Harbour History

Before 1700 St Helier had no decent harbour although a map of 1545 does show two stone piers in the area under Le Mont de la Ville, near where South Pier is today. The modern harbour dates back to the construction of the stone fronted quay at La Folie in the early 1700s.

So it was to St Aubin that the States turned when the demand for a harbour could no longer be ignored, and during the 17th century this certainly became the island’s principal port, where vessels headed to and from the cod fisheries on the Canadian coast would moor, alongside cargo vessels and privateers and their captures.

It was not a convenient location, however, because the berths dried out at low water, and there was no road to St Helier, which was still the island’s main town and marketplace. Cargoes had to be transported across the long beach from St Aubin to St Helier by horse and cart.

In 1790 work started on a new northern pier, known as the North Quay, and later the New North Quay, but it would be 25 years before it was completed.

There have been a number of 20th century developments. The tanker berth was built to allow tankers to offload fuel and oil supplies near to the fuel farm. It is also the outermost part (at the southern edge) of the harbour. Further north, La Collette Yacht Basin backs onto the Victoria Pier, and provides a deep-water harbour for leisure craft. Nearby is the area for the fishing fleet.

It was the 1980s when the Elizabeth Harbour, with its new terminal building for passengers, and separate freight area, was planned. It was opened by the Queen in 1989.

Mood Board

What was the involvement of Jersey mariners in the Canadian cod-fisheries and the Transatlantic carrying trade?

When the first Europeans reached Canada is unclear, but it is thought to be Italian explorer John Cabot’s descriptions of ‘new found landes’ and a sea swarming with fish in 1497 that drew fishermen to the north of the continent, and around 1600 English fishing captains still reported cod shoals 

By the beginning of the 16th-century Basque fishermen were travelling to the region to fish and, by 1580, around 10,000 European fishermen were making the transatlantic voyage to the area each year to fish for cod.

Channel Island fishermen were among these and by the 1750s they had set up lucrative trade routes between Canada, Europe and America, establishing bases on the Gaspé Coast where they could salt and prepare the cod. 

Which ports did Jersey ships sail to and trade with?

A concerted effort to build harbours did not take off until the late 17th century, when work began on building a pier on the islet on which St Aubin’s fort stands. During the 18th century St Aubin’s harbour proper was constructed and work began on developing St Helier as a port, although the capital had to wait until the 19th century before it really began to develop as a port.

It was during the early 19th century that stone piers were built at La Rocque, Bouley Bay, Rozel and Gorey, to accommodate the oyster boats. The harbour at Gorey also took passenger traffic from Normandy. The primary purpose of these harbours was the movement of cargoes and not people.

What type of goods did Jersey merchants exchange for cod-fish?

Jersey cod-merchants also exported cod-fish to British colonies in the West Indies and later Brazil too in exchange for plantation goods, such as sugar, molasses, rum, cotton, coffee and tobacco which it brought to markets in America, Europe and the UK (inc. Jersey). Within that context Jersey benefitted from the profits made in the British Empire build on a capitalist model of a slave-based economy.

To what extend, has the island of Jersey benefitted from its constitutional relationship with Britain and the legacies of colonialism based on a slave plantation economy during the first Industrial Revolution (1760-1840)?

 By the 1770s there may have been up to 70 Jersey ships and 2,000 Jerseymen engaged in the cod trade. By the 1840s it is estimated that the industry directly employed 4,000 people. Also, many others were engaged in manufacturing goods to be exported to the Canadian settlements. https://www.policy.je/papers/jerseys-history

Design 1

This was my first design I made but I didn’t like the way the three images on the side looked in a row because I thought it was too squished and if I put the filling writing in it would be a lot going on in one place and be boring to look at because everything is set out for you and it wouldn’t make you look around.

This is my final look the page spread I chose the to use the pictures that I took in Edinburgh. I edited these images originally on Lightroom to edit each image slightly before moving onto photoshop. On photoshop I used the same coloured filter on each image called ‘Septa’. I chose this filter because I thought it looked old and vintage and I took these pictures in the Old Town in Edinburgh so I thought it matched well. After I selected the filter I wanted I outlined each of the most prominent thing in the image and kept them in colour, the main accent colour in the page spread was blue. I then went on InDesign and created the page spread. I picked the big main image as a woman posing for a picture with a church/cathedral in the background. The image underneath is of a man in a blue tracksuit which goes with the blue in the big main image. The rest of the images are smaller on the side going down in a zig zag pattern. I chose to lay it out this way because I liked the way it goes with the writing next to each image.

Design 2

For this page spread I mixed pictures that I took in Paris and Edinburgh together. I chose to mix these two together as the ‘old’ vibe was still carried through in Each city. On my first attempt for this design I chose no text and three images but I didnt like the way the three images looked squashed together so I decided to use one less image and spread out the right two images from the others instead of all being joint together and put filler text in the fill the space where the other image was.

For my final images I went for Black and White as the main theme. I chose this because of the structures I was taking photos of were mainly old and looked best in black and white.

Decisive Moment

For these pictures I chose to put filters over them and selected the thing that stood out the most in each image (people) and I kept them in colour so there was a nice contrast of dark filters and a pop of colour.

Cropping and Removing on Photoshop

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French artist and humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment. 

He studied painting when he was just 5 years old, taking an apprenticeship in his uncle Louis’ studio. Cartier-Bresson was introduced to oil painting by his uncle Louis, a gifted painter and winner of the Prix de Rome in 1910. But his painting lessons were cut short when uncle Louis was killed in World War I.

The Decisive Moment

In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book The Decisive Moment. Cartier-Bresson took his keynote text from Volume 2 of the Memoirs of 17th century Cardinal De Ritz “There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment”. Cartier-Bresson applied this to his photographic style. He said: To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.

“Photography is not like painting. There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”

Cartier-Bresson’s photography took him to many places, including China, Mexico, Canada, the United States, India, Japan, Portugal and the Soviet Union. While traveling in China in 1958, Cartier-Bresson documented the construction of the Ming Tombs Reservoir He became the first Western photographer to photograph “freely” in the post-war Soviet Union.

Technique

Cartier-Bresson almost always used a Leica 35 mm rangefinder camera fitted with a normal 50 mm lens, or occasionally a wide-angle lens for landscapes. He often wrapped black tape around the camera’s chrome body to make it less conspicuous. With fast black and white film and sharp lenses, he was able to photograph events unnoticed.

He never photographed with flash, a practice he saw as “impolite…like coming to a concert with a pistol in your hand.”

He believed in composing his photographs in the viewfinder, not in the darkroom. He showcased this belief by having nearly all his photographs printed only at full-frame and completely free of any cropping or other darkroom manipulation. He insisted that his prints be left uncropped so as to include a few millimetres of the unexposed negative around the image area, resulting in a black frame around the developed picture.

He worked exclusively in black and white, other than a few experiments in colour. He disliked developing or making his own prints and showed a considerable lack of interest in the process of photography in general, likening photography with the small camera to an “instant drawing”. Technical aspects of photography were valid for him only where they allowed him to express what he saw.

Image Analysis

This image was taken 1954. The decisive moment is the boy with two wine bottles in each of his arms. The boy’s face expresses happiness and a cheeky smile, In the background you see more children looking at the boy and it seems like he knows they are looking because he has his head held high a proud smirk on his face. The image is solely focussed on the boy in the middle so you can’t tell if there are any adults around or with the other children in the background. The boy’s name was Michel Gabriel and when he grew up he kept in touch with Henri Cartier-Bresson.

My photos are in order of my favourite images and final results from the typography and Anthropocene topic. For all the images in the galleries I made, I added perspective to each and distorted them to make them the right shape for the perspective. This made sure that all the images where correctly placed against the walls where they are on the side or at an angle. I added drop shadows to make it look like they are mounted against the wall for a more realistic look. I used different galleries for each theme. Where I have more final images than the other I used a more strategic gallery where I can fit more images into it, for example typography has the most final images so I went with a more spacious and complex design that has the most area to put images so I could fit all my chosen images in. However, my Anthropocene gallery is square shaped as I did not have many final images so I went with a gallery that would be easy to fill without it looking underwhelming compared to my typography gallery.

Typography + Anthropocene Gallery

Typography Gallery

Anthropocene Gallery

Typography Final Images

Anthropocene Final Images

Experimenting with Images + Final Photos

For these images I experimented on I used the same technique for them all. I started off by using the magnetic lasso tool on photoshop and outlining the section I wanted to put a filter on. after I outlined the section I selected the filter I wanted. For this I used a variety of different ones I used ‘Strong’ which is a black and white filter for all my black and white images as I found it was the most prominent and I liked how strong the blacks and whites were. I used ‘Blue Mood’ for a blue-purple sky, and ‘Split Tone’ for the yellow-green sky.

Firstly flagged my favourite images and narrowed it down from 73 to 15 images.

I then went through my flagged images and edited my favourite ones from that selection.

In this image it is of a snake covering plastic. The snake represents nature and wildlife while the plastic and hand represent humans doing damage to the world due to plastic pollution. For this image I turned highlights and whites and turned down shadows and blacks as the original picture looked dull with no vibrancy and colour, (which could have worked well for the topic) but I decided to make it lighter and more vibrant. I also turned up the texture and clarity slightly so you could see the shapes and patterns properly and more clearly. this also contributed to the pop of colour in the image.

This image is of a snake wrapped around a plastic bottle. I think this image shows Anthropocene and typography as it represents life (the snake) and how it is wrapped around a plastic bottle which shows how plastic is polluting the world and the human hand to symbolise its humans doing it. I chose to put the image in black and white as I didn’t originally like the colour contrast of the snake, hand and bottle all mixed together and I preferred the way it looked in black and white. I turned the contrast and clarity up to get sharper point in the photo and really define all the features in this image.

This image is of a dog looking at treats through a plastic bag. I took this image of the dog looking into the treat bag to show that humans look after these animals and they rely on humans for food and care. I think this relates to the Anthropocene topic indirectly because it shows the care for animals instead of if they had improper care, were stray, being hunted or if their environment was destroyed. For this image I added an effect where the outside of the image is highlighted and glowing. I also turned the highlights down a lot and turned the black tone up to make the image darker so the effect stands out more.

This image goes with the other dog image where this time the dog isn’t looking at the plastic bag and is looking into the camera. I made this image black and white because I like the way the dog is smiling into the camera, the black and white contrasts with this and I like how it came out.