Picturing the family

6 Portraits in the open air

6.2 Street photography

Many portraits were taken outside the home and in the garden or, in the case of urban dwellers, in the street or back yard. Local studio proprietors could be commissioned to attend at the customer's house, in which case they would impose an additional charge to cover the extra time and effort involved. Itinerant operators regularly patrolled suburban streets and villages in search of speculative work. Their prices undercut those on offer in local studios. Weekdays would find women, children and servants at home in their workday clothes. Sundays found the whole family dressed in their best and therefore (by common consent) suitably attired to appear before the camera.

Just like their equivalents in the studio, street portraits could also be taken to celebrate rites of passage, special occasions and to record prized possessions. It is sometimes very difficult to know if the accessories in street portraits actually belonged to the sitter, were borrowed from more prosperous neighbours or were brought along by the photographer to encourage sales.

Studio conventions in street photography

Activity 23

Look at Images 81 and 82. Given your knowledge of conventional studio portraiture, can you see any similarities between studio and street practice?

Image 81: Photographer/Painter: Anon. Subject: Two friends photographed in the back yard of a house in Autumn Street, Horwich.

Image 82: Photographer/Painter: S. Williams. Subject: Mrs Roberts with her daughters Hannah (left) and Margaret (right).

Now read the answer

Comment

I hope you immediately recognized the influence of studio practice in these street portraits. Expression, pose and positioning all conform to the conventions of studio portraiture. In the case of the girls in Image 81, even the props – the chair, the table, the book and the aspidistra – are arranged and deployed exactly as they would have been in the studio. In the Roberts family photograph (Image 82) a cloth has been arranged over the gate as a backdrop. Street photographers in effect recreated the studio in the back yard. Some street photographers actually carried painted backdrops similar to those used in the studio.

Does it help for the purpose of comparison to see what normally took place in the back yard? Please remember, however, that this is a most unusual photograph – the exception that proves the rule!

Image 83: Photographer/Painter: Anon. Subject: Bathing the dog in the back yard.

Informational content

Obviously for the purpose of historical record, portraits taken in the context of the family home can be more informative than those taken inside the studio with its make-believe settings.

Activity 24

Compare the children in Images 84 and 85. What can we say about their different circumstances, using evidence from the photographs?

Image 84: Photographer/Painter: Anon. Subject: Details unknown.

Image 85: Photographer/Painter: Anon. Subject: Wilfred, Walter and Harry Ramsden outside the family home in Boardman's Buildings, near Moss Lane, Pendlebury, c.1905. Their father was a miner at Agecroft Colliery.

Now read the answer

Comment

Perhaps the most obvious difference lies in the style and appearance of their homes. The children in Image 84 lived in a house with bay windows, an elegant entrance porch and a front garden. The Ramsden brothers (Image 85) lived in the poorest class of terraced house which boasted neither bay window nor front garden. Here the front doors opened directly on to the street.

The other major difference is in their clothing. School uniform and school caps advertise the affluent. The less affluent children wear clogs. Clogs were worn by working-class women and children on weekdays. The respectable poor would attempt to provide boots for their children to wear on Sundays. Working people normally visited the photographer's studio wearing their Sunday best outfits, so it is unusual to find clogs featured in studio portraits. The oldest boy, who has been breeched, also wears a flat hat (Image 85). Flat hat and clogs, symbols of the northern working-class male!

Did you also notice that the child in the middle has rickets, a disease caused by poor diet and vitamin deficiency?

Groups

The large group portrait came to commercial prominence in the 1880s, probably as a result of the widespread introduction of dry plate negatives. These negatives could be bought ready made over the counter. They did not require immediate processing and they reduced exposure times significantly. The group portrait involved the production of a single negative and a potential sale to each member of the group. Customer costs were kept low without injury to the photographer's profits. School, work and leisure group portraits became regular components of the family album.

Image 86: Photographer/Painter: Photographer unknown. Subject: Lynton Street, Ordsall, Salford, c.1925.

Image 87: Photographer/Painter: Photographer unknown. Subject: Waterloo Street, Salford, c.1915.

Children living in deprived urban areas in the 1920s and 1930s could find themselves in street group photographs such as Images 86 and 87. Their families could not afford individual portraits of their children but could find the few pence charged for a single copy of the group picture. The mother of a child in the Lynton Street portrait (Image 86) was bringing up 3 children on a First World War widow's pension. Lynton Street was situated near the entrance to the Manchester Docks. This may account for the presence of a single black child.

The significance of the Waterloo Street group (Image 87) is that it features Robert Roberts who in later life wrote The Classic Slum, an account of life in Edwardian Salford that has become required reading for social historians of the period.