When I was small, cameras were only just becoming quite commonplace amongst working class families. The one we had was basically a black plastic cube, with a little silver lever on the front, just below the lens, and a square silver viewfinder on top, which you could spring up and look through when lining up your shot. Not that it helped my mother much, who missed the heads off everyone she ever photographed. The film looked like a roll of yellow paper, and had to be kept out of the light or be ruined. So my father had to wait ‘til evening time or find a dark place under the stairs, when loading it into the camera. It all seemed so secretively mystical and magical to me.
Twelve photographs per film was the maximum, which then had to be taken to the nearby town’s chemist to be developed. The final photographs came back as tiny “contact prints”. In other words, the same size as the film’s negatives. So, if you have any tiny photos amongst your family’s treasured keepsakes, now you know why. If you wanted good, better sized photos for a wedding, a christening, or maybe a baby’s first birthday, you would hire a professional. Most likely the guy at the chemist, making good pocket money on the side. Come the holiday season, trade could be especially lucrative.
Walk along any UK seaside resort’s promenade in the 1930s, 40s, or 50s (the war years being an exception), and it wouldn’t be long before a man with a bigger professional camera leapt out in front of you, snapped your photo, pushed a ticket stub into your hand with details of where and when to collect, and be off. And you didn’t mind one bit. In fact you were most appreciative of the souvenir.
This photo, capturing one such moment, I’m guessing comes from 1933 / 34. It shows my English grandparents, and a little girl who would go on to become my Auntie Beryl. I must have looked at it a hundred times, before only recently realising where it was taken. My favourite go-to place for a day-trip’s sketching. Skegness. The clue being the roof of the Tower Cinema behind. That is to say, the roof before it was bombed in the war. The building as it stands today, has cropped up in my art more than once during the 2010s. Who’d have thought?
All text copyright ian gordon craig
