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3 days ago
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She was a working-class woman who took amazing photographs for 70 years, yet she is little known precisely because, some would argue, she was a working-class woman.
Alice Longstaff, who died in 1992, was well known in her home town of Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire but not elsewhere. Her fans hope a new book of her photographs will change that.
“People who knew her say she was a real force of nature,” said Andrew McTominey, the heritage manager of the Hebden Bridge-based charity Pennine Heritage, which holds Longstaff’s archive. “She was a brilliant photographer. She deserves to be known to the wider world.”
Born on a farm in 1907 in the village of Heptonstall, Longstaff was, her report shows, a good pupil but she left school at 14, apparently determined to become a photographer.
Most women of her age and status would have gone to work in the mills or domestic service but Longstaff managed to get an apprenticeship at Westerman’s photography studio in Hebden Bridge.
In 1935, she took charge of West End Studios and became the go-to photographer for generations of Hebden Bridge residents getting married or needing passport photos.
In the late 1930s, she bought a cutting-edge Rolleiflex camera, like that used by the American photographer Lee Miller, this year portrayed by Kate Winslet in the film Lee. It allowed Longstaff to take photographs “on the go”, something she later described as “heaven”.
After Longstaff’s death, Pennine Heritage was given her vast collection of negatives. There were tens of thousands of them, mostly her studio work.
Researchers were also thrilled to find a wealth of “end-of-the roll” photographs that charted the people and everyday life of Hebden Bridge as well as the distinctive beauty of the town and its surrounding Calder Valley landscape.
It is these negatives that have been restored and are being seen for the first time.
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Most of the people in the photographs are unknown, although the charity hopes local people will come forward with names as well as insights and stories.
McTominey said the photographs showed what a remarkable photographer Longstaff was. She was a pioneer and someone who deserved to be recognised alongside better-known peers, he said.
“She was a real character. So many people come here and say, ‘oh I was photographed by her’.”
