"Out of the Box" Exhibition - Pictures

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27 Sep 2012 - "Out of the Box" Exhibition

From Daniel: For those who live close enough to Walthamstow, here's an exhibition that's surely worthwhile visiting: Julia Spicer has put a lot of effort in it and deserves a big success!
The Ensign factory, Walthamstow based, was world known and a leader in photography.

INTRODUCTION

As an artist who uses photography as the basis for a great deal of my work, I was intrigued to find on one of my visits to the Vestry House Museum that the local area should have such strong links with its history.

Years ago I had started an indiscriminate collection of vintage cameras, but had stopped when they began to gather dust. So I was thrilled to go home and find that I had two of my own Walthamstow-made cameras - a Houghton & Butcher box camera and a Ful-vue. lt was not long before I proposed an exhibition of vintage and contemporary snapshots using locally made cameras.

The cameras I owned were not in particularly good condition so I spent some time sourcing 'new' ones on eBay. Prices varied enormously with some clearly being more rare than others but what I was looking for were cameras that were still working and of course not too expensive. My first purchase was a Selfix 420 that takes eight 6 x 9mm negatives and was made from 1946. My favourite has been the Selfix 16-20 that takes 16 negatives 6 x 4.5cm and was produced from around 1950.

Creating this exhibition has been enlightening, frustrating and inspiring in equal measure

Enlightening - in terms of learning about Walthamstow's connection with the history of popular photography and the incredible range of cameras that were produced here.

Frustrating - I found myself taking photographs over the wettest summer on record and some of my attempts were less successful than the Ensign adverts had me believe were possible.

Inspiring - in that I have rediscovered the joys of film photography; the anticipation of waiting for negatives to be processed and discovering what the results are like. Also the standards of manufacture are inspirational. It has sometimes been hard to believe that I am using cameras assembled over half a century ago.

Out of the Box! is therefore my celebration of Walthamstow's role in photography's heritage. It celebrates the unsung snapshots, stuffed into tins and shoeboxes; the charm of the blurred, cropped and incomprehensible photographs stored for posterity.
The exhibition consists of a mixture of reprinted archive and 'found' photographs (originals from the Vestry collection are too fragile to be displayed) - as well as my own images taken using Ensign cameras. They are not differentiated except for the single original images which introduce each of the themed sections into which the exhibition has been divided.

My aim for this show is a coherent aesthetic which links locally made cameras and images with their origins, and which features some of the people of Walthamstow who contribute to its vitality. I have been touched by their generosity in agreeing to be photographed for this exhibition and by that of those people who have shown support and interest since its inception. In particular I would like to acknowledge the interest shown by David Houghton, who provided the images of his ancestor and Antoine Claudet. I would also like to thank Daniel Quinn of the Walthamstow Memories website for the interest he has shown, and Lynne Petitt of Leytonstone & Leyton Historical Society for the loan of her father's Ensign and photographs and for sharing her memories of him.

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