Hidden History: The Lost Portraits of Bradford聽
The secrets of a lost archive of portrait photos showing the changing face of Bradford in the 20th century. Presenter Shanaz Gulzar tracks down people in the portraits.
Thirty years ago, thousands of portraits from a small studio in Bradford were saved from a skip. They form a unique collection of photographs that records the changing face of a British industrial city in the middle of the 20th century. Many of the people in the portraits were new arrivals from the Asian subcontinent, eastern Europe and the Caribbean, attracted by the offer of work in wool mills. The names of these people are a mystery 鈥� only their faces survive.
A small studio, Belle Vue, in the middle of Bradford, built a business on taking portraits of the newly-arrived migrants. Photographer Tony Walker used a battered Victorian camera to take images of his customers, which were often sent back to relatives in the countries they鈥檇 left behind.
Working alongside staff from museums in Bradford, presenter Shanaz Gulzar identifies and tracks down the people in the portraits, and uncovers dramatic social change and the hidden stories behind the portraits.
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Preview: Bradford portraits captured in time
Duration: 01:43
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Family lives on camera
Duration: 01:30
Discovering the portraits
A search for people among thousands who had their pictures taken at a long-closed photographic studio in Bradford has succeeded in finding some of the subjects.
Belle Vue studios in Manningham, Bradford, documented people's lives from the 1920s until it closed in 1975.
After it closed many images were dumped in a skip before being rescued.
During the search for people shown in the images some of the photos were displayed at a Ukrainian club, a bus drivers' canteen and also a Windrush celebration event in the city.
The studio's old-fashioned technique had used a Victorian camera and daylight to produce a glass plate negative. Eventually more than 17,000 of them were saved and more than 10,000 have so far been digitised.
Read the full story on the 91热爆 News website
Credits
| Role | Contributor |
|---|---|
| Presenter | Shanaz Gulzar |
| Producer | Richard Taylor |
| Executive Producer | Tony Parker |
