Francis Foot was born in Jersey in 1885, he was born to parents Francois and Louisa Foot, his father, Francois, was a china and glass collector in St. Helier at a time when this was more affluent. Francis Foot became a gas fitter, but he soon became interested in Photography through early photographs and gramophone records and he realised that he could turn this into a career and earn his living. Due to Francis’ new found interest, his family opened a new shop in Pitt Street where Francis worked as a photographer and his parents worked selling gramophones, records, and other wares in Dumaresq Street. Francois Foot passed in 1918 and Francis then put all of his focus into the business on Pitt Street before marrying his wife, Margaret Vernon just before the First World War, the couple then went on to have four children.
Francis Foot’s area of interest within photography is portraiture, more specifically family portraiture, and photos of different places around the island of Jersey. The photographs are, for the majority, taken in the subjects own environment rather than being captured more formally.
photo analysis;
This photo is an image of Francis Foot’s three children, George, Stanley, and Dora taken by himself. Contextually, this photo captures that the children were quite clearly higher class due to the clothes they are wearing and how they have been presented which also leads for the assumption to be made that their parents were likely to have more wealth than the average islander. As with a lot of Foots portraits of the children, they are all wearing white, this could too be representing the idea of the family having wealth and being ‘upper’ class, or that they are clean, and somewhat ‘pure’. The background of the photograph seems to be bushes and plants, however due to older technology, the photo is in black and white, this creates a significant contrast within the image so that the only thing you can really look at is the children in the foreground. Technically, this photo is not taken the best way, however in the era it was taken, I can imagine this was the best quality available, but due to the development of modern technology this photo could nowadays be seen as being a ‘low’ quality photograph. The background shows that this image was taken outside and so we can therefore assume that the light used was natural sunlight, this would have made the white clothes appear bright and also give the natural shadows and highlights.