Documenting workers at their labour is one of the more fascinating areas of social photography, requiring the photographer to strike a balance between the heroic and the patronising in seeking to combine information with visually engaging compositions. Fifty years ago, when portrait photography was largely studio-based, the subject was carefully posed, often in front of painted backcloths. This was the method adapted by Maurice Broomfield who literally set up his studio on the factory floor.
The 1950s and ’60s were the heyday of the British manufacturing industry, with high employment and a diverse range of manufacturing businesses. A series of imaginative commissions led Broomfield to take photographs of workers in workshops and factories, portraying them as subjects of interest in their own right while establishing the context in which they worked. As a result, his finely-crafted images depict individuals on the factory floor in industries that ranged from factories making nylon stockings – then regarded as a luxury – to insulators and shipbuilding. Broomfield was less concerned with attempting to capture the atmosphere or the busy nature of the factory floor, or to suggest its speed and activity but, rather, to set the work in a carefully considered setting.
The approach adopted by Broomfield was simple and accepted the artifice of the posed image. First, he spent time in the factory, stalking the floor, looking for the sort of shot he wanted. The following day, he returned with an assistant and they carefully set up the composition, posing the worker, arranging lighting to bring out strong but not necessarily dramatic arrangements. The carefully set up lighting became something of a characteristic of Broomfield’s images. In seeking to eliminate unnecessary detail, he used highlighting, influenced in part by the way Joseph Wright of Derby made effective use of a single light source, particularly evident in his paintings of blacksmiths at work by the forge.
One of Broomfield’s typical images was taken in the Doulton works in Stoke-on-Trent, then a thriving ceramic company that still used much hand making. The potter here is seen removing a coffee pot from a plaster of Paris mould in which the form has been cast. It is a moment held in space. You can almost feel the worker being told to hold the pose to make clear the process involved. It neither glamorises nor idealises the operation, which would have been carried out as quickly and efficiently as possible.
An image taken in a nylon factory is altogether more dramatic. In the foreground is a model of a shapely leg, standing upside down and wearing a nylon stocking. In the background is a worker dressed in a crisp white overall gazing into the distance in front of a table on which stands bobbins of fine nylon thread. The figure and the stocking are brightly lit and set against a dark background, enhancing the sense of the surreal.
Broomfield’s aesthetic approach is particularly evident in an image of steel tubes converted into a pattern of reflecting mirrors that appear to radiate light. While there is no sense of physical toil in Broomfield’s tasteful images – some even have a pervading sense of melancholy for lost professions – there is a sense of dignity and pride in workmanship that respects both the worker and the work they do.
* Maurice Broomfield: A New Look at History continues until May 9
