An archive- a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.
The Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive is holds Jersey’s collection of archives, containing over 125,000 items dating from the mid-1840s to the present day. Formed in 1873, it was originally designed to be a museum and library, however by the second year much more focus was put onto the collection of the archives itself. The importance of ‘recording in permanent photography local prehistoric monuments, buildings and ruins’ was the main ideology of the founders, thus the sorting of the data collected became the main priority. They wanted to show how their archival collection weren’t just pictures, they were a portrayal of the past in a highly detailed manner. This is why context proved to be so important- a picture needed a labelled time and place to have a significant meaning and place in Jersey’s timeline. Photography arrived in Jersey on 9th May 1840, and without archives all the information and knowledge documented would be lost, causing the past to fade. Archives help create a collective memory of Jersey, from many different points of view, and can teach us about other people’s opinion in a way nothing else can. We can look at archives and notice the good and bad changes that have occurred over the year, helping us avoid repeating mistakes. Every person keeps achieves- whether it is pictures on our phones or text messages- and they say more about us than we realise. Our identify revolves around events and how they affected us, and what better way to show that than keeping archives?
William Collie
William Collie was born in October 1810 and passed away in the year 1896. He was born in Skene, Aberdeenshire, Scotland and moved to St. Helier, Jersey in his 30s, opening a portrait business in Belmont Road and Bath Street. Like many other early photographers, started his professional life as a portrait painter. However, after moving to Jersey, he began a portrait business, making him one of the first photographers in the Channel Islands. Collie was probably the first photographer to use Fox Talbot’s calotype process, which required paper coated with silver iodide to develop his photographs. was exposed to light in a camera obscura; those areas hit by light became dark in tone, creating a negative image. His most popular project is called the ‘French and Jersey Market Women’ and was created by him in the late 1840s. Many of these portraits actually show friends and family dressed as the migrant market women Collie met at St, Helier’s Market. The Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive lists 157 photographs by William Collie and are all portraits of Jersey folk and their surroundings from the 19th century. His photographs show a mix of professional portraits and candid photos, presenting us with how the upper and lower classes lived. We can see the segregation between the classes at the time, taking into account their clothes and the activities captured in the images. Being one of the first photographs in Jersey, Collie captured a time in the island’s history that not many other people did. It is the oldest imagery we have of our home, causing these photos to be priceless and a true representation of the past.
Emile Guiton- Children in Park
Thomas Young provided the theoretical framework for the first commercially viable method of colour photography, the autochrome, by theorising that our physiological perception of light was trichromatic, that all perceived colour is produced optically, by the eye’s sensitivity to just three wavelengths of light: red, green, and violet. On the 10th of June 1907, to an invited audience of 600, the brothers Louis and August Lumière, demonstrated their newest invention, the first combined system additive colour screen process. The interest around autochromes in 1907 was worldwide, photographically, scientifically and culturally.
Emile Guiton was born in Jersey in 1879 and had a keen interest in history and was a member of La Société Jersiaise, being known by many as the founding father. He was known for experimenting with autochrome colour very early on and producing in the process many beautifully coloured photographs. Guiton had a particular interest in the design of Jersey houses over the centuries, and particularly in different styles of arches to be found in the island. In Patrick’s Cahill’s ‘The Autochromes of Emile Guiton’, he mentioned how ‘Emile’s autochromes form the bulk of the early colour collection, thematically they fall quite neatly into two categories. The first category can be described as still life photographs, images of flowers, a stained- glass window, a colour chart, fruit. The second category can be loosely described as domestic photographs, Mrs Guiton, children playing, a garden, local country scenes’. I think is very interesting as it shows how Guiton used photography as not only an art, but also a useful tool in the documentation of history and his life.
I think this picture is a beautiful representation of Guiton’s work as well as a perfect example of the simplicity yet uniqueness of Autochrome colour photos. The photo appears to have quite a shallow depth of field, the children being mostly in focus and the background being smudged, however this could simply be due to the long exposure (due to the child on the far right also appearing blurred). This adds to the softness of the picture, a resemblance of the children. The picture shows how Guiton was a ‘trendy’ photographer, engaging with the photographic styles at the time. The theme of maroon in the picture- being present on the children’s clothes and flowers- creates a feeling of repetition. He also utilised this colour as a heavy contrast in the image. The washed out look of the photo causes there to be a sense of nostalgia in the photo, creating a portrayal of the past in a dreamlike, gentle manner. Guiton recorded an everyday scene in unique and almost magical manner, causing this to be a truly significant photo. The natural lighting in the photograph causes the colours of the dresses to stand out in the otherwise dull environment. I think the photo provided a lot of inspiration for other photographers who hadn’t yet experimented with colour, and how a simple picture could be significantly enhanced with the technique. Furthermore, the fact that this image is one of the first coloured photos, implies that the way coloured photographs have developed can be tracked.
In conclusion, images of the past are the main, and most important, form of documentation, that has a huge impact on our knowledge of history. We can learn how people before us lived, as well as learn from their mistakes and achievements. The past is a big part of each individual’s identity, and many to this day take inspiration from different aspects of the past. Without photography or, more specifically, archives this knowledge would be unknown to us. Archives are a repository of knowledge since they are a physical way of proving many aspects of our world’s past, and a way of understanding what photographers deemed to be interesting/ important. It is not only an insight to our history but also to people’s opinions and thoughts. Without organised archives our world would be very different, which is why places like the Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive must continue their important work. In my opinion, archives would help me explore the theme of nostalgia in the way that nothing else could. Looking back at old photo albums helped me understand many things about my family, and how my own life came to a start. I would want to respond to the knowledge I have gained to create a comparison between nostalgic images and how the same places/ people are now, as I attempted in my summer task. I think it would be interesting to see how time changed everything for the better and worse.