STREET LIFE, INSTANTANEOUS

Photographs of Newcastle in the 1890s Edgar G. Lee

GALLERY 10 | 08 | 13 12 | 10 | 13

Photographer Aaron Guy, researching the archive at Newcastles North of England Mining Institute, stumbled on a set of remarkable glass plate negatives belonging to the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne. A trail led to the Northumberland Archives at Woodhorn, where other boxes had been deposited and a set of fascinating photographs began to emerge of Newcastle street life in the early 1890s, largely taken with hand-held cameras. They strongly resembled the known work of Edgar G Lee, which Side Gallery had shown in the 1980s. Edgar Lee was a respected Tyneside photographer and lantern slide maker, with a professional studio in Newcastles Eldon Square, who also made his own hand-held cameras with the fast exposure dry plates that had been patented by the Tyneside inventor Joseph Swan. It is possible that fellow members of the highly regarded Newcastle upon Tyne and Northern Counties Photographic Association are also represented in the Society of Antiquaries boxes, alongside those that can with certainty be attributed to Lee. There is an Edgar Lee photograph of a group on what appears to be a day out, photographing the poor of Newcastles Quayside - after the Swing Bridge was built, many of the families of the once prosperous Keelmen fell into destitution and provided ready subject matter. The renowned Hexham photographer John Pattison Gibson promoted Edgar Lees work, advertising his lantern slides for sale as CHILD LIFE IN THE SLUMS and STREET LIFE, INSTANTANEOUS. Fast exposure plates and hand-held cameras were offering photographers an immediacy in capturing the moment, laying the technogical ground for the development of documentary in the C20th. In the late C19th the North East of England was at the heart of taking these things forward. Together with Aaron Guy, Side Gallery has curated an exhibition of photographs, a number of which have not been published or exhibited before. There were negatives of other pictorialist subjects in the collection, but the exhibition focuses on the street life of Newcastle upon Tyne, including fascinating images of Sandgate, Milk Market and the Quayside areas of the city. The images are drawn from the collection of the Society of Antiquaries, held at the Mining Institute and the Northumberland Archives at Woodhorn. 2013 is the bicentenary of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne.

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