Joan Tupley was a young girl in World War II when the Nazi German soldiers came to Jersey with the aim to occupy the Island. She came into Hautlieu to talk to us about what life was like on island during this time.

Joan was only 6 years old when the occupation took place and changed life on the island. Joan was an only child who lived with her mother and father. Before the occupation movement happened, Joan recalls the island spreading white sheets and cloths around, to show the Germans that they were no threat. She remembers hearing the planes soar overhead, scouting the island, being an only child, Joan couldn’t enjoy this experience with a sibling, so she sat in an open field with her best friend watching the planes fly over. When suddenly her mother called, telling them not to sit out in the open field, so they Joan, her friend and Joan’s- mother all sat in a privet bush watching, the low flying planes. She says she remembers hearing, what she now knows were the sounds of bombs going off, which the Germans had dropped on the tractor and farm vehicles, thinking they were troop transporters.

Joan’s childhood house was along the North Coast at Les Platons, which was later a very popular place for the German fortifications and gun placements. When the Germans arrive in mass and started occupying, they fortified the island by having barbed wire and mines placed around the coast of Jersey.

Everyone on Island had to have a ration book, so that they could spread what little food they had over the weekly period. Joan explained that the weekly ration for butter was 4 ounces for a male/father and 5 ounces for a female/mother. She explained how her mother had registered as a farmer so that she could get extra rations.

Due to the shortage of food and rations during the occupation, islanders turned to using substitutes for the simplest of things such as tea and sugar. To make tea, they turned to parsnips, where they’d chop the parsnips up and cook them to dry them out, and then boil them and use the broth type water afterwards. Then for the sugar substitute they’d use Beetroot, to make beet sugar.

Listening to Joan, opened up my views on the occupation, she explained whilst life was tough under these living conditions, she personally believed that it was fair, Live life by how they wanted and by the rules, then you were treated fair. Listening to the endless stories amazed me as I was hearing about things for the first time, and it just opened my eyes more on what living was like during the occupation.

-Jersey’s repository for a#rchival material like maps, photos and documents.

-It was formed in 1993.

-they have the occupation and alien cards from the occupation.

the documents are contained in three different vaults all at different chilling temperatures.

-The documents are often contained in acid proof boxes.

This is the alien card that my great- great granadfather was issued . He was the original Le Clezio from my father’s side who came over from France.

This is my Grandfather’s occupation card. All my relates between my great-great grandfather have occupation cards.

The War Tunnels

-Builts during the occupations by a slave labour, the majority were french, Russian or Polish.

-There week voluntied skilled paid workers.

-Originally built as a vast tunnel system.

-1943 it was converted into a casulty cleariing operation in an allied invaison of Europe/ emrergency hospital.

Set 1 (Environmental and Candids)

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Set 2 (Candids)

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Set 3 (Environmental and Candids)

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My goal for creating both environmental and candid portraits is to show the some of the subjects personality using different environments and Mise-en-Scene to add to the backgrounds of the subject. I also found that personally, i think that a home is made by the people who live there, not the rooms or objects that surround them, which is why i decided to take many of my images focusing solely on the subject, using a telephoto lens for many of the images to throw out the background to further emphasize my viewpoint.

TECHNICAL: The image was taken in black and white, The writing and the logo is the main focus of the image which is centered on the right of the image, these are in bold, which then creates the audiences attention.

VISUAL: In the image you can see Francis foots, Wife and child, but also importantly you can see into Pitt street, and the families shop, where they sold records. You can also see in the shop the different types of items they sold in their shops. I get a feeling that this picture is a celebratory of what the family has achieved.

CONTEXTUAL/CONCEPTUAL: This image was taken in 1900s, by Francis foot showing the iconic sign, along with his wife and their child. The iconic sign was put on side of the building because it showed the families business, the sign soon became known as the HMV Sign. The foots family was the first gramophone and record sales. I know that recently the logo has been restored and the store fronts have been decorated. The logo was put on the side of the buildings on Pitt Street and Dumaresq Street

The HMV Sign Now:

Joan was age six when the occupation of Jersey Channel Islands first started and had only been in school two years before hand. She lived in the middle of Jersey, at the highest point (Le Platon) and was an only child. Due to being an only child, she says her parents didn’t baby her at such a young age and she knew the circumstances of the situation the people of Jersey were in. Her living in the north coast of jersey meant that she could see over France and witnessed the Germans settling over in France before deciding to come to Jersey, meaning she was so close to the country that she could hear the bombing going on.

3-4 days before the Germans arrived in Jersey, Joan helped her mother put up white flags in her garden to stop them shooting at the area. June 1940 is when everything started. The family heard the planes come over above their heads which is when Joan met with her five year old female neighbour and they sat in the deserted roads watching the planes fly above them. However, due to their being a rumour that bombing was taking place on Victoria Avenue (St. Helier) Joan’s mother moved the children to under the bushes on the side of the road, sheltered out of sight from the Germans. The three of them sat over night listing to the planes go by, listing to the bombings which she described as being overpoweringly loud and mostly watching the stars in the sky which she found very relaxing.

Living in the highest point of Jersey meant that once the Germans had overtaken Jersey, they then set up base in the area which Joan was living as it was a good point for the Germans so shoot over at France while being able to also see what was coming towards them. Cliffs around the area were also blocked off meaning Joan could no longer play along the cliff edges which she expressed was an activity she used to do a lot. Although the Germans and France were shooting at each other, the germans also used to trade good with them to allow people in Jersey to live. This was the time where ration booklets also came and everyone had to track the amount of food they were buying, and the shop keepers could see the amount that they were allowed to be given. Depending on your occupation depended on the amount of food you got. Joan’s mother cheated at this system and registered her occupation as being a farmer as there was a farm next door to her house, this was believable and allowed the family to get 5grams more of food. The dates people bought food was also noted in these booklets in small squares in the top right hand side. The amount of food being given was no where near enough to last people a week and meant that people started to grow crops, sometimes illegally.

At this point in time the Germans introduced rules to keep the islanders in line, the first being a military zone which meant islanders couldn’t go on beaches. The curfew time was also brought in where in summer everyone had to be home by 10pm and in winter 9pm, no one was allowed out the house until 6am the next day creating restricted movement and allowed the germans to do whatever they lived during this time. During this time blackouts were also happening and everyone had to black out their windows with cardboard to stop any light shining to the outside at nighttime. All radios and other electronics had been taken away to stop people knowing what was happening at this point as well.

The brits are known for liking their tea, and of course there was no rations of tea being given out meaning people had to make their own. This consisted of grating parsnips which people grew, oven baking the parsnip until brown and then pouring hot water onto the parsnip which made a tea favour. If you wanted to buy supplemented off other people you had to use the new German phennings which was money at this point.

Coming back onto people growing their own crops, farmers were told how much they were allowed to grow which was a very restricted amount and kind of made no point of every growing stuff in the first place. They also couldn’t cheat this system as the Germans kept a very close eye on how much everyone was growing. Joan said most people kept to the rules (95%) but the other 5% were punished if not staying in line.

Process of Elimination

Planning my Editing Process

Editing Coloured Images

Black and White Image Edits

High Contrast Edited Images

Best Edited Images

LIFE AND WORK:

In 1859, Sutton developed the earliest panoramic camera with a wide-angle lens. The lens consisted of a glass sphere filled with water, which projected an image onto a curved plate. The camera was capable of capturing an image in a 120 degree arc.

In 1861, Sutton created the first single lens reflex camera. Sutton was the photographer for James Clerk Maxwell’s pioneering 1861 demonstration of colour photography. In a practical trial of a thought-experiment Maxwell had published in 1855, Sutton took three separate black-and-white photographs of a multicoloured ribbon, one through a blue filter, one through a green filter, and one through a red filter. Using three projectors equipped with similar filters, the three photographs were projected superimposed on a screen. The additive primaries variously blended to reproduce a gamut of colour. The photographic materials available to Sutton were mainly sensitive to blue light, barely sensitive to green and practically insensitive to red, so the result was only a partial success. Forty years later, adequately panchromatic plates and films had made excellent colour reproduction possible by this method, as demonstrated by the work of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky. The principle of reproducing a full range of colour by three-colour analysis and synthesis is based on the nature of human colour vision and underlies nearly all practical chemical and electronic colour imaging technologies. Sutton’s ribbon image is sometimes called the first colour photograph. There were, in fact, earlier and possibly better colour photographs made by experimenters who used a completely different, more purely chemical process, but the colours rapidly faded when exposed to light for viewing. Sutton’s photographs preserved the colour information in black-and-white silver images containing no actual colouring matter, so they are very light-fast and durable and the set may reasonably be described as the first permanent colour photograph.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS:

VISUAL:

In the image above, the initial feeling which I get is dystopia and war through the very plain background and black and white color scheme. The ripped fabric which is flowing in the wind also portrays this, it gives a flow to the photo leading from the hot air balloon basket to the actual balloon on the right hand side of the image. There is no clear understanding of the location of the image therefore the viewer is kept guessing. The shapes within the image are also very circular and round, giving a sense of pattern and continuity. Due to the time frame of when this photo was taken and the technology available at the time, the image is monochromatic with very little variation in tone or texture. The image is a little grainy, but it adds to the overall aesthetic of historic images. Furthermore, due to the monochromatic nature of the image, the people are left as silhouettes, especially the first man in the back.

TECHNICAL:

In terms of the technology available at the time, the light sensitive paper which was used for the production of this image means that neither color or minor shadows can be produced in the image, resulting in a very flat and one dimensional image. In order to produce clear images, the camera had to be propped up on a tripod to keep it steady and the subjects also have to be very still. In the early 1800s, the camera obscura had become a portable, light-tight box that contained materials and chemicals that would momentarily record the image through the lens. Cameras created in the 1800s were often crafted for looks as well as functionality. For instance, fine woods were used with brass fixtures to showcase the equipment. Wood had the advantage over metal as it was lighter and the camera could be made larger, which would give the photographer more movement and extension. The wood was also exceptional for dampening vibration, which could affect a metal camera and blur the picture. On the other hand, the metal cameras had the advantage of less flexibility for long extensions. The metal cameras could be knocked over with little damage, while the wooden cameras could be shattered if they hit the floor.

CONCEPTUAL/CONTEXTUAL:

Sutton had a workshop and studio in St Brelade’s Bay from 1848 until it burnt down in about 1854. He was in partnership with the famous French photographer Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, who pioneered the calotype (negative and paper print) process in France. Their business was patronised by Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert and, according to its advertisements, was founded at the suggestion of the prince, who was a collector of photographs.

Sutton produced the first photographic publication of the island – Souvenir de Jersey – and was a prolific writer on photography. He wrote his Dictionary of Photography, the major work on the subject at the time, in 1858, and in 1867 he and photography lecturer George Dawson produced a revised edition. Sutton’s calotype manual was another often reprinted and updated work that kept its popularity through at least 10 editions.

source:
https://www.theislandwiki.org/index.php/Thomas_Sutton