Exhibition gives an insight into everyday life in our town
8:56am Thursday 9th February 2012 in News
IT WAS back in the 1930s when celebrated photographer Humphrey Spender captured the scene of everyday life in Bolton.
Now, more than seven decades on, a modern day Spender has drawn her inspiration from his famous Mass Observation project.
Anna White, a graduate of the University of Bolton, was awarded the annual Humphrey Spender scholarship, supported by the John Marriott Trust and Boltonle- Moors Rotary Club, to ensure the photographer’s legacy continues.
Spender took more than 900 pictures of the town and its people between 1937 and 1938 at the request of Tom Harrison, one of the founders of the Mass Observation project.
Miss White has spent the past year taking pictures of people living, working and socialising in Bolton to capture everyday history being made. Some of those photographs now feature in an exhibition at Bolton Museum in the Spender Archive.
Miss White, aged 27, said: “My concept for the images was, in some ways, to do the complete opposite of Spender. Instead of hiding the camera, to be unobserved, I used an old 1920s press camera and took photographs of people in plain sight, with their permission.
I did this to engage with Bolton and so people could start to understand what I was trying to do.”
Miss White documented the time, location, weather conditions and other factual information for every photograph.
She also conducted short interviews with the pictures’ subjects to fully document what living in Bolton is like now.
She said: “People really got behind the idea. In 75 years we can all look back and see what Boltonians looked and lived like. It is a lasting legacy and something everyone can be a part of and be proud of.”
She added: “I hope that I have made an impression that other people can take on, as well as leaving a record of what 2011 was like.”
The exhibition, Worktown: ‘The Everyday’, runs until Saturday, February 18.
