Birth of photojournalism explored in new exhibition

Images of some of the most historic moments of the twentieth century feature in a new exhibition about the photo-magazine, Picture Post (1938-57), which runs at the National Museum Cardiff until the 10th of November.

Picture Post: A Twentieth Century Icon reveals the UK’s transformation from the 1930s to the 1950s covering war and its aftermath, social reform and shifting public attitudes, as well as the advent of consumer culture.

Co-curated by Dr Tom Allbeson of Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture and Dr Bronwen Colquhoun, Senior Curator of Photography at Amgueddfa Cymru, the exhibition takes visitors on a journey from the Blitz and VE Day during the Second World War, to the arrival of teenage fashions and celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot in the postwar decades.

‘Huge task’

Bronwen Colquhoun, Senior Curator of Photography at Amgueddfa Cymru said: “We are thrilled to be presenting this exhibition in the photography gallery at National Museum Cardiff and are hugely grateful to the Getty Images Hulton Archive and Cardiff University Archives and Special Collections for their generous support.

“It was a huge task to select around 120 photographs from a collection of 4 million images in the Picture Post library. but we had a good sense of the three core themes we wanted to cover– conflict and empire, society and politics, and culture and leisure.

“We were struck by how many of the issues covered still resonate today, from the NHS and immigration, to changing gender roles and the cost of living. Alongside coverage of global events, the exhibition also represents some really powerful Welsh stories.”.

‘Plan for Britain’

In 1941, Picture Post published a special issue called “Plan for Britain” which discussed many topics subsequently covered in the famous Beveridge Report of 1942 and which reshaped society and politics after the war.

This agenda for ‘cradle to grave’ support – which Picture Post helped promote – included major reforms in education and healthcare.

That special issue began with a letter from an unemployed miner, B.L. Coombes, from South Wales.

From the late 1930s, Picture Post revolutionized the way Britain looked at itself. With circulation figures reaching 1.7 million copies at its peak, this groundbreaking photo-magazine captured everyday life, major events, and shifting social attitudes.

Tom Allbeson, based at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff University said: “Picture Post was the leading British example of an international phenomenon – the birth of photojournalism. It was the first British magazine to showcase the technique of the photo-essay – our equivalent of Life or Paris-Match, effectively.

“It was started by a pioneering Hungarian editor called Stefan Lorant who fled Nazism for Britain in the 1930s. And before the establishment of large television audiences in the later 1950s, the photographs published in Picture Post offered a shared perspective on the UK and its place in the world. The topics covered by each weekly issue were discussed in homes, offices, factories, and on buses, trains and trams.”

While Picture post published photographs from across the world, it also reported on politics, society and culture from across the UK including many photo-stories about urban and rural communities in Wales.

The exhibition includes documentary imagery by Grace Robertson about sheep-shearing in Snowdonia to street photography in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay by Bert Hardy, as well as portraits of Dylan Thomas and Richard Burton.

For more information, visit: https://museum.wales/cardiff/whatson/12572/Picture-Post-A-Twentieth-Century-Icon/