STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves
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A welcome ‘rediscovery’
A new exhibition in Oxford restores the reputation of HELEN MUSPRATT as one of the 20th century's great radical photographers, says John Green
(L to R) Busking Miner (unemployed young Welshman met busking on the jetty) 1930; John Cornford & Ray Peters, 1934
CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity
The bard mourns the loss of comrades and troubadours, and looks for consolation with Black Country Jess
CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a star-studded adaptation of Ibsen’s play that is devoid of believable humanity
GORDON PARSONS is fascinated by a unique dream journal collected by a Jewish journalist in Nazi Berlin
Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, Parthenope, Where Dragons Live and Thunderbolts* reviewed by MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE
Helen Muspratt Photographer
Bodleian Library, Oxford
HELEN MUSPRATT was a noted photographer who came to prominence during the inter-war years yet, like so many women artists, her life and work had been largely ignored before being recently “rediscovered.”
Muspratt decided to make a career for herself in photography early in life. After completing a photographic course at the Regent Street Polytechnic, and still in her early twenties, she began working as a receptionist for the fashionable Mayfair photographic studio of Donald Donovan.
In 1928, full of confidence, she set up her own studio in the High Street in Swanage where her parents lived. Here she utilised her newly developed skills as a portrait photographer to establish a flourishing business.
Although her bread-and-butter remained straightforward portraiture, for her own pleasure she experimented with lighting and other technical processes. After coming across one of Man Ray’s solarised photographs in a magazine, she began experimenting with this technique and others, including rayographs and multiple exposures.
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