christina broom
It’s rare to find a photography exhibition where the artefacts on show are a production of commercial consumption first, art and design second, but this is what we get with the work of Christina Broom.
The Museum of London Docklands is playing host to this extensive collection of Broom’s work from Friday 19th June until the 1st of November and is aptly titled “Soldiers and Suffragettes”. In this first major retrospective of Broom’s work, we get a broad view of life in motion during the early part of the 20th Century and an insight into Broom herself as she flawlessly transitions between royalty, warfare and the suffragette movement.
For those who are unfamiliar with Christina Broom’s work - of which I was one of many, I’m sure - she is widely considered to be the UK’s first female press photographer, beginning late in life at the age of 40. With no intention of making a political statement, Broom started her photography career as a means for mass consumption of the postcards she was producing.
As we entered the dark exhibition room, lit only by the light emitting from the highlights of the photographs, we are greeted by the woman herself - in picture form, of course - a stern glare over the top of the camera that would make her known in social circles from the Royal family to the Pankhursts.
Many of the artefacts present at this exhibition were donated by Broom’s daughter, Winifred, who played a large part in understanding the work of her mother. A quote adorns one of the walls from a letter Winnie writes in 1975 “naturally the Museums are not interested in our lives – but are glad of our negatives.”
Curator, Anna Sparham tells us “because she was very commercially driven as opposed to, let’s say, a leading photojournalist or an art photographer and also as a woman, the coverage of her work has been lessened and not as appreciated as perhaps it should have been.”
As I pass through the years of Broom’s work, I want to hear more stories about her life and photographs, about the man with one leg and the where she got a photograph of a lion from.
Through the equipment Broom used, with the slow shutter speed of the camera whilst capturing the events of the time at breakneck speed, there is a haunting blur to her photographs, with just one or two sets of piercing eyes in sharp focus, especially during her suffragette period of photography.
Broom’s work is very much of her time, capturing the lives we never got the chance to see and of her time, in her life, I guess that’s why we are only just rediscovering her now.
Soldiers and Suffragettes: the Photography of Christina Broom runs until the 1st November 2015 at the Museum of London Docklands and is free to enter.