Studio Portraits
Studio portraits were an essential way of recording lives before cameras became more readily available during the 1970s. The images could be sent with letters as a way of communicating to friends and relatives that the sitter was doing well.
Many portraits were taken at W. W. Winter’s in Derby. Located on Midland Road since 1867, the photographic studio still operates today and is the longest continually running photographic studio in the UK. The studio, and some of the props used in the photographs taken there, still exist in the same site.
W. W. Winters was one of few photography studios that would photograph South Asian people as they moved to the city. When sitters arrived for a portrait, backdrops would be carefully chosen and sometimes sitters would borrow ties, watches or other items to 'improve' their portraits.
Studio photos like these show the changing faces of people as they arrived and settled in the UK. The images illustrate the way many new arrivals responded to discrimination by conforming to a more westernised appearance. Changes such as cutting and restyling hair, changing clothes and removing turbans were often enforced by local workplaces.
A more positive shift can also be seen in the increase in couples’ and family portraits through the 1960s-1970s. Women and children increasingly travelled to be reunited with their husbands and fathers who had initially travelled to Britain alone. Children born and/or growing up in Derby had growing communities within which to make friends and build families.
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