‘Faces and Places – Stories from the JEP Archive’ features a selection from the hundreds of thousands of photographs that have appeared in the newspaper since the 1920s. The archive collection is now looked after by Jersey Heritage, who are cataloguing the images and putting them online. However, the details of when, why or where many of the images were taken has been lost over the years.
Louise Downie, Jersey’s Heritage’s director of curation and experience, said: ‘The Jersey Evening Post photographic archive is a unique visual record of Jersey’s faces and places, featuring events great and small.
‘As well as showing off the incredible range of stories that have been beautifully captured over the decades, we are also asking for the public’s help to solve the mystery of why the photos were taken, and who is featured in them.
‘Our aim is to record the precious memories that lie behind each and every photograph, so we hope that as many people as possible visit the exhibition and share what they know.’
Throughout the exhibition, there are albums of photographs with numbers on. If visitors know anything about an image, they are being asked to note down its number, fill in a postcard and put it in the post box at the exhibition entrance.
Jersey Heritage archivists will then add those details onto that photograph’s record.
The exhibition, sponsored by Benest & Syvret, is due to officially open at Jersey Museum on Wednesday 12 June at 5.30pm.
Those present will include JEP photographers from the past and present, as well as former JEP editor Chris Bright and former picture editor Peter Mourant, who were instrumental in the transfer of the newspaper’s photo archive to Jersey Heritage.
