The Société Jersiaise is a Jersey archive which preserves Jersey’s history. Amongst many objects, they house many images that depict Jersey’s occupation during WW2. In the archive you can find many images taken by both German soldiers and Jersey people.
The Société was founded by a group of jersey individuals who were keen on jersey’s history and wanted to make sure it was kept. The Société then grew to include the founding of a museum, and the purchasing archaeological sites in order to preserve and present them. Some sights now owned by the Société Jersiaise are La Hougue Bie and La Cotte de Saint-Brélade.
The archive was formed in 1873, and in 1877 they announced that they had aims of opening a museum. The archive contains over 100,000 images from the mid 1840s, to today. Since Britain and France were both known for the development of photography, Jersey (located between the two) has a rich history in photography. On the 9th of May 1840, photography arrived in Jersey, and the archive contains works by photographers such as Thomas Sutton and William Collie.
We then spent the majority of the time looking through many collections of images, both from the archive and private collectors, from the occupation of Jersey. We were able to see many photos taken by both Jersey and German photographers, which was very interesting as it meant we were able to see two different perspectives of the occupation. After choosing our favourite images, we then recorded the reference numbers so that the archive were able to provide us with the digital version you can see in the gallery to the right.
We spent some time learning about narratives. A narrative is the idea that a group of images are able to tell an audience a story. We were given a selection of copies of archive images so that we were able to attempt our own narratives in groups. This was a helpful task as it aided me in realizing that sometimes, less images may be better than more.
Also during the day, we were given the task of taking pictures of things in and around town that related to the jersey occupation. My approach to this was how during the occupation, gold and leather was taken from islanders and made use elsewhere. Whether it be their gold teeth or worn out shoes, it was all removed from their possession. Correlating to this, I went around town and photographed second hand shoes and rings, showing how the once loved can be passed on for other purposes.
We also had the task of ordering Archival images to create a narrative; whether it be a story or just in chronological order. Within my group we ordered the images (from left to right) into 3 sections. Section 1 consisted of ‘Sea, Beach and Land’ (how the island was invaded), section 2 focused on the narrative of one soldier, then section 3 was a general narrative of the occupation and its effect on the island.
