How do archives function as repositories of knowledge?

Archives are a place in which public records or historical materials (such as documents) are preserved, or in the case of photography a place where “old” photographs are held to preserve them. They are often funded privately but sometimes receive help from the public. They are created in order to record the history of a place, topic, or time in history; for example, we visited the Societe Jersiaise Photographic archive to look into the history of the island, more specifically the archaeological features such as previous excavations and other findings with relation to the islands. These institutions serve to give context to the way things are today- which is important because with things like photography, without context photos are almost meaningless. These collections of documents and photos can be interpreted in certain ways in order to convey an idea of understanding and knowledge of the time in which they were taken. Societe Jersiaise was founded in 1873 for the purpose of “publication of local history”, “the study of the ancient local dialect”, and “to achieve the conservation of all prehistoric and historical sites”. By being able to understand through the use of the archive, it allows us to understand why things on the island are a certain way, as well as allowing us to predict/anticipate the future of it as we can learn from important mistakes. For Example, leaving potential archaeological sites of interest such as burial chambers to be eroded by the sea when they could have been studied, a sad reality that happened to Green Island. Looking more broadly into archives and things that I keep that could be considered personal archives are e-tickets of events that I have attended, as well as posters of line ups and images and videos that I have taken to look back on.

The Photographer I have chosen to study in relation to the essay question is William Collie, Collie was born in Scotland in October 1810. Collie’s work featured in Society Jersey’s Archives consists of 157 images. An Image in particular that stood out to me when researching Collie was his image of a Jersey Market Woman, one of the earliest photographs printed on paper taken in 1847, It is thought that Collie was most probably the first photographer to use Fox Talbot’s calotype process in Jersey. Although these images have been ‘copyrighted’ by the Royal Photographic Society and are unable to be viewed on the Society Jersey Archives website, they can be viewed in person. Collie had to use one of the early photographic processes of salt printing to produce these images on paper. The salted print process was a revolutionary, direct, negative to positive photographic process invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1839, which allowed multiple prints to be created from a single negative. However, depending on the precise process used, it can result in extremely light-sensitive prints. Without photographers such as William Collie’s work being stored in archives, studying and understanding historical processes would be a lot more difficult. From studying his images, we can learn more about Jersey in the times he was photographing, as well as photographic processes throughout history.

In my process of researching William Collie his images of Woman in a Jersey Market really stood out to me. The images were taken around 174 years ago in 1847, which I find remarkable that they are of such good quality from that time period. Collie was a pioneer of the photographic processes which lead to printed photography, and his series of images of Jersey Market Women are calotype portraits. Calotypes are the original negative and positive process invented by William Henry Fox Talbot; the calotype is sometimes called a “Talbotype.” This process uses a paper negative to make a print with a softer, less sharp image than the daguerreotype, but because a negative is produced, it is possible to make multiple copies. The image below in particular looks as though it was taken outside with natural lighting, however the way the image is printed it has made it a lot darker than what the image most likely looked like on the camera. In spite of the image being printed very dark and monochromatic, there is still a lot of bright contrast in the image with the white brick wall featuring in the background and the white details that are more obvious on the bottom half of her dress she is wearing. One thing I like about this image is that although the woman in the image is the focal point, she is not entirely centred which makes the image more interesting to look at, as it also draws you into looking at the details and information that can be seen in the background. The basket on the wall in the top left of the image breaks up the brightness of the wall behind the woman and fills the image well.

In Conclusion, archives are a great source of knowledge and provide evidence of activities which occurred in the past, they tell stories, document people and identity and are valuable sources of information for research. Without archived images we would find it a lot harder to piece together historical moments in time. One could argue that photographic archives store some of the most important pieces of history and are massively important in proving historically important events happened. Whilst writing this essay I have reflected on how images from the past have and still can in the future help me develop my own photography style, I think that looking back on images from the past greatly helps me with deciding which kind of images I like and dislike and the style of images I want to take as a photographer. Something that I could do to develop my own photographic project around St Helier Migrant communities is photograph people in Jersey Market, in a similar style as William Collie has done and compare the images of people who work and/or frequent the market to Collies images that only featured woman in the market.