FROM the 1950s to the 1970s, photographs taken at a modest Manningham studio were cherished by families across the world.
The Belle Vue Photographic Studio at 118 Manningham Lane was the place to go for families new to Bradford, who wanted portraits taken to send back ‘home’.
These photographs - seen as a sign that they were doing well for themselves in their adopted home city - were sent to relatives in Ukraine, Latvia, Poland, the Caribbean, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.
The studio closed in 1975 and a decade later 17,000 glass negatives, which had been dumped in the cellar, were destined for a skip until they were rescued and acquired by Bradford Museums and Galleries. The images date back to the early 1900s, when the studio opened.
Nearly half a century after it closed, what stories have been uncovered about the people in the portraits?
Next month John Ashton, archivist at Bradford Museums Photo Archive, will offer insights and share photographs and objects salvaged from the Belle Vue Photographic Studio in a show-and-tell event at Impressions Gallery.
Feed Your Mind: Belle Vue Studios is part of an ongoing series of informal lunchtime talks inspired by the venue’s exhibition programme. It will take place in the gallery where Invisible Britain: This Separated Isle presents a contemporary range of diverse photographic portraits of people from across the UK.
The Belle Vue Studio, which was featured recently in a BBC documentary, Hidden History: The Lost Portraits of Bradford, was opened in 1902 by photographer Benjamin Sandford Taylor, and established on Manningham Lane in 1926. After he died in 1953 his darkroom technician, Tony Walker, took over.
Until the post-war period, there were over 50 photographic studios in Bradford. When hand-held cameras became more widely available in the 1950s, most of the studios closed, but Belle Vue managed to survive, partly because it offered a warm welcome to migrants new to the city. From the 1950s to the 1970s Belle Vue was widely used by people from the Asian sub-continent, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe.
The portraits were formal Victorian-style, with people posing in front of a heavy curtain, often holding props to display success. The glint of a watch beneath a shirt sleeve signified a good salary. A briefcase or a row of pens in a pocket hinted at professional aspiration. A book showed off an education. Bus drivers were photographed in their uniforms. Mill girls wore fur stoles.
“All the Belle Vue portraits were taken on a single camera in a single spot in the studio, which never moved in 50 years,” Bradford photographer Tim Smith told the T&A. “Tony continued using daylight and the same backdrop until 1975. Nothing changed in the studio - but outside, the city was transforming city. From a single Victorian glass plate camera in one back room, this studio told the story of extraordinary post-war changes.”
Tony closed the studio in 1975. Thousands of negatives lay forgotten in a cellar until 1985 when he came to empty the building and started throwing the archive out. The man who was buying the building spotted them and contacted Tim at the Bradford Heritage Recording Unit.
“I was expecting endless pictures of weddings and babies on rugs, but he brought a couple of dozen along and I thought, ‘Wow, these are extraordinary’,” said Tim. “Not only are they are a record of these migrant people, they’re beautiful pictures. There’s a stillness about them, a timeless quality.”
The images, stored in the Bradford Museums Archive, are a fascinating snapshot of people who came to Bradford from across the world. Some of the portraits are on display in a recreation of the Belle Vue Studio as a permanent exhibition at the National Science and Media Museum.
The museum has teamed up with Bradford Museums and Galleries and the University of Leeds to digitise the thousands of photographs. Visitors can step inside the ‘lost studio’ - some may see relatives or old friends looking back at them from another time - and find out about early 20th century photographic techniques.
The Belle Vue portraits trace the growth of industry in Bradford, as well as the impact of the NHS and expanding public transport networks. Says Phillip Roberts, Associate Curator of Photography and Photographic Technologies at the National Science and Media Museum: “These images tell the story of Bradford, its people, and the whole region’s transformation into the diverse and industrious place that it is today. And the display tells the story of photography and its power to represent people, their hopes, and relationships with one another.”
* Feed Your Mind: Belle Vue Studio is at Impressions Gallery, Centenary Square, Bradford, on Thursday, September 22 from 12.30pm-1.30pm. The event is free but booking is advised at (01274) 737843.
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