Photographic Archive Review - Autumn 2006

The closing date for entries to the Société Jersiaise Photography Competition has now passed. We have received a good number of submissions and the images seem to be well balanced across the four categories of Architecture, Landscape, Community and Natural History. It is pleasing that as an open competition a good number of non-members have entered and the event has even encouraged some new members to join the Société. We now look forward to the challenge of selecting the winning photographs. Our judges are: Francis Corbet - President; Jonathan Carter, Director – Jersey Heritage Trust; and Peter Mourant, Picture Editor – Jersey Evening Post. A presentation of prizes for the winning entries will take place at the Société Christmas gathering on Thursday 14 December. An exhibition featuring winning and commended photographs in the Members’ Room will also open on this occasion and continue until Friday 22 December (closed Saturday and Sunday).

It is with great sadness that I must report that Mr Ken Wilson, a volunteer with the Photographic Archive passed away recently. Over many years Ken devoted an enormous amount of time and energy to his work in our department. His background in communications and electronics meant that he was extremely adept with computers and his greatest contribution was undoubtedly in scanning numerous collections, totalling many thousands of images. He fully embraced our ambition to make the photograph catalogue publicly accessible on the internet and during the time leading up to the launch of this facility in July 2005 was effectively a part-time member of staff, coming in every day to ensure that as many records as possible were enriched with images. Many visitors to the Photographic Archive will remember Ken. The staff and his fellow volunteers are privileged to have worked with a man of such kind nature and incredibly sharp wit!

Recent work has brought to light a fascinating early photograph of St Helier Harbour which is reproduced with this article. This version is actually one half of a stereoscopic pair which explains its square format (see small image). Two prints from near identical negatives, though of conventional landscape proportions, are known in other local collections. One of these prints, only recently returned to the island, carries the studio stamp of George W Bashford Photographer of 15 Bath Street (now F Le Gallais & Sons Estate Agents) and is dated 14 September 1866. The detail in both the view shown here and those referred to in other collections is so similar (except for a slightly different state of tide and human figures who were still enough to be recorded in different places) that it seems possible that Bashford was working with two cameras: one for taking a standard single negative and one for the simultaneous double exposure necessary to achieve the three-dimensional stereoscopic effect. Irrespective of the exact circumstances of origination, the content is so similar that we now have a fairly reliable date for the image shown here. Interestingly a photographer named James Bashford operated from premises directly opposite George at 12 Bath Street (now the Soleil Levant public house) in the 1860s. Three cartes-de-visite portraits by James Bashford are present in the Photographic Archive collection and are clearly stamped with the 12 Bath Street address. It seems strange to think that two photographers who were presumably closely related (James Bashford is absent from all Jersey census records and the relationship remains unclear) would trade in direct competition with each other.

Gareth Syvret – Photographic Archivist

George W Bashford? St Helier Harbour, 14 September 1866?