Ilford Limited – Analogue Stories
Joan Craven, (1897-1979) was a photographer who began her career capturing socialites such as pianist Harriet Cohen (pictured), and went on to specialise in photographing the female form. She is listed as a client of Ilford Limited in their customer record book.
What is Ilford Limited – Analogue Stories?
Analogue photography values the process, the materials and the equipment to get a good image. Ilford Limited started out in Ilford in what is now the borough of Redbridge as one of the best and most versatile companies to support all of a photographers’ needs. Together with Redbridge Museum & Heritage Centre, photographer Eddie Otchere and a group of local young people we delve into the Ilford Limited archives and discover the joy of manual photography, factory life in Ilford and some of the stories from former Ilford workers.
Artist
Eddie Otchere (b.1974) is a south London photographer and curator whose solo and collaborative projects engage with Hip Hop culture and photography, documenting cultural pioneers and landscapes that represent the social history of varying Black cultures. These investigations document the construction of movements, revealing the entrenched human desire to express through, dance, music, poetry and food. Eddie has exhibited, performed and presented projects at institutions within the UK and abroad including National Portrait Gallery, London. Brighton Festival, Brighton. Southbank Centre, London. HVW8 Gallery, Los Angeles, International Centre of Photography, New York and the Museum of London.
About Redbridge Museum & Heritage Centre
Redbridge Museum & Heritage Centre is the local history museum and archive service for the London Borough of Redbridge. It is based in Redbridge Central Library and is at the heart of the community in Ilford, east London. The Museum holds objects, photographs, archives and other local history resources that tell the story of the people, places and events that make up the history of Redbridge. The Heritage Centre holds the archive for Ilford Limited, a now global photographic company that was founded in Ilford in 1879 and left the town in 1976. Redbridge Museum reopens in Spring 2023 with a new permanent exhibition.
Research
Ilford Limited makes photographic materials for black and white film photography including film, paper, developing chemicals, plates, cameras for commercial, domestic, medical and military uses.
History of Ilford
Alfred Hugh Harman began his photography business in Peckham before moving to Ilford in 1876. He started manufacturing dry gelatine plates in the basement of his new home in Cranbrook Road, Ilford, using simple techniques – he applied his emulsion formula with a teapot and transported secret emulsion from Cranbrook Road using a cart where the uneven road led to jars falling and breaking leaving silver and gelatine laying in the mud.
Alfred Harman names his company Britannia Works and builds his first factory in Ilford in 1883, it became known as Ilford Limited in 1902.
Ilford Limited stayed in Ilford until 1976 where the factory moved to Basildon in Essex, and finally transferred to Mobberley in Cheshire in 1983 where it remains today.
What we found in the archives
Fleet Street and the national press were key customers of Ilford products. Experiments took place in the Ilford labs to try and cut down on exposure times and processing times to get the images to print more quickly. Central Press and the Daily Herald were listed in the customer record book of Ilford Limited.
This photograph was taken at a suffrage rally in Trafalgar Square in 1908. Following Pankhurst's speech, in which she urged the audience to 'rush' the House of Commons, she was arrested and sentenced to three months in Holloway prison.
Factory life
We found a sense of community from the workers in the Ilford factory. There are a lot of photographs of social societies and valuing staff with long service awards.
Notable people
Kathleen (Kitty) Clara Clark 1896–1968
Kitty Clark trained as a radiographer and in 1935 became co-founder and Principal of the Ilford Radiographic Department at Tavistock House X-Ray Centre researching radiography and medical photography. She received an MBE for her contribution to mass miniature radiology in 1945 and became the first woman President of the Society of Radiographers, writing the book Positioning in Radiography in 1939, which is still in print and remains an influential text.
Kitty’s book includes photographs that have strong artistic qualities. Her book was found in the possessions of artist Francis Bacon and is believed to have influenced some of his paintings, revealing multiple layers of the body beneath the skin’s surface.
Olaf Frederick Bloch 1872–1944
Olaf Bloch joined Ilford Limited in 1910 and became chief chemist in 1931. He worked on Ilford’s infra-red sensitive plates, plates for astronomy and the first nuclear plates.
He took up mountaineering in his 50s and survived a slide of several hundred feet in the Pyrenees when escaping from the Spanish Civil War. He was made an Hon. LLD of Aberdeen University for his services to science and awarded the Royal Photographic Society's Progress Medal.
Cecil N. Potter
Cecil N. Potter was a Factory Manager at Ilford & Selo. He started work in 1916 as an Assistant Works Manager of the Imperial Dry Plate Co. Limited which became part of Ilford Limited. Cecil received a long service certificate in 1949 and finally retired from Ilford in 1957. He helped rebuild the Ilford factory twice when it was bombed during the Second World War.
He wrote a history of Ilford Limited from its origins with Alfred Harman through to the 1940s. A transcript can be found in the Ilford Limited archive at Redbridge Heritage Centre.
Oral histories
A successful call out for former Ilford Limited workers to share their stories led to a series of interviews revealing the reality of factory life. Their experiences and the young people’s responses to their stories will form part of a new display at Redbridge Central Library in December 2022.
Eamonn Burnell, Mary Davis, Avril Nelson, Brenda Payton, Juliette Royer, Grahame Stehle, Hilary Stehle.
Collection links
Ilford Paper
Ilford Film
Ilford customers
Ilford contact sheets
Ilford employees
Workshop sessions and process
The young people took part in 5 workshops learning how to use analogue cameras, process their own film, print contact sheets, interview former Ilford workers and use the archives for research.
They made new work walking the former factory site and photographing Ilford as it is now.
Portraits were taken of the invited sitters and the young people experimented with different processing methods using coffee and cleaning fluid in place of the usual chemicals.
Images: Participants looking through archive material, photographing Ilford, processing film and interviewing Juliette Royer. © Nishat Alam.
Exhibition
A new exhibition created in partnership with Redbridge Museum showcases new portraits by photographer Eddie Otchere alongside photography and zines produced by local young people exploring the working life at the Ilford Limited photographic factory. The exhibition runs from 5 December 2022 – 12 March 2023 at Redbridge Central Library.
Funded by The National Heritage Lottery Fund and Art Fund
