[Commlist] CFP - Workshop on Picture Post Magazine

/REMINDER: CALL FOR PAPERS/

//

*/Picture Post /**(1938-57): Genesis, History & Legacy of a Photo-Magazine*

One-day workshop, Cardiff (UK), Friday 13 June 2025

The landmark British photo-magazine, /Picture Post /(1938-57), was 
launched in the era of the Spanish Civil War and the Popular Front. 
Conceived for Hulton Press by Stefan Lorant (a Hungarian editor exiled 
from Nazi Germany), /Picture Post/ had a transnational staff and a 
global outlook. It was the leading British example of an international 
phenomenon – the birth of photojournalism and the photo-essay. The 
equivalent of /Life /in the US and /Paris-Match /in France, the magazine 
achieved circulation figures of 1.7m.

Before the establishment of large television audiences, the photographs 
published in this general readership magazine offered audiences a shared 
perspective on the UK and its place in the world. /Picture Post/ 
reported extensively on the Second World War as it unfolded across the 
globe, as well as documenting both the Cold War and the wars of 
decolonization after 1945. It helped popularise a progressive attitude 
to society and politics, shaping the debate about postwar reconstruction 
and the establishment of the welfare state. Yet, its coverage also 
reflected sexist and racist ideas of the era, as well as patronizing or 
critical perspectives on disadvantaged communities and young adults.

To mark the opening of a major exhibition about /Picture Post /at 
Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales, we will be hosting a one-day public 
workshop that aims to bring together an international cohort of 
researchers, curators, archivists and librarians to discuss the 
development and impact of /Picture Post/.

We invite proposals for 15-minute papers or panels of 3 to 4 
contributors. Please send a title, abstract (250 words) and short 
biography (150 words) to (allbesont /at/ cardiff.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(allbesont /at/ cardiff.ac.uk)>.

**

*Deadline for CFP*: _Friday 14 March 2025_

We encourage contributors to engage with the multifaceted histories 
relating to the genesis, development and legacy of /Picture Post/. We 
are interested in a broad range of methodological approaches to the 
emergence of photojournalism and the photo-essay format pioneered by 
mid-century, general readership photo-magazines. Possible subjects for 
papers include:

  * Emergence of photojournalism and the photo-essay in interwar Europe
  * Influence of émigré photojournalists (e.g., Edith Tudor-Hart, Kurt
    Hutton, Felix H. Man, Tim Gidal)
  * Role of key editors (e.g. Stefan Lorant, Tom Hopkinson, Ted Castle)
  * Significance of preceding British publications (e.g., /Daily
    Herald/, /Weekly Illustrated/)
  * Relevance of Mass Observation to the work of early contributors
    (e.g., Humphrey Spender, Bill Brandt)
  * Contribution of pioneering women photographers (e.g., Gerti Deutsch,
    Merlyn Severn, Grace Robertson)
  * Wartime experience of photojournalists serving in the Army Film &
    Photographic Unit (e.g. Bert Hardy, Leonard McCombe, Haywood Magee,
    Charles ‘Slim’ Hewitt)
  * Organisation of Hulton Press, including role of Anne Scott-James
    (women’s editor), Edith Kay (head of darkroom), Mona Parrish
    (librarian) and Sheila Hardy (office manager), Maxwell Raison
    (general manager) or Edward Hulton (proprietor)
  * Relationship between Hulton Press and Ministry of Information
    (1939-46) or Central Office of information (est. 1946)
  * Formative impact of competition with Britain’s second bestselling
    photo-magazine, /Illustrated /(Odhams Press)
  * Comparison with international equivalents (e.g., /Life/, /Look/,
    /Heute/, /Quick/,/Vu/, /Regards/, /Cadran/, /Point de
    Vue/,/Paris-Match/, /Epoca/,/Tempo/, /Pix/)//
  * Market of photojournalism and ecology of photographic agencies
    (e.g., AP, Black Star, Keystone, PIX, Popperfoto, Rapho, Topfoto, UP)
  * Significance of changing conventions for page layout, typography and
    graphic design
  * Importance of page-setting and printing technologies (e.g., presses,
    paper, inks), as well as techniques of retouching
  * Audiences of /Picture Post /revealed by Hulton Readership Survey or
    letters pages
  * Journalistic contribution of key writers (e.g., Lionel Birch, James
    Cameron, Warick Charlton, MacDonald Hastings, Lorna Hay, Sydney
    Jacobson, Robert Kee, Albert Lloyd, Hilde Marchant, Trevor Philpott,
    J. B. Priestley, Fyfe Robertson, Katherine Whitehorn)
  * Everyday life and the space of the street in the work of Thurston
    Hopkins and John Chillingworth
  * Fashion and photography (e.g., work of Lee Miller and Nancy
    Sandys-Walker)
  * Magnum photographers in /Picture Post /(e.g., Robert Capa’s Spanish
    Civil War coverage, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photo-reportage from the
    Soviet Union, Philippe Halsman’s celebrity portraits)
  * Imagery of the Holocaust, camps and Europe’s ‘bloodlands’ (Snyder)
  * Freedom of the Press (e.g., solidarity with the /Daily Mirror/
    during Second World War)
  * Debate concerning postwar reconstruction, welfare state and founding
    of NHS
  * Representations of Black Britons’ lived experience or immigration
    from West Indies
  * Depiction of white Britons emigration (e.g. to South Africa, Canada,
    Australia)
  * Deprivation, unemployment and imagined geographies of poverty
  * Gender, labour and domesticity
  * Interactive representations of rural and urban Britain
  * Representations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
  * Constructions of ‘Englishness’ (e.g., depiction of institutions and
    establishment figures, as well as landscapes and landmarks)
  * Imagery of the British Empire in the interwar, wartime or postwar
    periods
  * European neighbours in war and peacetime
  * Editorial decision-making and geopolitics of the Cold War or
    decolonization
  * Imagining world events of the ‘postwar’ years (e.g. Partition of
    India, Iron Curtain, Korean War, Hungarian Uprising, Suez Crisis)
  * Business histories of /Picture Post /in its final years, c.1950-57
  * Impact of growing television audiences on content and economics of
    the magazine
  * Consumer culture and advertising in /Picture Post /
  * Cinema-going, celebrities and on-set or behind the scenes reportage
  * Sports photography
  * Coverage of the arts (e.g. Festival of Britian, Edinburgh
    international Festival, ballet, opera, theatre, painting, sculpture)
  * Representation of youth culture and teenagers in 1950s
  * Experiments with colour photography
  * Representation of new technologies, from the atom bomb to colour
    television
  * ‘Forgotten photographers’ of /Picture Post /(e.g., Maurice Ambler,
    Alex Bender, Elisabeth Chat, Alex Dellow, George Douglas, Malcolm
    Dunbar, Jack Esten, Daniel Farson, Laelia Goehr, Raymond Kleboe,
    George Konig, Joseph McKeown, John Murray, Frank Pocklington,
    Francis Reiss, Ronald Startup, Carl Sutton, David Steen, William
    Vanderson)
  * Documentary and television careers of writers and photographers
    after 1957
  * Legacies of /Picture Post /for photojournalism in 1960s (e.g.,
    /About Town/, 1960; /Sunday Times Colour Section/, 1962; /Observer
    Magazine/ and /Weekend Telegraph/, 1964)
  * Relevance of /Picture Post /to social history and cultural studies
    in late-twentieth century Britain (e.g. Raphael Samuel, Stuart Hall)
  * Afterlives of the magazine’s photographic archive (e.g., ‘Hulton
    Picture Library’, ‘BBC Hulton Picture Library’, ‘Hulton Deutsch
    Collection’, ‘Hulton Archive Getty Images’)
Programme announced: Friday 14 April 2025

The event is co-hosted by the Tom Hopkinson Centre for Media History 
(School of Journalism, Media & Culture, Cardiff University) and 
Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales.

Organisers:

Dr Tom Allbeson, Reader in Media & Photographic History, Cardiff 
University, (allbesont /at/ cardiff.ac.uk) <mailto:(allbesont /at/ cardiff.ac.uk)>

Dr Bronwen Colquhoun, Senior Curator of Photography, Amgueddfa Cymru - 
Museum Wales, (bronwen.colquhoun /at/ museumwales.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(bronwen.colquhoun /at/ museumwales.ac.uk)>

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