On Tuesday 13th June, we visited Societe Jersiaise to do several workshops with Jonny Briggs and Tanja Deman, (the Archisles artists in residence), and Karen Biddlecome (the Communications Assistant at Societe Jersiase).

At the beginning of the day, we were split into three groups. We then participated in three 45(ish) minute workshops, with a 15 minute break between each one.

Our first workshop was in Tanja Deman.

She spoke to us about the images she had been looking at on the archives, which inspired her work for the Archisles project here on the island. She was particularly interested in the north coast of Jersey, and took her photos around the north coast, underwater at different tides.  She gave us the task of taking two photos of the ugliest buildings we could find in St Helier, using the archives to help us decide where to go in St Helier to take the photos.

Here are my final images.

Our second workshop was with Jonny Briggs.

Jonny spoke to us about his photography and his inspiration for his photographs. He spoke about how his dislike of photography got him into photography, and how he uses photography as a socially acceptable way to ‘be naughty’ and rebel. He set us the task of taking one of two photos from the archives, and manipulating them physically, then rephotographing it.

Here is my final image.

Our final workshop was with Karen Biddlecome.

Karen spoke to us about the archives, and the history of Societe Jersiase. We did an exercise where she showed us photos of children from different eras from the 1840s to 2010s. We had to figure out which photo was from which era. She also showed us how to use the archives, and had us search a photographer who photographs family or environment on the archives.

After Lunch…

…We looked through people’s images they had taken in response to the tasks we had been set by Jonny and Tanja. Everyone presented their photos responding to Tanja’s task, and each person stood up and spoke a little bit about their photos of ugly buildings. We had a brief discussion about each one. We then looked through some people’s responses to Jonny’s task, and discussed those and the meaning behind what we did.