Edinburgh Snapshots
Alex Corlett talks to Johnny Blomfield, the brother of photographer Robert, whose work is on exhibit for the first time.
AFREE exhibition in Edinburgh’s City Art Centre has been making waves over the winter months. Photographer Robert Blomfield, originally from Sheffield, came to Scotland’s capital to study medicine.
He brought his camera with him, and when he wasn’t studying he was out and about on the streets capturing stunning images of city life – unstaged and entirely authentic.
Robert took photographs of everybody, from policemen to children playing, and it’s the latter that have been causing a stir as some visitors have recognised themselves in the pictures!
Robert’s brother, Johnny, spoke to us about the exhibition – the first of Robert’s work – and the reaction it has had from the public.
“Our father gave him the camera when he was fifteen and that’s when it really took off.”
Robert was taking photographs in and around his home town of Sheffield before he came to Edinburgh, so by the time he arrived to study, his passion was already well established.
“He went into medicine, doing a course in
Edinburgh starting in
1956, and he graduated in 1964.
“He liked the hills; he loved going climbing and travelling. The camera became a sort of extension of him. He didn’t ‘use’ a camera – the camera was him.
“You know how, before you learn to ride a bike, it’s separate from you; then, once you learn, it becomes an extension of you?”
Looking at Robert’s images, you understand what Johnny means.
There’s nothing arranged or staged about the photographs – you can tell the photographer has just come across a moment and captured it exactly as it was, so it feels more like a memory than a professional image.
You can also tell that he obviously caught a few people by surprise!
“He liked to capture people as they really were and not self-conscious or posing.”
Although occasionally his subjects would spot him there and pose accordingly – especially the children – by and large his images are very natural.
“He wanted to capture them without knowing they were being taken. You get a much truer image of a person. He didn’t actually do anything except point and press!”
There are a few images Robert took of the police – one at the scene of a car accident and one with a policeman walking towards him – when the viewer is acutely aware that his camera might not have been welcome.
The policeman approaches the camera, mouth open in speech.
“Robert had been parking up his scooter in Leith, and was being approached for driving without due care and attention or something.
“But he brought this camera out and took a picture of him!
“That is the last thing you want to do when you are away to get ticked off by a policeman!
“Yes, he was cheeky sometimes.”
Robert qualified as a doctor in 1964, so he was working as a junior doctor when most of the images shown were taken – between 1965 and 1966.
“He worked at the infirmary doing his house jobs and then he went and did a GP training stint where he was just a dogsbody. He did become a GP in the end.”
Although Robert took thousands of images, he never gave up the day job to turn professional.
“He thought about it at one time, because he had an offer from a friend of John Betjeman.
“She knew that he was looking for a photographer to take pictures to accompany the text he was writing. It was for a magazine about markets and city markets like Sheffield and Leeds.
“It didn’t work out. He wanted to take pictures of people and Betjeman wanted to take pictures of architectural features.
“Robert didn’t want to have to make a living from his real love of photography. He felt it would have somehow got in the way of what
he really wanted to do with the photography – which was always done for the love of it.”
Perhaps that explains why, despite the incredible photographs he took, this is the first major exhibition of his work.
“He had a very minor show in Sheffield, but it was the tiniest of things. And he has had some of it published.
“He had a back page in ‘The Times’ in 1967 because the same lady who knew Betjeman also knew the picture editor.”
It turns out that Robert and the family had approached a number of venues over the years about the possibility of an exhibition, but hadn’t had any interest.
At Edinburgh’s Heriot Watt University they were keen, but had a three-year waiting list for exhibiting. The City Art Gallery in town, though, jumped at the opportunity.
The shots on these pages are all on display at the exhibition. Johnny has some definite favourites amongst them, including the one of a boy climbing on the cannon.
“He didn’t ask the kid to get up on the cannon! It wasn’t staged.”
There’s also a stunning shot of the Forth Road Bridge under construction; a slightly intimidating industrial structure towering over a cottage in the foreground.
It’s quite a moody shot, balancing the big, brash modern building with the friendlier, older one.
“That was in 1962. We had just climbed the Matterhorn in Italy and it was a time when Robert could not see a tall structure or mountain without have the irresistible urge to climb it.
“I think that was part of a series he took.
“We turned up at night and we trespassed. To him the words ‘ Keep Out’ meant ‘ Welcome’!
“And we went up that in the middle of the night. It was pitch black.
“Looking at the picture, I think we went up, step by step, on to the catwalk.
“The catwalk, as you can see on the picture, is underneath the wires right up to the top.
“We certainly went up right to the very top and down to the middle before coming back.
“We didn’t have a torch. Any light must have been from the moon. There was no security.”
Such is the quality of Robert’s shots that choosing which ones to display was a challenge.
“There were so many. I did scan them all – all the black and whites.
“His wife had done about three dozen before she died and had them done professionally but I thought, right, I will do the lot, very high res, and see what people think of them.
“We had about six hundred to choose from of the Edinburgh period, covering ten years, and whittled them down to just sixty.
“I insisted on a couple of the early ones, and the art centre’s curator had a say in it, too.
“There was no single criteria for choosing them, and we have enough shots to make at least two exhibitions of an equal calibre, I think.”
Of those that did make the final cut, Johnny’s favourite is that of the two kids on a tyre.
“He’s got it perfect. He just got it. It’s pure joy. That’s what gives it, in my opinion, a universal attraction because of the emotion.”
In another lovely shot of four children walking away up a street, clearly best of friends, one of the children came forward to identify themselves.
“She’s called Donna. She said, ‘That’s me!’ And came up with evidence.”
Anyone claiming to be a child in one of the photos has to show the gallery a picture of themselves at that age.
Edward, Robert’s son, has been in touch with them all and wants to give them a good print of themselves. And to get retrospective permission!”
The images have struck a chord with everyone, though, not just the folk who were in them.
“In the gallery there is a little comments book. I made a note of one of two of the entries.
“This one guy said that, in all honesty, he’d just come in to shelter from the rain.
“But he ended up having a good wander round – and has come back three times since!
“I thought that that summed the whole thing up. All the publicity we’ve done and this guy just turned up.
“He didn’t know what was on at the centre, wandered upstairs and was so struck by the images that he has returned three times. Marvellous.”