As a class we went down to The Society Museum Jersey. Where we got to look through the archives of old images and find out a lot about historical photographers of jersey, who intern pushed forward the photography movement with in jersey Chanel islands.
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, in the form of the traveling photographer advertising demonstrations of the daguerreotype process.
Able to practice in the Channel Islands without concern for the patents that restricted the medium in the 1840s, amateur and professional photographers arrived from both sides of the English Channel.
The archive holds examples of work by important nineteenth century photographers. We were introduced to 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. Important twentieth century holdings include a major archive of over one thousand negatives by Percival Dunham Jersey’s first photo-journalist and the archive of Emile F Guiton (1879-1972) Honorary Curator of the Société Jersiaise Museum and founder of the Photographic Archive.
We were then set the Task of going into St Helier, to try recreate some of these images that we have been intently looking at and researching through. Furthermore creating our own that we then can edit into the black and white timely style. We were told to focus on photographing sights that have historical value e.g sights of heritage to do with ww2. So I chose to photograph the liberation statue in liberation square because it has a lot of historical connotations. Also i like the fact there is all the modern, bright buildings in the background juxtaposing the old iron structural sculpture and the weathered, rustic floor slabs. This creates interest and intrigue within the images making the statue a focal point. Also when i was walking i saw they jersey war tunnels bus and thought it was the perfect photo opportunity to contrast the urban with the historical vintage aspects of the bus. The vibrant red creates a focal point point within the image. The rigid structural points of the polls make the image have texture, a foreground and a background making the image more interesting to look at and The tourist map of jersey to add context to the image, almost like telling a story giving background information.
