Masterplan

The island of Jersey is one of the world's leading offshore International Finance Centres. The question of what visual record there is of contemporary Jersey is a question of what visual record there is of finance. And, what is a visual record of finance?

The island of Jersey is one of the world's leading offshore International Finance Centres. In the second half of the twentieth century Jersey’s economy has experienced a radical transformation from one based upon agriculture and tourism to a financial services industry which today commands over 50% of total economic activity. 100,000 people live in Jersey and in 2016 13,000 islanders are employed within the finance sector. Jersey Finance, the organization formed to promote the industry, stated that in 2015 the cross sector value of invested wealth exceeded £600 Billion. Masterplan is a five year project (2016-2020) using photography, film and archival research to tell the story of Jersey’s economic growth and development in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The question of what visual record there is of contemporary Jersey is a question of what visual record there is of finance. And, what is a visual record of finance?

Masterplan is a collaborative research project between Martin Toft and Gareth Syvret at Archisle: The Jersey Contemporary Photography Program, hosted by the Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive exploring contemporary Jersey corporate culture, the finance industry, business community and governance. The huge importance of the finance sector to the post war economic trajectory of the Island of Jersey is an area in which Photographic Archives until now remain deficient. Although the Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive contains rich documentary of Jersey and St Helier’s landscape, social and business histories in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries major post war developments in landscape, infrastructure and society are not represented in a coherent visual narrative.