66 http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk
‘W
hat connects mustard
and photography?’
asked Roger Taylor,
the UK’s premier
photographic historian, at the beginning
of his lecture at Trent Polytechnic,
Nottingham, in 1978. I was in the
audience and we were all fascinated by this
intriguing question. I have heard Roger talk
many times over the years, and he always
injects this sort of stuff into his enthusiastic
and entertaining presentations. Although
he is an emeritus professor of photography
and a world-renowned photographic
scholar – he has just been to Windsor Castle
to get the Royal Victorian Order from the
Queen for services to the Royal Collection
- he makes photographic history engaging,
with humour and humanity.
His journey to this world of historic
collections and dusty artefacts started at
the end of World War Two when he was
five. A family friend, who was a
professional photographer in Manchester,
lent him a camera whilst they were on
holiday at the seaside, and said: ‘Go
and photograph that seagull.’ That
photographer was Rex Lowden, who was to
have an immense effect on Roger’s life
when he later became his apprentice in
1957, having been considered an academic
failure at his secondary school. He loved
his job and was determined to succeed and
become qualified. As a consequence, he
passed his City & Guilds exams and later
went to Derby School of Art as senior
photographic technician where he also got
a first-class Diploma in Creative
Photography (there were no degrees in
photography then) in 1967.
Around that time, he borrowed the
college Hasselblad and went to the famous
Petticoat Lane Market in London, where
this image was made. ‘It completely bowled
me over as a lad from Manchester,’ he told
me. ‘I only used about three 120 films as
they were expensive for someone on a £300
a year grant!’ A book of these pictures has
just been published by Cafe Royal Books:
http://www.caferoyalbooks.com/shop/roger-
taylor-petticoat-lane-london-1966.
Final Analysis
Paul Hill considers...Petticoat Lane, London, 1966 by Roger TaylorPhoto CritiqueBig turnaround
The move from making photographs to
researching and collecting them came
when he found a 19th century
Daguerreotype in a Derbyshire antique
shop and bought it for £1. Although he
was a senior lecturer in photography at
Sheffield Polytechnic, it was a Damascene
moment for Roger, who became eager to
know more about that era. He embarked
on a master’s course in Victorian Studies at
Leicester University and his MA thesis on
G W Wilson later became a book. His
transition into historian was cemented
when he became senior curator and head
of research at the National Science andMedia Museum in Bradford in the 1980s.
That move led to him and his wife buying
a house in Settle in the Yorkshire Dales
where he became director of ‘the smallest
gallery in the UK’ – a redundant BT
telephone box – where he exhibited many
photographers, including Martin Parr,
and some stereographs from the collection
of his great friend and collaborator, Brian
May of Queen.
So what connects mustard and
photography? Well, gelatine for film was
made from cows’ hooves and if the cattle
grazed on grass that had been enriched by
mustard plants it improved the
quality of the gelatine.Among many achievements, Paul Hill has written two books on photography, was director of the Creative Photography course at Trent Polytechnic and has been exhibited numerous times.
He was the first photographer to receive an MBE for services to photography and the first professor of photographic practice in a British university. hillonphotography.co.uk.