Tony Walker, Bradford photographer

pdeeh · Oct 28, 2019

This is well worth an hour of anyone's time, whether or not they have a particular interest in photography.

Linky: Tony Walker - The Lost Portraits of Bradford

(If you're not in the UK, you'll need to add a VPN to your browser to watch it as the BBC geoblocks based on IP address. I use Windscribe. Please don't @ me if you don't know what this means. Instead, ask your daughter or grand-daughter)

From the BBC website:

Thirty years ago, thousands of portraits from a small studio in Bradford were saved from a skip. They form a unique collection of photographs that records the changing face of a British industrial city in the middle of the 20th century. Many of the people in the portraits were new arrivals from the Asian subcontinent, eastern Europe and the Caribbean, attracted by the offer of work in wool mills. The names of these people are a mystery – only their faces survive.

A small studio, Belle Vue, in the middle of Bradford, built a business on taking portraits of the newly-arrived migrants. Photographer Tony Walker used a battered Victorian camera to take images of his customers, which were often sent back to relatives in the countries they’d left behind.

Working alongside staff from museums in Bradford, presenter Shanaz Gulzar identifies and tracks down the people in the portraits, and uncovers dramatic social change and the hidden stories behind the portraits

SPOILER FOR TERMINAL PURISTS, INVETERATE SNOBS AND MOANERS

At one point, the presenter refers to a photograph being taken on *film* when what is being used is clearly a paper negative.
This obviously invalidates the entire rest of the programme and thus you don't need to waste your time watching it.

Tony Walker, Bradford photographer

pdeeh

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