Launch of ED.EM.04 Victoria & Albert - on the piers

Launch of ED.EM.04: Victoria & Albert - on the piers

Fourth issue in a series of photo-zines produced by Éditions Emile – an imprint celebrating the unique collections held in the @sjphotoarchive in the island of Jersey.

Issue four considers the development and use of Victoria and Albert Piers. A recent donation to the Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive showing work being carried out to the piers between 1929-31 forms the backbone of the zine, with contemporary photographs, produced by four local photographers placing recent construction work to the piers within this historical and social context. Doug Ford, Maritime Historian and former Community Learning Director at Jersey Heritage, has written a new text for this issue; a concise history of the piers up to date, providing the broader context of a working harbour for an island community.

Get you copy here!

www.edem.je

Jèrriais project finalist in Gomma Photography Grant 2021

Yesterday I was invited to attend Jersey Dialogues - Exploring and Celebrating our Island Identity organised by Jersey Policy Forum as part of the Island Identity project spearheaded by Deputy Carolyn Labey, Minister for International Development, Government of Jersey that asks: What makes Jersey special and why does that matter?

Jersey’s native language of Norman French and its unique geology is partly what makes the island special and I was pleased to learn earlier that my project Becque á Barbe: Face to Face has been shortlisted for the Gomma Photography Grant 2021.

I began the project in 2019 when United Nations General Assembly declared 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages. Each portrait is titled with a Jèrriais word that each native speaker has chosen to represent a personal or symbolic meaning, or a specific memory linked to childhood. Some portraits are darker in tonality to reflect the language hidden past when English was adopted as the formal speech in Jersey and Jèrriais was suppressed publicly and forbidden to be spoken in schools. On a linguistic level the project is exploring the space between the formal, etymological and vernacular use of Jèrriais. In an island made of granite most names are forms of the Celtic, Norse and Latin words for rock. Juxtaposed with portraits of Jèrriais speakers are images of Jersey rocks that are all designated as Sites of Special Interest; important geological outcrops that are protected from development and preserved for future public enjoyment and research. The native speakers of Jersey French should be classified as People of Special Interest and equally be protected from extinction through encouraging greater visibility and recognition as guardians of a unique language that are essential in understanding the island’s special character.

A selection of images were initially exhibited at CCA Galleries International, St Helier (23 May - 12 June 2019) as a way to encourage native speakers to come forward to be photographed. If you know such special islanders, or are from a family where Jèrriais was spoken, please DM. All portraits will be deposited at Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive for future research and public enjoyment.

#becqueabarbe #jèrriais #portrait

Review of ED.EM.03 in PhotoBook Journal

Many thanks to Douglas Stockdale for his PhotoBook Journal review of our latest edition of ED.EM.03 - On the Social Matrix representing 165 years of portraiture in Jersey by Henry Mullins and Michelle Sank. Accompanying the images is a text by Gareth Syvret that contextualises both photographer's work in a period that has seen the island undergo important changes both socially and economically. This publication examine those changes, but also the power structures that remain in place. Get your copy here!

https://www.edem.je/editions/p/ed-em-03

For collectors we have a special offer of the first 3 issues of ED.EM. at a discounted price.

https://www.edem.je/editions/p/ed-em-01-03

Becque á Barbe: Face to Face - my Jèrriais portrait projects begins again after CV-19

In 2019 I began a new project Becque á Barbe / Face to Face with the aim of making 100 portraits of Jersey's native speakers. Since then a certain pandemic intervened and almost 2 years on I'm pleased again to be spending time with some of the most endearing islanders who grew up speaking Jèrriais – Jersey’s native language of Norman French.

On a linguistic level the project is exploring the space between the formal, etymological and vernacular use of Jèrriais. Each portrait is titled with a Jèrriais word that each native speaker has chosen to represent a personal or symbolic meaning, or a specific memory linked to his or her childhood. Some portraits are darker in tonality to reflect the language hidden past at a time when English was adopted as the formal speech in Jersey and Jèrriais was suppressed publicly and forbidden to be spoken in schools.

In an island made of granite most names are forms of the Celtic, Norse and Latin words for rock. Most Jersey place names are also using proper French rather than Jèrriais, although there are variants of place names that native speakers would have used in a local context. Juxtaposed with portraits of Jèrriais speakers are a series of photographs of Jersey rocks that are all designated as Sites of Special Interest (SSIs); important geological outcrops that are protected from development and preserved for future public enjoyment and research purposes. The native speakers of Jersey French should be classified as People of Special Interest (PSIs) and equally be protected from extinction through encouraging greater visibility and recognition as guardians of a unique language that are essential in understanding the island’s special character.

A selection of images were initially exhibited at CCA Galleries International, St Helier (23 May - 12 June 2019) as a way to encourage native speakers to come forward and to support the project's aim to publish a photobook. A review was featured in Islands of the Mind - an online archipelago of real and imagined islands curated by Belgian photographer Sylvie De Weze.

https://islandsofthemind.tumblr.com/.../becque-%C3%A0...

If you know a native speaker, or are from a Jersey family where Jèrriais was spoken please DM me. On Wednesday I will be in the parish of St Martin together with my dear friend and Jèrriais teacher Joan Tapley.

All portraits will be deposited at Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive for future research and public enjoyment.

#becqueabarbe #TheLast100 #jèrriais #portrait

NFT Embroidery Workshop

This week we had the pleasure of welcoming artist Yulia Makeyeva to Hautlieu School and work with our A-Level photography students in a workshop on Embroidery to help them develop new ways of thinking about narrative and making imagery for their animated film project that will be part of 2 Lives NFT exhibition later this year in St Helier, Jersey. The education programme begin with a visit to Jersey Museum in June to see the People Makes Jersey exhibition that explore the island's history and stories of immigration. In this workshop students are re-appropriating the exhibition panels kindly donated by Lucy Layton, Outreach Curator at Jersey Heritage. #2lives, #NFT #connectwithart

Launch of NFT Education programme

Great to launch our education programme for A-level photography students at Hautlieu School together with artist and curator Yulia Makeyeva in the classroom and live video link from Rome with Francesco Vincenti and Claudia Runcio - the creaters behind 2 Lives NFT Art Project that will be Jersey’s first art exhibition connecting art and finance, through the introduction of NFTs. 2 Lives will consist of a traditional art exhibition at Connect With Art Exhibition Space in St Helier and NFTs offered on a digital platform in the metaverse. Students will be making a series of animated films and images using analogue and digital processes supported by a number of creative workshops in embroidery, 3D modelling and animation. Watch this space to see how their work develops in the next few weeks!

#2lives, #NFT #connectwithart

Dispatch 6 - Elsinore, Kingdom of Denmark

My six my week sojourn around northwest Europe is coming to an end. It seems poetic to stay the last night at Baltic Hotel in Lübeck which was the centre of the Hanseatic League – a sophisticated trade empire flourishing in the 13-15 centuries. The trading network of the Hanse merchants was based on a system of stable markets and foreign offices (kontoren), eg. in London, Bruges, Bergen, Novgorod, Danzig (Gdańsk), Riga, Reval (Tallinn) and many more. The successful linkage of sea, river and land routes was one of the reasons for the success and longevity of the Hanseatic trading system. The vestiges of this well organised maritime super league are evident throughout the Baltic and North region, and no doubt they established a maritime entrepôt that Jersey merchants later benefitted from as various nations, including Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Prussia and not least Russia vyed for power to control its riches. Tomorrow I’ll begin my journey back to Jersey and once again the adventure of Entrepôt has been fascinating as it touches on topics of trade, shipping, merchants, commodities, diplomacy, finances and migration.

In the excellent maritime museum of Denmark (M/S Museet for Søfart) in Elsinore (Helsingør) an inscription on a gold coin from the Danish West India Company, 1778 (a chartered company that operated out of the Danish colonies in Caribbean islands of St Croix, St John and St Thomas and flourished in the North Atlantic triangular trade routes bringing slaves from the Gold Coast of Africa in exchange for molasses and rum in the West Indies), reads ‘In travelling the seas we enrich ourselves’. Perhaps Charles Robin, Jersey’s most successful merchant had traded with one of these coins as he embarked on establishing his dried cod empire in the Gaspé peninsula in Canada whose maritime connections reached many markets around the world, including the Baltic. It was Robin’s story fictionalised in The Seaflower Venture, an unpublished biography based on his journals written by Phylis Ross - aka Lady McKie (of which a copy is held in the Library archive at the SJ), that initially ignited my interest in 2017 with a visit to Robin’s headquarter in Paspébiac in the Bay of Chaleur in the province of Quebec. At M/S in Elsinore another quote was imprinted on the wall: ‘There are three types of people, the living, the dead and mariners’ (Anacharsis, Greek philosopher, ca 600 BC)

Image; Kronborg Slot immortalised in Shakespeare's Hamlet and where toll from every ships entering and leaving Øresund was collected for the Danish kingdom.

Dispatch 5 - at sea in between Finland and Sweden

I posted this last night on a ship in the Baltic Sea between Turku and Stockholm. In the last month I have been exploring maritime history between Jersey and the Baltic as part of my project Entrepôt. I’m on the last leg of my journey travelling to specific locations and sites in Sweden and Denmark before returning home to Jersey. There has been many twists and turns on this trip as new research and discoveries have been found. Often Jersey ships would arrive in port with luxury goods produced from slave plantations in the American colonies, or sail from ports in the Mediterranean with commodities exchanged as part of the lucrative triangular trade, without knowing exactly where to collect a freight for the return voyage. In archival records we have accounts from captains’ logbooks describing how they would sail from port to port over several weeks or sometimes months in an attempt to secure a good deal as frustrations mounted from the shipowners back in Jersey.

Image: Dining room on ‘Vestland’, a Norwegian vessel carrying dry bulk between ports in mainly Scandinavia and the Netherlands.

#entrepôt