Emile Guiton was born in Jersey in 1879. He was part of La Société Jersiaise and was part of the executive committee there as he had a keen interest in History. Guiton had a fascination with the past and he had a particular interest in the design of Jersey houses over the centuries, in particular, the different styles of arches to be found in the island. Guiton was a keen amateur photographer and practised throughout his life. He experimented with colour at the beginning of the twentieth century in “Autochromes”. He would photograph archaeological excavations and he was one of the few people in Jersey permitted to take photographs during the German Occupation of 1940 – 1945. He recognised very early on the importance of collecting photographs and donated many images to the Société Jersiaise when he died in 1972.

Emilie’s work:

• 

• 

Autochromes

Autochromes ( or Autochrome Lumière) is an early color photography process patented in 1903 by the Lumière brothers in France and first marketed in 1907. The process consists of a glass plate coated on one side with a random pattern of microscopic grains of potato starch dyed red/orange, green, and blue/violet with the grains of starch acting as colour filters and a black-and-white panchromatic silver halide emulsion is put on top. The autochrome was put into the camera with the glass side that wasn’t covered in the potato starch and emulsion was facing the lens so that the light passed through the filter layer before reaching the emulsion. Because of the light loss due to all the filtering, autochrome photographs required a much longer exposure. This mean the photographer had to use a tripod and that photographing moving subjects wasn’t practical.