The Photographic Archive of the Société Jersiaise contains over 80,000 images dating from the mid-1840s to the present day and is the principal Jersey collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century 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. The archive contains over 15,000 portraits of identified people and views of every bay. Together the collection offers detailed visual record of Jersey and Channel Islands history and an excellent representation of technical and aesthetic developments throughout the photographic era.

Photography arrived in Jersey on 9th May 1840 just nine months after it had been first publicized in the urban centres of England and France.   Following technical developments in the 1850s, by the boom period for Victorian photography in the 1860s the number of photographic studios in St Helier peaked at twenty-one. The Société Jersiaise was formed in 1873 but only realised its aim of opening a museum in 1877. In 1992 the Photographic Archive Department was established to implement appropriate collections management policies, to improve storage conditions and to catalogue the collection to increase access so that the public would be able to see their work.