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Old images of London go on display at Tate
By Louise Jury, Evening Standard 21.05.07
City pictures: A Thirties photograph taken by Wolfgang Schuschitsky
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Pictures of London dating from the earliest days of photography will go on show for the first time tomorrow.
They are part of an exhibition at Tate Britain that traces the history of the medium in the UK.
The show features about 500 pictures by 150 photographers, including David Bailey, Martin Parr and Bill Brandt.
One of the earliest is of the building of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, taken by photography pioneer Fox Talbot around 1845.
There are also images of wartime London by Cecil Beaton, the East End by suffragette Norah Smyth and Seventies bedsits by American Nancy Hellebrand.
Tate Britain is particularly excited by the works by Smyth, which were discovered in an Amsterdam archive.
Curator Susan Bright said: "She founded the East London Federation of Suffragettes with Sylvia Pankhurst and originally worked as her chauffeur. She came from a wealthy northern family and used her inheritance to support the work."
The photographs, all printed originals, date from around 1912 and show deprived children in the street, their mothers, nurseries and even a toy factory. Many were published in the federation's newspaper, the Dreadnought.
A series of works by Wolfgang Schuschitsky shows Charing Cross Road in 1936. The photographer is still working today. "He is one of many ÈmigrÈs that made British photography really exciting in the Thirties," said Ms Bright. Hellebrand walked into the National Portrait Gallery with her pictures of bedsits in the Seventies and secured a show on the strength of them. They have not been exhibited since.
Ms Bright said: "They're very carefully posed pictures of people in their homes. They're time capsules."
The exhibition also has pictures of children arriving at the first Barnado's homes and a series on Eighties music tribes, such as punks, New Romantics and skinheads.
• How We Are: Photographing Britain, supported by Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation, runs until 2 September.
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