An archive is a collection of historical records or something physical, such as a document, image or object relating to a location or an event. The archive tends to contain the primary documents that have been collected over a time period of an individual/organization or an event, the things that are going to show a role of someone or something has, to have historical proof that was what happened. Some archives such as Société Jersiaise are open to the public and they are able to show the development of someone’s life, maybe even related to the visitors and watch the individuals life evolve as you are presented with evidence and images showing off their movements and evolution.
As mentioned previously, archives are repositories for historical events, as they provide relevant and reliable evidence to individual and certain events, such as WW2 or The German Occupation. A repositories is a server, which contain a set of packages similar to an archive, as they hold information and record to events, such as the Holocaust. The records tend to be bundled together depending on what they are associated with, this allows people to access all the information on that specific event.
All around the world there are many archives and museums documenting photos and certain objects relating to certain periods of time, which are put together in sections of the museums where they can be acknowledged altogether. Later on into the future archives can be used to as resources to answer questions about our past, and they may also be used to set legal claims. Historians can use this information to dive in deeper to events and times of the past and gather more information and facts, that we can later on tell the new generations of people to come, along with filmmakers using this information if their story is set around certain historical events, by using the documents and facts held at archives it makes the film more personal and makes you want to connect to the film more to understand what people really went through during events in our history. Finally, it gives people of today a change to connect with people from the past, such as family members and helps them understand what their life was like when they were alive and it may allow them to have some closure toward their loved one.
Walter Benjamin said that the ‘aura’ of an object, which has been created by the historical event and what experience it had.
Along with Benjamin, Roger Fenton being one of the first war photographers, his photographs became very well-known as they feature museum exhibitions, showing the facts of parts of life, the photos he takes aren’t necessary but they have meaning to them to show a part of history, along with the historical meaning being merged into the present. The ‘Vintage News’ said ‘his photos of the Crimean War are now considered to be the first pictoral documentation of war’ people have also commented saying his work was ‘interesting’ and ‘captivating’
Société Jersiaise was founded in 1873, its objective being ‘to create a museum and library’ and still stands today as an archive of Jersey’s history. There interest was really capturing photographic evidence as their source of recording as life could be documented visually which is said to be ‘remarkable in it insular context’ . Within this archive it holds more then 100,000 images dating back to the 1840’s. Photos within Société Jersiaise were taken by a variety of photographers, two of them being Henry Mullins and Percival Dunham.
Mullins was one of Jersey’s first photographers, producing thousands of portraits from 1848-1873 at his studio in the Royal Square, which was highly successful. Bellow are a few of his portraits which can be found by the following link; https://www.theislandwiki.org/index.php/Henry_Mullins
Mullin’s images are simple head shots of individuals from around the island, who may have been a part of war like the men above, of they could of been images of the women and children who were left on the island during the war, it also allows him to document what people wore and what was the norms during certain periods of times which he photographed.
Dunham took over one thousand glass plate negative between 1913 and 1914 and at least eight hundred where published in the daily newspaper. He began in Jersey in a boarding house at Davids Place and combined with many other occupants. Dunham’s big break came in 1910 on August 27 in the morning news where one of his images was published and credited, and after that the morning news requested more of his work to be used, whilst submitting weekly prints to win a cash prize of five shillings. He ended up being a part of the first British newspaper with illustrations. More of his history and images can be found using the following link; https://www.theislandwiki.org/index.php/Percival_Dunham,_photojournalist
