White Heat of British Industry, 1950s-60s: Photographs by Maurice Broomfield
15 March-6 May 2019 Museum & Art Gallery
Maurice Broomfield (1916-2010) made spectacular photographs of British industry, showing skilled men and women proudly at work in factories across the UK. Produced in the 1950s and 1960s, they reveal a workforce in an era of rapid technological transition. Broomfield was born to a working-class family in Draycott, Derbyshire, leaving school at 15 to work as a lathe operator at Rolls-Royce. He attended Derby Art College in the evenings before becoming Britain’s premier industrial photographer, drawing inspiration from the paintings of Joseph Wright of Derby and modernist photography from the German Bauhaus design schools. Images in the exhibition are from Broomfield’s archive housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, alongside works from Derby Museum and Art Gallery. The exhibition is curated by Martin Barnes, V&A Senior Curator of Photographs. A selection of Broomfield’s original cameras complement the photographs loaned by his son; acclaimed documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield. Part of FORMAT19, organised by QUAD and the University of Derby: formatfestival.com
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