All in a Week’s Work!

Anyone who is familiar with the work I do on the Photo Centre Collection will know what a varied collection it is. The photographs it contains were taken between 1951 and 2012 by David Smith and his son Ian and the staff of photographers based at their studio and press agency in Berwick-upon-Tweed in North Northumberland.

The collection is negative based, beginning with glass ¼ plates, moving to 6x6 film negatives in the early 1960s and eventually reaching 35mm film (both black and white and colour) by the mid 1970s, the business never went digital!

As this was a commercial business, prints were only made for customer orders or to send to the press, hence why we only have the negatives. In order to use an image, I first of all have to find it amongst the approximately 2 million negatives, then I digitise it. We’re so lucky that the collection is very well indexed by category, and after 12 years of working with the books, I know them very well!

The Neg Room at 17 Bridge Street (the Photo Centre)

In addition to the indexes, we also have a number of day books from the business. These are diaries which list the jobs undertaken by photographers each day. These rather tatty books offer us a fascinating glimpse into the day-to-day life of the Photo Centre and I thought I’d share with you a week in the life of the business from exactly 60 years ago this week. I’ve also digitised a few of the images to accompany the diary entries so you get a more vivid picture of the varied work that was undertaken.

*The day book for July/August 1964 - very much a working document!*

The selection below offers just a random snapshot of a week in the history of the Photo Centre. It is by no means the busiest or most eventful week but in all, 366 photographs were taken - that’s 30 rolls of Kodak Tri-X 400 film! I’m sure you can see how we come to have such a HUGE collection!

From the Day Book….

Friday 31st July -

Visit: Mrs Laura Grimmond at Norham
Wedding: Lockie - Milne at Wallace Green
Pony Gymkhana at Shielfield Park
Coble Race on Tweed
River Carnival ’64
Copy - Pictures of law books for Mr Edney
Final children’s talent competition at Spittal
Bell Cup bowls winners
Jim Clark’s Trophy Exhibition
Prime Minister arriving at Berwick Station

Friday 31st July - Coble Race on Tweed - Sir Alec Douglas Home arrives at Berwick Station - Scouts with Jim Clark Trophies - Lockie Wedding - Bell Cup - Talent Competition

Saturday 1st August -