Yet
the period – and the people – remain a fascination to us. How often do we
invoke the Blitz spirit that saw them through the years that extended beyond
the war – more often than not, comically bathetically so? It is to this
preoccupation that these photographs speak, offering an everyman's view of
subjects from street traders to entertainers. And who wouldn't fancy a quick
glance at the Spiv's Gazette?
Yet there
is added interest here, and that is in the history of the man behind the lens:
born into an Orthodox Jewish family, Walter Joseph fled his native Germany in
1939 for England. After being interned on the Isle of Man for the period of the
war, he worked in a newspaper's photographic laboratories while remaining an
enthusiastic semi-professional photographer in his own right. He doubted his
own ability, but his family were proud of his images – which is how they ended
up in a collection now on display at the British Library.
Walter
Joseph was a semi-professional photographer,
born in Germany but forced to flee to England in 1939, where he remained for
the rest of his life. His images of postwar London went unrecognised until 2011
when knowledge of his work reached the British Library’s curator of visual
arts, John Falconer. Though Joseph had always been doubtful of his ability, his
stepdaughter had been eager to bring his work into the public eye for some
time, and through a friend Falconer found out that she was still in possession
of a collection of Joseph's negatives. Of the eighty surviving images, thirty
were displayed for the first time in an exhibition at London's British Library
between July and September 2011 as part of the London Street Photography
Festival.
All images © Walter Joseph
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