Francis Foot was born in 1885 in the channel island Jersey to mother and father, Francois Foot and Louisa Hunt. His father was a china and glass dealer in Dumaresq Street, at a time when the area was one of the more affluent in St Helier. Francis soon became fascinated by photography and the early phonographs and gramophone records and realised that he could earn a living from them, from this his family took on a second shop in Pitt Street where Francis worked as a photographer, while his father and mother sold gramophones, records and other wares.

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Francis Foot was in and among the most prolific photographers of early Battles, he was better known for his shop in Pitt Street, selling, among other things, early phonographs.

From 1905 to 1920 Foot was a regular visitor to the Battle on Victoria Avenue and many of his pictures survive in a collection held in La
Société Jersiaise’s photographic archive.

Foot’s pictures are notable for their depiction of the people involved in early events. Whereas the first photographs of the Battle of Flowers from 1902 onwards concentrated on general views of the arena and the audience and later they were generally interested in the spectacular floats which gradually came to dominate the event. Foot homed in on the participating adults and children, for without them there would have been no carnival.

Below shows one of Francis Foot’s photographs, it shows a women and child stood outside their shop. For the time this was a common thing to happen, I have been able to relate this type of photograph to some of my own family photographs I found when researching my own family history (also shown below). This style of photograph was very common, almost like an environmental portrait, usually the owner and their family stood outside their owned shop, it was their life work and these images were taken to preserve these histories. Francis Foot was looking at the people rather than the surroundings.

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