is now becoming more and more sought after to take up as a hobby. Although with the introduction of high quality, expensive, technological cameras, there has been a recent boost in the use of disposable and vintage film cameras again in order to take photos that give a sense of nostalgia through the effect they have on the images you take once developed – this is achieved through the colours and textures of graininess. Sticking to the idea of technological advancement, David Bates’, in his book Art Photography states that the ‘awareness of historical accumulation of photographic archives has expanded expositional since the invention of the internet’. I believe this is very true because with the endless possibilities of the internet, things such as photo sharing is ever so easy and can be argues that it almost too easy but is hugely beneficial.

I wish to make the most of my personal archive and look through it as much as I can in order to get a better sense of my own life and the life of people surrounding me. I am aware that also my grandparents have left their own photobooks from when they were younger documenting their life and as they grew older to become fathers and mothers to my mum etc. It is evident that archival imagery can be passed through many generations of family members and the all link us together to create a cohesion – like I mentioned before. However, an idea I am really keen to pursue over the course of this next year relates to how my life on Jersey for seventeen years differs to that of my younger sister, of four years. I am lucky enough to have a sibling and even luckier, in my opinion, that she is thirteen years younger than I am. I think this is amazing and I think it would create a perfect project for me to carry out for my personal study by looking at archives from when I was younger in comparison to what my sister has experienced. This is how I will look at archival imagery to enhance and enrich my experience throughout the A2 course. I have no intention of focusing heavily on public archives of Jersey because this won’t relate to what I want to study – being a personal archive between myself and my family. I think there is something mesmerizing about old photos from when I was a child to see what I actually got up to if I can’t remember certain things. I think it will be interesting to see how her life as a child differs from mine – even more so because we have been raised by different mothers because my sister is on my dad’s side after my mum and dad divorced and my dad found another partner. What I have also noticed whenever I go to see my sister, is that she obsessed with Snapchat on my pone and the filters it offers – she is fascinated by them and looking though photos of me and what I get up to. I believe this will make the project a lot more interesting.

All in all, however, every archive in the world functions in the same way – in that it intends to provide a rich documentation of the history of someone or something whether it be place or a person. In my opinion, I find personal archive, carried on throughout many generations much more interesting than public ones’ due to the fact that they are so much more intimate and mean so much more when you look at them.

What I have earned from archives is that they are such a useful tool for anyone who wants to discover more about themselves and they can essentially work as a family tree. Archives provide an open door for endless possibilities to re-create and re-live memories you may have partially forgotten about and the nostalgia that comes with archives, more so for the older generation of Jersey due to how influential Jersey was in the 20th century, can spark new emptions they may not have experienced in a long time.

To answer the question Whose Archive Is It Anyway? – I don’t know, you decide. Maybe it’s all of our archives because each and every one may lead back to the same place or have a link in some way. My archive holds much food for thought and I know that I will be utilizing it fully and my memory box is my archive but the wonderful thing, I want to share it with people – archives can be shared, and therefore instantly becomes a personal archive to other people.

 

Uncategorized

Whose archive is it anyway?

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The awareness of historical accumulations over photographic archives has widened dramatically since the invention of digital photography and the internet. An archive is usually known to be a collection of historical documents or records that provide information about a place, institution or group of people. However there is variation between the meanings of archives because I think that there can be both public and private archives. Public archives are usually in the form of museums, photographic archives, or digital online websites which anyone can access allowing them to research their own future or different places. I also think that archives can be private and an individual store of memories. Many people keep photo albums storing old images but in the new age where technology is constantly developing the awareness of different methods of private archives is ever growing. For example people may store personal images on their phone in their albums or they may have them transferred onto the computer for later use. However in my opinion the most modern form of archival is social media. Snapchat now has a feature called memories where you can save only photographs or 10 second video clips which have been created on snapchat. This creates a very specific and individual type of archive which you are able to access easily on your mobile phone and always have with you.

However one question which is commonly asked and usually found as a challenge to answer by people is ‘why do we have private archives?’. Public archives generally have to purpose of historical content and giving information of places and people from the past, whereas people are less certain on why they keep personal and private archives and an even more difficult question is why they prefer either a physical photo album or a digital archive on either a phone or laptop. I asked a group of people including family, friends and teachers on why they keep a private archive. One response from a yr. 12 student was “I look to look back through the memories I’ve had and be reminded of the fun and exciting things I have endured over the last year”. This was a widely acknowledged response given by many that questioned the topic on. For the vast majority of our generation phones can be seen as historical archives which provides with our own personal resource which allows us to answer the question “what happened?”.

Although we have this easy access to our own person archives, public archives are still extremely necessary to give us understanding of our background and past events.  Societe Jersiaise is Jerseys local photographic archive where there is up to 80,000 which date all the way back from the mid 1840’s to the present day. Jersey has rich history of photographic practice as it is located in a geographical position between Britain and France which are two nations which were essential in the development of photography. The archive holds examples of work by important nineteenth century photographers such as William Collie, Charles Hugo, Thomas Sutton and Henry Mullins. The collection incorporates late nineteenth century studio collections of negatives by Jersey based photographers such as Ernest Baudoux, Albert Smith and Clarence Ouless. All these photographers are key to understanding jerseys historical context and allow members of the public as well as historians to investigate further into the history of jersey.

Archives can be seen as inherited items and photographs and when you think about the heritage of archives they are historical information which is passed through family members over decades. These inherited artefacts can be seen as story tellers as they tell us a lot history and defiantly in terms of inherited archives they tell us stories of our past family members and give us an insight into the lives that they lived. The well-known quote “a picture tells a thousand words” is relevant to inherited archives as they really are visual storytelling, from archival images of family members from the 1950’s that we may never have known with one photo we have a detailed description of maybe what they looked like and where they lived and what they used to do for a living. When you put together a selection of these inherited images and make maybe an album the visual story grows to create a story which gives great detail about your family or jerseys past and I think that’s what makes archives so special, they can be very personal to you and in this context the archives belong to us. The archives belong to who is in position of the artefacts.

Archival photographs can have many purposes such as for advertising, news, documentary, fine art, identity and anthropology.  In this text called ‘Archives, Networks and Narratives’ and discusses photographs in terms of its purpose within museums and how photographs can function as both a collected artefact that might be put on display and as a way to collect museums and artefacts, since the photograph is a form of archive in its own right. However it can also be argued that archives can be seen as ‘the return of meaning’. In ‘Camera Lucida’, Roland bathes last book on photography. He focuses on the meaning of archives and photographs being about its social messages via cultural codes as well as images portraying a highly personal which is private and purely individual which relates back to what i previously said about new technology and photographs now being able to be kept private and completely personal and individual.

This arguments links back to the question of ‘Whose archive is it anyway?’, do the public have a choice of what goes into public archives or is there someone in charge of museums and archives who then become in charge of these historical and meaningful artefacts which may in fact be very personal and not wanted to be shared. There is also the question to be asked of is everything piece of photographic evidence shown in the archives is some rejected, could we be missing important piece of history which 50 years ago weren’t considered important by the owners of the archive and were ignored and thrown away. Therefore are they really everyone’s archives if specific content is shown or do the archives really belong to the owners.

In conclusion I think that archives have many different purposes such as to look back on historical artefacts and to gather information from the past which is more a public and educational purpose but then they also have more personal purposes like memories. In the age of ever enhancing technology we are becoming more reliant on our digital dives as personal and public archives but I think it is important to remember the photographic archives and museums as they contain rich information on our history and should be considered as highly valuable resources. I am going to use the jersey archives to enrich my personal study as I am interested in looking into the coast line of jersey and looking at how it has change over the past decade. I am also inspired by the archives to investigate during my personal study my family history and personal background linking photos I might found with private archives such as family albums.