Public Images: Celebrity, Photojournalism, and the Making of the Tabloid Press (Photography, History: History, Photography) [1 ed.] 1474243967, 9781474243964

Citation preview

Packed with case studies from the glamorous to the infamous, the book argues that the candid snap was a tabloid innovation that drew its power from Britain’s unique class tensions. Used by papers such as the Daily Mirror and Daily Sketch as a vehicle of mass communication, this new form of image played an important and often overlooked role in constructing the idea of the press photographer as a documentary eyewitness. From Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson to aristocratic debutantes Lady Diana Cooper and Margaret Whigham, the rage of the social elite at being pictured so intimately without permission was matched only by the fascination of working class readers, while the relationship of the British press to social, economic, and political power was changed forever.

Public Images

The stolen snapshot is a staple of the modern tabloid press, as ubiquitous as it is notorious. The frst in-depth history of British tabloid photojournalism, this book explores the origin of the unauthorised celebrity photograph in the early 20th century, tracing its rise in the 1900s through to the frst legal trial concerning the right to privacy from photographers shortly after the Second World War.

Initially pioneered in the metropole, tabloid-style photojournalism soon penetrated the journalistic culture of most of the globe. This in-depth account of its social and cultural history is an invaluable source of new research for historians of photography, journalism, visual culture, media, and celebrity studies. Ryan Linkof is Associate Curator at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. In addition to curating numerous exhibitions, he teaches courses in the history of photography, flm, and the humanities, and his research has appeared in a number volumes and journals, including Media History, Photography and Culture, and Études photographiques. He holds a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, where he has served as a visiting professor.

This feld-defning series explores the inseparable relationship between photography and history. Bringing together perspectives from a broad disciplinary base it investigates what wider histories of, for example, wars, social movements, regionality or nationhood, look like when photography and its social and cultural force are brought into the centre of analysis.

PHOTOGRAPHY Series design by Sharon Mah Cover image: The Tatler, May 7, 1930. © The Bri�sh Library Board

an informa business

Ryan Linkof

Photography, History: History, Photography Series Editors: Elizabeth Edwards, Patricia Hayes, Jennifer Tucker

Public Images

Celebrity, Photojournalism, and the Making of the Tabloid Press Ryan Linkof

PUBLIC IMAGES

PUBLIC IMAGES Celebrity, Photojournalism, and the Making of the Tabloid Press

Ryan Linkof

First published 2018 by Bloomsbury Academic Published 2020

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Ryan Linkof, 2018 Ryan

Linkof has asserted his

right under the Copyright, Designs and

1988, to be identified

as

Patents Act,

Author of this work.

All

rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

form

Notice: Product

or

may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

corporate

names

British

Library Cataloguing-in-Publication

are

used

Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

A

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data catalog for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Series: Photography, History: History, Photography Series

Cover image © Rosy Martin,

‘In

design by Sharon

Mah

Situ’, 2006/1938 (medium:

photograph on silk)

Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India

ISBN13: 978-1-4742-4396-4 (hbk)

For my mother

CONTENTS

List of

Figures

viii

Acknowledgments

Introduction

x

1

1

Tabloidism:

2

Shooting people: portrait

Photojournalism The press

in

London, 1904-38

19

photographer and the candid

47

Snapping

3

royals: The press photographer and the challenge to the British monarchy 75

4

Photocracy: Celebrity and aristocratic "decline" in the 1930s

5

"The

plague of Britain": The tabloid photographer and the right to privacy 129

6

Ungentlemanly behavior: Class, privacy, and the tabloid photographer 149

Conclusion

163

Notes 169

Bibliography Index 235

the

217

101

LIST OF FIGURES

1.1 1.2

1.3 1.4

1.5 1.6 2.1 2.2

2.3 2.4

2.5 2.6 2.7

2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11

Daily Illustrated Mirror, March 23, 1904. © The British Library Board 27 Daily Mirror, November 25, 1904. © The British Library Board 30 1928. Front page of the Daily News showing Ruth 13,1928. Daily News, January 13, in Snyder being executed the electric chair at Sing Sing prison 35 Daily Mirror, August 6, 1935. © The British Library Board 39 Daily Mirror, January 4, 1937. © The British Library Board 40 © The British Library Board 43 Weekly Weekly Illustrated, July 10, 1937. ©The The British Library Board 51 ©The Daily Mirror, July 19, 1905. © Daily Mirror, December 15, 1905. ©The British Library Board 53 latter. April 2, 1913. © The British Library Board 54 ©The Tatler, 1911. © The British Library Board 55 Daily Mirror, January 18, 1911.© Punch, March 19, 1913. Reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd., www.punch.co.uk 57 Press Photographers, 1939. National Science and Media Museun/Science Museum/Science and Society Picture Library 63 The British Library Board 68 ©The Daily Mirror, December 20, 1935. © Bystander, October 13, 1937. © The British Library Board 69 © The British Library Board 71 Photography, May 1938. ©The The British Library Board 72 ©The Tatler, May 7, 1930. © World's VZorld's Press News, March 7, 1929. © The British Library Board 73

3.1

Cecil Beaton, The Duke and Duchess of Windsor at the Chateau de Condé, Conde,

3.2

1937. © Cecil Beaton/Victoria BeatonA/ictoria and Albert Museum, London 76 Press Photographers and Film Cameraman Outside the Chateau de Condé, Conde, 1937. National Science and Media Museum/Science and Society Picture

Library

77

3.3

The initial early (left) and later (right) editions of the cover story of the Daily Mirror, December 3, 1936. © The British Library Board 87

3.4

Stanley Devon, The Prince of Wales, Wallis Simpson, and Entourage Taken Unaware, Summer 1936. Reproduced in Stanley Devon, Glorious 89 Sunday Graphic, December 6, 1936. Devon's photograph taken from the air is bottom center. © The British Library Board 90 Daily Mirror, December 8, 1936. © The British Library Board 94 Daily Mirror, October 23, 1937. © The British Library Board 96 Daily Mirror, June 24, 1905. © The British Library Board 105

3.5 3.6 3.7 4.1

4.2

4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7

4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12

5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 6.1 C.1 C.2

Tatler, February 8, 1933. The bottom two photographs credited to Swaebe. Mary Evans Picture Library 110

Daily Mirror, May 10, 1929. ©The British Library Board 112 © The British Library Board 114 Daily Daily Express, May 15, 1930. ©The Tatler, February 5, 1934. © The British Library Board 115 Portrait of Lorna Harmsworth by Harlip Harlip studio, reproduced in the Tatler, June 1, 1938. Mary Evans Picture Library 117 Punch, January 1, 1937. Reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd., www. punch.co.uk 118 Sunday Graphic, February 20, 1938. © The British Library Board 120 Daily Sketch, March 3, 1932. © The British Library Board 122 Daily Mirror, February 22, 1933. ©The British Library Board 123 Daily Mirror, Mirror, March 22, 1934. © The British Library Board 124 Daily ©The The British Library Library Board 126 Daily Mirror, December 13, 1935. © 1911.© The British Daily Mirror, February 2, Library Board 136 Daily Graphic, July 30, 1919. © The British Library Board 140 Looker-On, April 6, 1929. © The British Library Board; © H.M. Bateman Designs 141 "Press photographers at the Exhumation of Miss Ellen Ruddle," "Press Ruddle," 1937. National Science and Media Museum/Science and Society Picture Library 144 © The British Library Board 152 Daily Mirror, January 12, 1946. ©The 2005. © Mirrorpix 167 Mirror, 16, Daily September Jonathan Horowitz, Daily Mirror, 2005. Screenprint on mirror. Courtesy Xavier ©Jonathan Jonathan Horowitz 168 Hufkens, ©

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In the process of writing this book I have accrued many debts. Researching in three different countries over nearly a decade required the help, guidance, and financial of a number of people—too many, in fact, to mention here. This project emerged out of my interactions with colleagues, mentors, and friends, and it has been a effort in many ways. The unique nature of the intellectual community at the University of Southern California (USC) ensured that my interdisciplinary interests found an engaged and helpful audience. The faculty and students of USC’s Visual Studies Graduate Certificate (VSGC) program have been instrumental in helping me to think beyond the parameters of history, and expand my reach into art history, media studies, and cultural theory. This project, it is safe to say, could probably have been written only at USC. I need to begin by thanking my colleagues at USC who have helped shape this since its inception. In particular, my advisor Vanessa Schwartz has been an amazing advocate of my work, and an indispensable ally in my professional development. Without her intellectual and moral support, this project would almost surely never have been The critical insights of Philippa Levine and Richard Meyer have also shaped the and their work has been hugely influential in my own scholarly development. It was an honor to have such a talented and intelligent collection of minds reviewing my work. I also need to thank my two closest confidantes in the dissertation process, Catherine Clark and Brian Jacobson, who offered edits, intellectual guidance, and advice when I most needed it. VSGC’s dissertation reading group always served as my first point of call when finishing a draft of my chapter, so I must give a special thanks to Elizabeth Affuso, Jennifer Black, Karen Higa, Chera Kee, Anca Lasc, and Amy Von Lintel, and all of whom helped turn undigested material into the project it has become. I also need to express my thanks for the financial support that I received during the process of researching this project, both from USC and from a number of grants and institutions. The project would never have been possible without the funds and intellectual support of the Social Science Research Council’s Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship. The mentoring professors and graduate student colleagues of the “Visual Culture” research group and workshop were an important force in forging this project and providing input during the dissertation’s gestation. In particular, I must give a special thanks to Emerson Bowyer, who helped to strengthen some of the key ideas of the project. I also received an enormous amount of financial support from the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, through their International Research Fellowship, as well as a number of privately endowed fellowships offered through the

assistance collaborative

project

written. project,

agencies

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

college, including the Louis D. Beaumont Fellowship and the Gold Family Endowment Fellowship. The intellectual and financial support of my one- year fellowship at the Center for Law, History and Culture at USC’s Gould School of Law played an indispensable role in forging the project. The Roberta Persinger Foulke Endowment Fellowship, offered through USC’s Department of History, was also an important source of funding. The support of the VSGC, providing funding for summer research for three consecutive summers, allowed me to conduct research in London, New York, and Paris, without which the project would never have been possible. The financial and intellectual support of the Mellon Foundation, through their Seminar in Modern British History at Columbia University, fundamentally affected how I had conceived and implemented the project. The careful edits and engaging discussion of the fellow members of that seminar, and the guidance and direction provided by Professor Susan Pedersen, helped me to rethink the project at an important stage in its development. The team at Bloomsbury Publishing has been of tremendous support throughout this process. From the moment I was approached to participate in this series, I have been in the capable hands of Bloomsbury’s editors. The insights that they— and the peer reviewers— provided throughout this process have helped to shape a dissertation into a scholarly publication. Finally, I would like to thank all of my friends and colleagues who provided support throughout my tenure as a graduate student, and in the years since I have moved outside the confines of academia and into my career as a museum curator. The support of Britt Salvesen, who encouraged me to continue work on this and other projects while working on a number of exhibitions, is deeply appreciated. Her intellectual and ability to look beyond the art historical canon has been a tremendous inspiration. While I rarely shared drafts of this project with my closest friends, they provided essential support to complete this project, and their intelligence and insights help forge my own critical eye. Even if they were not aware that they were helping me, they often were. In the support (both intellectual and emotional) of Garrett Morgan was an absolutely crucial force in the final stages of this project. So, for that, a very special thank you to him.

financial

outstanding

simultaneously curiosity

particular,

INTRODUCTION The introduction of newspaper photography was a phenomenon of immense importance, one that changed the outlook of the masses. Before the first press pictures, the ordinary man could visualize only those events that took place near him, on his street or in his village. Photography opened a window, as it were. The faces of public personalities became familiar and things that happened all over the world were his to share. —GISÈLE FREUND1

Photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. —SUSAN SONTAG2

In his scathing 1927 polemic Stentor: or the Press of To-day and To-morrow, critic David Ockham asked, “What, actually is a newspaper?” In a book dedicated to eviscerating popular news reporting, he gave special attention to the photographic content of such as the Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch, London’s most popular tabloids. He wrote,

newspapers

Then there is a page of pictures, gathered at great expense from the ends of the earth, often transmitted by aeroplane, and providing a feast of new hats and evening wraps from Paris, railway accidents, shipwrecks, upturned tramcars and motor lorries that have fallen into ditches, the more or less recognisable portraits of men and women performing at the Divorce Courts or for some other reason temporarily in the public eye, photographs of film actresses, and pictures of the diversions of the Rich at the races, on the moors, on the Lido, and on the Riviera. Democracy’s peep-show. 3 The palpable disdain evident in Ockham’s book was shared by many of his and continues to influence perspectives on the tabloid press. The tabloids are at once frivolous and somehow insidious— simultaneously eroding the informational content of the news and providing too much information. Following the rich and famous “to the ends of the earth,” tabloid photographers seem never to rest in their pursuit of mindless, and morally dubious, photographic spying. These photographers transacted a voyeuristic

contemporaries,

PUBLIC IMAGES

expedition on behalf of the mass public, looking through the keyhole with camera in hand, in the service of “Democracy’s peep show.” The highly photographic nature of the tabloids is key to understanding their and enduring impact on the nature of news and information in the twentieth century. The tabloid press was a crucial venue for the development of photojournalism. Halftone images, reproduced directly from photographs, were a central feature of the tabloids from their very origin. The founders of the Daily Mirror — “the world’s first tabloid,” launched in 1904—asserted the value and superiority of photographic reporting, and became the prototype for the development of tabloid newspapers around the world.4 The distinctive cocktail of photographic reporting, personality journalism, and no- holds-barred journalism created an enduring paradigm in modern mass media. Excavating the historical foundations of the tabloid press, this book offers a cultural history of a form of photographic visibility that has become a fundamental feature of life, in Britain and around the world. The celebrity snapshot—so ubiquitous that it is hard to imagine that there was ever a moment that it did not exist—has a rich and complex history that this book investigates. The British tabloids were the world’s first daily newspapers to make extensive use of the candid snapshot photograph as a vehicle of mass communication. In their pursuit of candid images, tabloid photographers played an important role in the creation of a new mass culture of celebrity based on direct and unmediated access. The snapshot image documented a fleeting moment in time, and could be taken with or without the consent of the subject, which intensified the pressures of life in the public eye. The frenzied media attention directed at the British royal family—as intense now as ever in the past—vividly illustrates the continued importance of the British tabloids in and feeding a visual culture of celebrity voyeurism avidly consumed by global London sits at the center of a heated and unresolved debate about press intrusion that dates back to the turn of the twentieth century. Understanding the conditions under which the tabloids emerged illustrates how they have informed and responded to cultural desires for access to celebrities, and helped forge a unique means of visual that has had a long and continuing hold on the popular imagination.

powerful

investigative

contemporary

creating audiences.

communication The tabloids and modern British history

Returning to the origins of the tabloid press helps illuminate how and why the tabloids have set such deep roots in British culture. Per capita, the British read more newspapers than any other people in the world, and the tabloids have long had the highest circulations of all British papers.5 Contemporary observers, both foreign and domestic, have often highlighted the British national proclivity for tabloid newspapers. The sociologist Sophia Johansson’s Reading Tabloids illustrates the importance of the tabloids in twenty- firstcentury Britain, describing how “their physical presence is undeniable: at newsstands, trains, cafes, pubs, buses, waiting areas, restaurants and pavements.”6 One media scholar has coined the term “Tabloid Britain” in an effort to underscore the links between the British and the tabloid press.7 The 2011 scandals involving the News of the World and

INTRODUCTION

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation have solidified stereotypes of Britain as a nation with a peculiar appetite for salacious tabloid news.8 Despite the widespread acknowledgment of the peculiar prominence of the tabloids in British culture, very little has been written to illuminate the historical development of tabloid reporting in Britain. While press history is a relatively prominent and vibrant field, especially in Britain, the tabloids have not been seen as a viable subject of study. With the exception of institutional histories of individual tabloid newspapers, all works of that have analyzed the tabloids have focused almost exclusively on the moment.9 The origins and development of the tabloid newspaper format in Britain has remained largely a matter of speculation or generalization, and scholars have often relied upon broad stereotypes of the “gutter press” in speaking about the longer history of tabloid reporting.10 When tabloid-like newspapers have been subjects of serious examination, it has been because their proprietors—such as the Daily Mail’s Lord Northcliffe and the Daily Express’s Lord Beaverbrook—circulated in high political circles. 11 And even studies of the popular press tend not to treat the tabloids as a distinct Adrian Bingham has used the popular press as an optic into the construction of gender and sex norms in Britain, and Dan LeMahieu has shown how cultural elites responded to the proliferation of mass media forms in the interwar period, but even these very cogent and well-researched works of cultural and social history all but ignore the unique and valuable contributions of the tabloid press.13 Some of the difficulty of telling the history of the tabloids is that the term “tabloid” is ambiguous and multivalent with its own complex history. It is not always immediately obvious which newspapers are tabloids and which are not. The term is both technical and conceptual: used as a unit of measurement for newspapers which are half the size of a standard broadsheet paper, as well as an evaluative expression describing a mode of sensational news reporting. This latter definition of the term is the looser and more fluid of the two, and is the source of some of the inconsistencies in its The media scholar Colin Sparks has done his best to articulate a standard for use by scholars analyzing the tabloids: “The tabloid is a form marked by two major features; it devotes much attention to the personal and private lives of people, both celebrities and ordinary people, and relatively little to political processes, economic and social changes.”14 Though this definition is helpful in understanding what tabloids are, it does not always help us understand what they were, and how they came to be. They did not always look the same, nor have they developed teleologically toward the tabloids that we see and know today. The term itself was not regularly used in the way that Sparks describes, at least in Britain, until the 1940s and 1950s. A more varied set of meanings adhered to the term between the years 1900 and 1940, when it first emerged and evolved in popular and elite discourse.15 Despite the changes in the format over the past one hundred years, the history of the tabloid press is characterized more by continuity than by rupture, and this book illustrates stasis, as well as change, over time. Many of the fundamental characteristics of the format have remained in place since their origin, and some of the elements of the tabloid press that Sparks and others identify with the contemporary period actually took shape much earlier. Paying close attention to similarities across the century reveals much

scholarship contemporary

historical

phenomenon. 12

particular application. definition developments,

tabloid

about how the tabloids have been (and continue to be) consumed, understood, criticized, and celebrated.

Tabloid photojournalism Placing the British tabloids within the history of photography complicates the scholarly narrative of the emergence of photojournalism. “Photojournalism” has been identified as a form of candid photographic practice originating in German and French magazines of the late 1920s, and only later adopted by British and American journalists. 16 Despite its to the growth of press photography, the British press plays a notably minor role in histories of photography and the press, a historical oversight that this book attempts to remedy.17 Tabloid newspapers of any national variety rarely, if ever, feature in the literature on photojournalism.18 Karin Becker’s “Photojournalism and the Tabloid Press” is the only study to truly isolate and identify the formal particularities of the tabloids as newspapers. 19 Her study focuses on the contemporary moment, and while she illuminates the unique photographic language of contemporary tabloids, she does not situate that language within a longer history of photojournalism. The only sustained analyses of the pre–Second World War history of tabloid photography have focused on the work of the news and crime photographer Weegee, but his work should not be seen as representative of tabloid photojournalism as a whole, since Weegee’s crime and photography was only one aspect of the emergent tabloid press.20 A much more varied array of photographic practices developed in the tabloids that have gone almost entirely unexamined. The problematic distinction between photojournalism and photoreportage has often been seen as a way of drawing boundaries around the photojournalistic magazine as a special and unique news form. Several scholars have claimed that the term “photojournalism” applies only to a type of reporting in which photographs do away with the need for captions, whereas “photoreportage” is the use of photographs simply to augment or illustrate written reporting.21 The photographic essay—a sequential series of images one continuous story—is often seen as the crucial innovation that marks the advent of photojournalism. Gisèle Freund perhaps best typified this idea when she wrote, “It was only when the image itself became the story that photojournalism was born.”22 Though this distinction is not without merit, the analysis that follows reveals that such a neat has little utility when investigating the various types of photographic reporting that flourished in the first few decades of the twentieth century. The editors and of the world’s first tabloids made a point to emphasize the fact that photographs were bold editorial statements, meant to speak for themselves. It is important to note, however, that photographs rarely spoke entirely for themselves in any news format. Even in photojournalistic magazines, text played a crucial role in making sense of photographic images. The intricate relationship between word and image is crucial to the meaning and significance of photographic reporting. 23 Instead of isolating the tabloids as fundamentally apart from, or somehow at the fringes of, the history of photojournalism, this book places them squarely at the center of this

importance photojournalistic insightfully

murder

narrating

categorization proprietors

history. I proffer an alternative narrative of the origins of photojournalism. Thierry Gervais has contended that a more thorough understanding of the origins of press photography can help reframe the traditional periodization of photojournalism, and this project contributes to that intervention.24 The earliest tabloids, such as the Daily Mirror and its most enduring rival the Daily Sketch, played a crucial role in making photographic journalism possible by affirming the privileged status of the camera as a conveyor of news and information. The magazines that emerged in the mid-1930s, such as Weekly Illustrated and Picture Post, which have been identified by some scholars as marking the moment when “began” in Britain, actually inherited some of the newsgathering and display methods (not to mention photographic personnel) already in place in tabloid newsrooms.25 Through an excavation of the tabloids’ early commitment to photographic reporting, this project illuminates how photography came to function as the privileged visual means of documenting the news. The motives behind the adoption of halftone technologies were complex and contradictory, and it is not possible to identify a singular reason responsible for its application to the news. 26 What is undoubtedly true, however, is that photography was given primacy because it was seen to provide unmediated access to real events. The status of the photograph as an indexical trace of the physical world is perhaps the central preoccupation of the scholarly analysis of photography, and while what follows is not a study in ontology, it does reveal how photography came to play a crucial role in the of notions of journalistic truth.27 As scholars such as Dan Schiller have suggested, the photograph appealed to newspaper editors in part because it dovetailed with a of journalistic “objectivity,” predicated on unbiased reporting. 28 The tabloids’ early adoption of photographic technologies implicated these newspapers in evolving ideas of the tasks and responsibilities of truthful journalism. While tabloids are often identified with mendacious reporting, their commitment to photography has long been rooted in a desire for uncompromising accuracy. Showing their subjects “warts and all” drove reporting from the very beginning. This project analyzes the important contributions of a generation of British press very few of whom have received any notice from scholars.29 It was through the figure of the press photographer that the early tabloids promised readers unmediated truth, providing documentary evidence of events as they were happening. As Gervais has argued, the early press photographer’s role as eyewitness to events illustrated an in the value of “being there” as a means of providing documentary truth. 30 By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, tabloid newspapers had grown reliant upon a popular conception of the press photographer as photographic observer. As the first newspapers to employ press photographers on a mass scale, the British tabloids have been central to the logic of photojournalism and the rhetoric of documentary reportage.

photojournalism

evolution discourse

photographers,

investment

Tabloid newspapers as popular visual culture The tabloids were a key element of the popular amusements that emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. Much has been written about the emergence of new forms of spectatorship in response to the proliferation of visual entertainment, including everything

from the stereoscope and the camera, to the universal exposition, wax museums, stores, and early cinema. 31 This project introduces the tabloids into this diverse and dynamic visual culture. The tabloids were intimately linked with the rise of the cinema, which played a particularly important role in popularizing photographic reporting. Looking back on the emergence of the tabloid press, the news editor R. D. Blumenfeld wrote in 1933, “It was not, I think, an historical accident that the growth in the public demand for pictures papers would have followed closely on the development of the Cinema. A public accustomed to having stories and topical news supplied to it in the form of pictures on the screen, naturally develops a taste for pictorial journalism.”32 The tabloids evolved as a journalistic form in response to a perceived popular demand for photographic that had been stimulated and abetted by cinematic spectatorship. As Chapter 1 illustrates in greater depth, the cinema served as a paradigm of eclectic visual that directly influenced the editors of the first tabloids. Photographic reporting facilitated profound transformations in the content and of popular journalism. Between the innovations of mid- Victorian illustrated and the rise of photojournalistic magazines in the 1930s there was a sea change in the way that the news was consumed and understood, and the emergence of the tabloids helps make sense of that change.33 Photographic images did not fit within a framework of Victorian conceptions of the news as educational and tethered to moral uplift. 34 The first newspapers to highlight their use of halftone images were not serious “news” papers, but periodicals designed as light entertainment, specializing in coverage and popular entertainments.35 Several scholars have illustrated how the commercialization of the press in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century led to the “depoliticization” of journalism, which transformed how newspaper editors their public mission. 36 The introduction of photography was a crucial— and almost entirely unexplored—feature of this process.37 Photographic images were informational, but they were also used as a source of diversionary entertainment, and this project how the tabloids forged a newspaper format that united visual spectacle and news coverage in new and complex ways. This project examines the role of the tabloid press in helping to create a public of whose viewing practices were enabled and conditioned by the mass-reproduced photographic image. Walter Benjamin has famously contended that photography has had a radically equalizing social effect by dislodging rarefied objects from their original context and distributing them to people who might never have been able to see them before.38 Although his analysis focused on reproductions of art objects, his insights can just as be applied to representations of people, and the subjects of the news more generally.39 The tabloids literally brought the world into view, bringing famous people and momentous events into clearer focus for anyone who could afford the price of a newspaper, a dramatic democratization of information and access. The concept of “democratization” is important in this project, and it appears in various forms throughout the book. Historian Dan LeMahieu has shown how mass media worked to forge a more democratically representative public culture in Britain in the early century, and my research illustrates how the photographic press was a particularly important venue for effecting this change. 40 The expansion of literacy in the decades after

department

representations entertainment character periodicals

celebrity

understood

illustrates

spectators

easily representing twentieth

the passing of the 1870 Education Act ensured a population of potential consumers who would never have been capable of perusing a newspaper before.41 Introducing was part of a strategy to expand circulation by appealing to working-class, lowermiddle-class, and women readers—demographics that had not typically been the target audience of Victorian newspapers.42 Photographic reporting was seen to be particularly appropriate for these social groups precisely because it was seen as a less sophisticated form of communication. As scholars such as Jennifer Tucker have shown, since the midnineteenth century, the photograph had been discursively constructed as an immediately and readily legible form of communication, which appealed to large audiences despite an individual’s ability or the inclination to read.43 Its meaning was, for many who advocated its usage, immediately apprehensible by even the most rudely literate of the population. Photographic reporting was also appropriate to the new ways of reading and consuming newsprint, and tabloid newspapers, as they proudly advertised, were perfectly suited for reading on trains, during short breaks from work, and during odd moments of repose. The appeal of mobile newspaper reading had obvious traction with commuters and working people in major metropolitan areas, and it would be these markets that the creators of tabloid newspapers sought to tap. The tabloids helped forge an inclusive public sphere, built around shared visual Of course, it may seem a misuse of the term to suggest that the tabloids had anything to do with the creation of a “public sphere.” In the classical definition of the term— deriving from Jürgen Habermas—the critically engaged public sphere was dead and gone by the time the tabloids emerged, and perhaps precisely because of the kinds of cultural production they seemed to represent.44 In Habermas’s estimation, the growth of mass media was the death knell of the bourgeois public sphere because it rendered public space “a version of representative publicity, to which the public responds by acclamation, or the withholding of acclamation, rather than critical discourse.” 45 Inspired by Habermas, the historian Jean Chalaby has argued that the very concept of “journalism” that emerged in Britain after the elimination of the “taxes on knowledge” in the 1850s came to signify a specific set of discursive practices that represented the saturation of public discourse with a depoliticized, consumerist ideology. 46 This critique shares much with that proffered by members of the Frankfurt School, most notably Theodor Adorno, who, in his redoubtable article “The Culture Industry,” argued that the deceptive populism of mass culture leads to mind manipulation by the forces of big capital.47 Applying the theories of Habermas and Adorno to the British context, the historian Peter Twaites has suggested that early photographic newspapers were evidence of an attempt to make news more digestible for larger audiences, but that, in the end, such newspapers, “reinforced the perceptions of the social structure,” and “answer[ed] to the needs of the reader’s curiosity—or even 48 It was not until the coming of photojournalistic magazines, Twaites claims, that British newspapers truly gave a voice to the interests of ordinary people. This book illustrates how an inclusive vision of what constituted news, and what the audience of news, was given its first great push by the founding of the after the turn of the century. The tabloids contributed to the creation of a public sphere that may not be very palatable to many scholars, but it is a public sphere Benedict Anderson’s much-referenced concept of the “imagined community”

photography

experiences.

prurience.”

constituted tabloids nonetheless. 49

perhaps more aptly describes the kind of social bond effected by popular news Anderson used the term in a specifically political sense—describing the formation of national identities—but the concept of a community of readers united by the printed word is not only relevant to the creation of nation states. 50 Scholars such as Patrick Joyce, John Fiske, and Vanessa Schwartz have attempted to identify the role of popular culture in forging communities of common interest across classes. 51 The very concept of “the is predicated upon an idea of a legible body of participants, defined by a shared set of references and experiences.52 Media scholars Bonnie Brennen and Hanno Hardt have suggested that image-based media, “produce a reality that anticipates the expectations of audiences and reflects the tastes of a reconstructed Western culture by privileging the signifiers of modern culture: celebrities, music and popular movements.”53 It is this “reality,” and its social repercussions, that this book attempts to explicate by returning to the origins of one of the most influential forms of mass visual media.

reporting. popular”

Tabloid celebrity The tabloids played a central role in the creation of the celebrity culture that has become a central component of the contemporary media landscape. Celebrity reportage has been a fundamental element of tabloid news coverage since its origin. As several scholars have shown, celebrity is a product of the dramatic transformations in communications, and reproduction technologies that emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century.54 It is, as Leo Braudy has argued, the “democratization” of the classical notions of fame and renown—a democratization made possible by the emergent commercial culture of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Europe. 55 Whereas “fame” is etymologically and culturally defined as acclaim deriving from formidable accomplishments, “celebrity” is a much more elusive form of recognition, untethered from achievement and more tightly affiliated with communications technologies.56 Daniel Boorstin’s insightful tautology—“a celebrity is he who is well-known for his well-knownness”—illustrates the dependence of celebrity upon media recognizability.57 The tabloids made this process of recognition in a historically unprecedented way, reproducing images of and information about celebrities on a scale never seen before: the Daily Mirror reached one million readers per day (the highest of any daily in the world) by 1910 and the Daily Sketch would do the same by the mid-1920s. With help from the tabloids, celebrities became an inescapable aspect of everyday life, paralleling the rise of advertising and the cinema as the ubiquitous visual markers of twentieth-century mass culture. The tabloid coverage of celebrities was of a piece with the “human-interest” that originated in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, and rapidly spread across the Atlantic. In his thorough study of human-interest journalism and its role in the rise of celebrity culture, historian Charles Ponce de Leon has shown how the popular newspapers that spread in the decades after 1890 promised access into the private lives of notable people by revealing the true person concealed behind the socially sanctioned “masks” worn in public.58 For all of its insight, Ponce de Leon’s analysis of human-interest journalism is, oddly, blind to the role of visual representations in the

transportation,

possible

reporting

genesis of the celebrity culture that he so expertly unpacks. This is especially surprising because scholars have widely acknowledged the link between photographic and the creation of celebrity culture. Art historians Roger Hargreaves and Peter Hamilton have argued that photographic portraiture forged the modern culture of “Such images are merely part of the currency of celebrity, without which it could not thrive.” 59 Cartes de visite, photographic albums, photographic postcards, and press engravings based on photographic portraits were fundamental to the dissemination of images of famous people to a mass public.60 The emergence of the tabloids not only increased the availability of these studio portraits, but they also introduced, through the work of the press photographer, an alternative mode of photographically documenting the lives of celebrities that had many parallels to the human interest reporting examined by Ponce de Leon. This book offers a historical and aesthetic analysis of a form of visual reporting that originated in the tabloids: celebrity photojournalism. Photojournalism created a new way of seeing famous people. The press photographer produced a culture of visibility based on visual immediacy and documentary access that came to define the dynamics of culture in the twentieth century and beyond. The press snapshot could be taken rapidly and without the consent of the subject. Press photographers played a role to the human-interest journalist, using the camera to see beyond the flattery and idealizations of the “mask” of photographic portraiture.61 Despite the fact that celebrity photojournalism was, and in many ways continues to be, the most ubiquitous evidence of the press photographer’s activities, it has fallen between the cracks of academic history. Scholars have written extensively and eloquently about the value and meaning of press photographs of war, of the urban poor, and of the socially dispossessed, but they have had much less to say about the cultural significance of candid celebrity photography, despite its importance to the growth and continued vitality of photographic reporting.62 Scholars of paparazzi such as Peter Howe and the theorist Allan Sekula have contended that the growth of an invasive style of photographing Hollywood celebrities in the late 1950s and 1960s marked the “first” instance in which photographers seized control over the processes of photographic representation.63 Decades before the emergence of the paparazzi, however, the tabloids created a culture of celebrity predicated on the ability to see celebrities as they “really were.” A closer examination of the early tabloids allows for a better historical and conceptual understanding of the “stolen” celebrity photograph. As scholars such as Tom Gunning have shown, the ability to capture essence and record incriminating information has been one of the fundamental concerns of the study of the photographic medium.64 Tabloid press photographers pioneered the art of capturing what Henri Cartier- Bresson famously called—in English translation—“the decisive moment,” that instant that seemed to offer an entirely unselfconscious representation of a person going about her life.65 CartierBresson’s French phrasing is perhaps even more revelatory, because “images à la sauvette” translates to “images on the sly,” “images taken hastily,” and even perhaps “images taken illegally.” At the very least, the phrase connotes the fact that the image was taken without authorization. By turning attention to the celebrity snapshot, this project the aesthetic and social ramifications of taking photographs of well-known people

representation celebrity:

celebrity analogous

illuminates

“on the sly” and without consent. Returning to the early history of this visual form illustrates the strangeness of early snapshot photography, and its vexed status in social discourse. It was a mode of representation that took some getting used to, both by the subjects caught on camera, as well as those viewing and consuming snapshot images in print. With the advent of photojournalism, celebrity became identified as a battle between the famous and those who photographed them. Celebrities responded to the rise of the press photographer with a mix of protest, begrudging accommodation, and even outright embrace.66 Even as the press photographer created new concerns for those in the public eye, the ability to harness the power of photographic publicity became a new source of social power. It could be advantageous for celebrities to cooperate with the men behind the cameras. The development of the “photo-op” represented a compromise between the candid photograph and the posed shot, and required celebrities to recognize and adapt to the photographer’s presence.67 In defiance of this spirit of cooperation, many photographers (satisfying their editors) desired images in which celebrities appeared unaware of the camera. Others insisted on finding images acquired despite the direct wishes— even the vociferous protestation—of their subjects. The stage was set for a confrontation that has continued to play itself out in tabloid news. By definition, celebrity is an ambivalent social phenomenon, defined as much by opprobrium as by acclaim. This double-sided nature of celebrity culture— simultaneously celebratory and condemnatory—is key to understanding the role of photography in the creation of celebrity culture in the twentieth century. In his treatment of paparazzi, Howe has suggested, “The general public has—and maybe always has had—an ambivalent attitude toward celebrities. The need for both the glossy studio portrait and the sometimes seamy, paparazzi representation of them is a product of this As this book shows, this tension has characterized candid photography since its origin.

however,

unglamorous, ambivalence.” 68 Celebrity and social class

Celebrity is a phenomenon deeply rooted in questions of social class. As Braudy’s use of the term “democratization” suggests, celebrity has been seen as a manifestation of democratic cultures—an outgrowth of the erosion of traditional social hierarchies based on status and inherited privilege.69 Building on this assumption, most studies of celebrity tend to view the United States, and its peculiarly democratic “cult of personality,” as the exemplar of modern celebrity culture.70 Hollywood stars, in particular, have been seen as prototypical celebrities. 71 As media-theorist David Giles’s has contended, “Hollywood acted as a blueprint of the fame explosion which has occurred during the second half of the twentieth century.”72 In the new meritocracy of fame, the Hollywood star—typically rising from obscurity to global recognition—was the shining symbol of a new democratic culture. Britain offers a unique and intriguing study into the democratizing effects of celebrity culture because British popular culture has a long and enduring relationship with the landed elite. Although Hollywood film culture was profoundly important to how

traditional

celebrity has evolved in the United States and elsewhere, the star model does little to make sense of the enduring authority of alternative forms of fame and celebrity, that surrounding figures of a decidedly premodern social standing. In the emerging tabloid press, the historical cult of aristocrats and royals existed side by side with a new “democratic” cult of celebrity.73 A preexisting fascination with the landed elite was onto a new mass media form. Scholars such as David Cannadine have shown how the years between 1890 and 1940 saw the steady dissolution of the Victorian social system, and the formation of a more inclusive and representative political and social body. 74 It is not entirely coincidental that these same years saw the emergence of a photojournalistic culture of celebrity. The first tabloids visualized the clash of modern and archaic forms of renown. Focusing on the peculiarities of celebrity culture in Britain reveals something profoundly important about the nature of celebrity as a social mechanism. What the tabloids of this era reveal is a nation in transition, struggling to preserve its traditional social structure even as it flew hurdling into the twentieth century that promised to shed the trappings of elite privilege. As scholars such as Martin Daunton and Martin Wiener have shown, British culture is defined by a seemingly contradictory combination of the modern and the archaic, summed up by Gertrude Himmelfarb’s term “Tory Democracy.”75 The endurance of the monarchy, the aristocracy, the established church, and other governmental, social, and cultural anachronisms meant that it had not, like its closest European neighbor France, rid itself of the trappings of the ancien regime. This push-pull between the demands of modern democratic society and the popular attachment to premodern social hierarchies, however, helps illuminate the social functions of celebrity in modern culture, not only in Britain, although perhaps especially there, as it has taken root around the world. Celebrity culture, in short, is deeply rooted in the perception of access to wealth and privilege. Media scholar Ian Connell, in his analysis of celebrity news reporting, has “that the drive to write stories about ‘personalities’ is fuelled by a vision of them as members of a privileged caste. Nearly all of the stories make a point of telling readers about the wealth and advantageous circumstances of the featured personalities.” 76 What the British culture of celebrity reveals is that celebrity is democratic, but paradoxically so. Its democratic character is manifested in a fascination with social inequity. Celebrity might subject the social elite to the scrutiny of a democratic system, but that only confirms the fact that celebrity reporting is largely concerned with the social elite. In its play with class voyeurism, celebrity photojournalism has an important role in bridging the distance between elites who feature prominently in the news and the mass audiences that consume it. As scholars such as David Marshall and Richard Schickel have shown, celebrity culture can be understood as a powerful social mechanism designed to create the illusion of intimacy and access across social divisions. 77 The press role as intermediary between those at the top of the social hierarchy and the person works to mitigate inequity in an ostensibly democratic society by reducing the psychological barriers that separate social classes. By providing visual access to both the banality and extravagance of the lives of the rich and famous, press photography created equivalence and virtual affinity, even where none existed in actual fact. In this way, the rise

particularly

transposed aristocratic

economic,

suggested

photographer’s ordinary

of the press photographer as a social actor provides evidence of changing conceptions of class deference and social privilege. Celebrity photojournalism stoked debate about who had the right to look and how. For many social critics, the press photographer’s impudence was glaring evidence of the modern press’s lack of decency and respect for standards of decorum and propriety, concepts deeply embedded in a language of class and status. The press photographer was an avatar for a new democratic culture of press access, seeking to satisfy the desire to diminish the social and psychological distance between the elite and the newspaper- reading public—potentially at any cost.

Public images In his pursuit of celebrity images, the tabloid press photographer stoked enduring and still unresolved ethical and legal debates about the limits of the press to invade personal While the social anxiety produced by photography and photographers is one of the defining aspects of the medium, the complicated history of the ethical and legal identity of snapshot photographs has largely evaded scholarly analysis. 78 This is especially true with regard to press photography. Analyses of paparazzi have provided a framework for understanding the legal dilemmas emanating from the photographic pursuit of celebrities, but the longer history of photographic “invasion” has rarely been analyzed in any depth. 79 The legal concept of privacy emerged, in part, out of fears associated with the press photographer’s perceived lack of social decency and respect. At its core, a protected category of “the private” is deeply rooted in a class-bound notion of the separation of the public and private spheres, which defined appropriate forms of social expression.80 As Robert Mensel and others have shown, the advent of the Kodak snapshot camera in 1888 caused alarm as a public nuisance across the Western world. 81 The press snapshot offered mass audiences the opportunity to view acts that might embarrass, humiliate, or even incriminate the subject of the image. 82 The discourse of the “camera fiend” created an enduring image of the snapshot photographer as a pathological voyeur determined to photograph people in compromising situations. The press photographer was both a real social actor and a phantasm: a locus around which fears and anxieties cohered. The of the press photographer—sneaking photographs of unknowing and often subjects—raised questions about the psychological impulses motivating this kind of photography, akin to what cinema scholar Laura Mulvey has famously analyzed as the psychosexual dynamics of scopophilia, or the compulsion to look. 83 Attempts to restrict the press photographer’s behavior reflected concerns about the potentially disturbing motives animating the desire to take unsolicited photographs. This discourse had a profound effect on the legal concept of privacy, inspiring the influential essay by two US justices, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, that advocated for and affirmed the existence of a “right to privacy” in American jurisprudence.84 Though based upon precedents in English common law, the Warren and Brandeis article did not have much of an impact on British legal conceptions of privacy.85 Unlike American law, which has a century of court decisions based upon a presumed right to privacy, British law remains obscure in its definition of privacy rights, as the legal historian William Pratt

privacy.

voyeurism unwilling

has shown.86 Without bedrock constitutional guarantees—as is the case in the United States—the English judiciary is more tightly bound to the limitations imposed by legal precedent. Legally conceiving of a “right” to privacy, then, was a much less acceptable notion. For this reason, the debates about privacy and press photography are enduring, and especially fraught, in the British context. As recent discussions about press intrusions resulting from phone hacking and internet spying seem to indicate, there is much to be learned from the historical development of the relationship between the press, information technologies, and the perceived right to privacy. The belatedness of the development of privacy rights in Britain, combined with its deeply entrenched of preserving the sanctity of the private sphere, makes it a particularly rich site for an investigation into the historical dimensions of privacy law. Attempts to identify and control the excesses of tabloid photojournalism, explored in the final two chapters of this book, exposed fissures in the logic of a “free press.” As scholars of the British press have shown, the liberty of the press has been a foundational tenet of English civil society, and remained steadfastly important throughout the twentieth century.87 In the face of various authoritarian regimes, seeking to contain and control the social influence of the press, “Englishness” was identified with open and relatively civic discourse, seen most saliently in its “uncensored” press. 88 Much of the rhetoric of an unfettered press was disingenuous— de facto and de jure forms of censorship were always firmly in place— but that does not diminish the power of ideas about the free press in Britain.89 As debates about the limits of press access illustrated, however, an entirely unregulated press was impracticable, and for many, undesirable. Offensive behaviors by press photographers presented a challenge to concepts of an unrestricted public sphere of information, and demanded clearly articulated boundaries to the freedom of the press. The debate over press intrusion was one about the burden of representation placed upon celebrities. In the legal and legislative arguments over press photography, critics asked whether or not celebrities, as figures of public interest, could reasonably expect to enjoy the benefits of being a private citizen, freed from the gaze of the press camera. For the purposes of the tabloid press, a celebrity was anybody involved in a story of public interest—even if that interest was only fleeting and temporary. The attendees at a society wedding, the victims of a violent assault, the relatives of people who had recently been murdered, and figures involved in any number of sensational court cases were, even if for only a few days, celebrities. Debates about privacy, then, were also debates about the nature and limits of celebrity—what kinds of stories were worthy of coverage, and which were merely invasive and sensationalist.

particularly

traditions

harmonious

photographer’s

Framing the project This book focuses on a narrow subset of practices associated with the tabloid press, namely, celebrity photojournalism and the legal and ethical issues that it inspired. It is not a comprehensive history of the tabloid press, nor an anatomy of all aspects of tabloid news reporting. Defining the focus in this way excludes any number of issues of relevance to the tabloids—chief among them crime reporting, populist political rhetoric, and issues of sex

and censorship. All of these are important to the history of the tabloids, and some have been at the core of the contemporary resonance of the tabloid press. By focusing on one fundamental innovation of the tabloid press, this book situates celebrity as one of the most powerful and enduring aspects of tabloid news. It is a feature of the tabloids that, unlike many of those other issues, has been in place since the origin of the form, and continues to play a predominant role in how tabloid journalism is produced, distributed, and debated. The period under consideration in this book has somewhat soft boundaries, roughly 1900–40. While some of the newspapers discussed emerged before the start of the twentieth century, the story “officially” begins in 1904, the year that the Daily Mirror emerged as an all-photographic newspaper for the masses, becoming the bearer of tabloid newspapers for the next century and beyond. The end date roughly coincides with the start of the Second World War, which truly marked a turning point in much of British history and culture, and the history of the tabloids after the war requires its own sustained study. The end of the 1930s also marked a significant moment in the development of photographic journalism, as well as debates about the tabloids and the intrusive methods employed in the pursuit of news. The founding of the epochal magazine Picture Post in 1938 was a major achievement in photographic news reporting, and the editors and photographers of the magazine played an important role in advocating for the use of new technologies and introducing bold new photographic techniques into Britain. The late 1930s also witnessed a series of highly charged debates about the social function of press photography. These debates lingered for decades, emerging again and again, culminating in a notable legal case in the immediate post–Second World War years, with which the book concludes. This timeframe has not always been easy to sustain, especially given the enormous and ungainly presence of the First World War squarely in the middle of the period. The First World War has often been seen as a moment of great rupture, dividing the nineteenth century from the twentieth.90 This division has little to no utility when discussing the rise and spread of photographic journalism. While the First World War is present in the that follows, it does not constitute an insuperable gulf. Most of the trends within the world of press photography were well under way by the outbreak of that war, and the interwar years were less a radical departure than they were a continuation and of the trends begun in the Edwardian period. The period under consideration presented particular challenges for research. Much of the archival record from the pre–Second World War period for newspapers such as the Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch has been lost or destroyed. The ravaging of the City of London during the London Blitz, which significantly damaged much of the journalistic center of Fleet Street, eliminated a substantial amount of the archival information from this period.91 What was not destroyed was often thrown away. The ephemeral nature of these newspapers militated against the preservation of much of the information relating to the business operations of these newspapers. The National Media Museum houses important archives of early press photography, but even there, much of the information is not catalogued, and is limited to one newspaper: the Daily Herald. Where possible, I have made use of private papers and correspondences, such as those of the proprietor

photojournalism spanning

standard

photojournalistic

public

discussion

acceleration

and founder of the Daily Mirror, Lord Northcliffe, and the proprietor of the Daily Express, Lord Beaverbrook. Such sources are few and far between, however, and due to that, the newspapers themselves are the main source of archival information for this project. Access to these newspapers, in and of itself, posed a problem. Despite the fact that they were some of the highest selling newspapers in the world, very few libraries—none in the United States—own entire runs of British tabloids before the Second World War. It was only in the midst of my research that the Daily Mirror was made available digitally. My research benefited from the many useful volumes published by proprietors, editors, and photographers who wrote about their experiences working for newspapers. While the potential problems with autobiographies and memoirs as historical sources are legion, they also provide a unique view into the world of reporting, and give a sense of the selfconception of those making the news. What is more, the trade journals for journalists and photographers, such as the World’s Press News and the British Journal of Photography, are rich sources, filled with a remarkable amount of information and informed editorial content. The popular press inspired a remarkable amount of critical writing, and these works also served as important sources for this project. Journals such as the Spectator and the Fortnightly contain many articles analyzing the social importance of the popular press. Similarly, published books of social criticism that attempted to make sense of the growth of popular media forms almost unfailingly took an alarmist or deeply critical tone. These critics provide insight into the perceived effects of the tabloid press on the public mind. Although skeptical of the rise of various forms of mass culture, they tend to be quite perceptive, and therefore provide a useful window into the social reverberations of new media forms. Official criminal, parliamentary, and legal documents complete the picture of the social role of the press. Thanks to recent moves to digitize governmental documents, both the House of Commons Papers and the Hansard Papers are available for online research. The archival material housed at the National Archives was also essential to researching this book. Because the behaviors of press photographers, and the journalistic profession more broadly, fell under various forms of supervision and regulation, the Metropolitan Police papers provided information about particular official responses to unruly press activity. Surviving depositions held in the King’s Bench papers provide insight into key court cases that drove the discussion around privacy and intrusion, and the Times reports of court cases often provide even more information than could be found in the files at the National Archives. Because the activities of the royal family were often a matter of official security and ministerial correspondence, the National Archives also served as a rich site for the investigation of the press involvement with the monarchy. While deeply rooted in the methodologies and source materials of the discipline of history, this book draws heavily upon the analytical models of art history. Art historians have developed useful models for effective formal analysis of visual images, and have pioneered ways of contextualizing visual production within a social historical context.92 This project takes inspiration from these innovations. Art history as a discipline, however, has been among the most resistant to the analysis of objects of so- called low culture.93 While photojournalism itself has been incorporated into art historical scholarship, that

analytically

has been reserved for a particular subset of journals selfconsciously engaged with avantgarde creative practice. Karin Becker has eloquently articulated the marginalization of photojournalism in scholarly discourse, capturing how “the ideology of cultural value which had shifted to admit photojournalistic documents into museum collections, gallery exhibitions and finely produced books has persisted in treated tabloid press photography as ‘low’ culture. This mean, with few exceptions, not considering it at all.” 94 Instead of viewing the tabloids as somehow unworthy of scholarly attention, this project recognizes the artifacts of low culture—the detritus of everyday life—as central to their significance as historical documents. As historian Billie Melman has suggested, “It is precisely the generic non-durability of the popular artifact . . . the fact that it did not survive its historical moment, the very reason why it has been despised by critics, that makes it invaluable to the historian . . . sensitive seismographs of the shifts in the attitudes and moods of My project shares Melman’s faith in the importance of ephemeral mass culture as a barometer of social change. Media and cultural studies are home to some of the most provocative theoretical work on the power of the press and press imagery, and such scholars have been far less anxious about the relative “quality” of their objects of study. As Brennan and Hardt have argued, photographs “articulate and actively shape the practical, evolving and lived in society along with connections between individuals and the social, political, and economic structures residing within each culture.” 96 In this way, the photograph does not simply illustrate historical events, but participates in and constitutes history itself. It was through processes of gathering, reproducing, and disseminating photographic images that the tabloids had widely felt social repercussions. The narrative of photojournalism put forth in this book is an international story on London. This investigation focuses on the photographic tabloid press in Britain, not only because London witnessed the first boom in photographic newspapers but also because British journalistic culture served as an unique meeting point for a variety of international trends occurring in photojournalism during these years.97 Scholars such as Victoria DeGrazia and Vanessa Schwartz have taken up the task of writing transnational, supranational, or “cosmopolitan” histories that illustrate the circulation of cultural and capital across national and even imperial boundaries.98 The study of the origins of photojournalism is just such a transnational story, especially in Britain. 99 The development of photojournalism illustrates the influential role of non-British—particularly German— photographers in advocating for new forms of photographic reporting. The who appear in the following discussion were all based in Britain—London almost exclusively—but the visual language that they used was part of a broader international network of photographic practice. And in turn, the British tabloids became a standard format for tabloid news as it migrated into Europe and around the world. From the other side of the Atlantic came the influence of new technologies and methods of reporting that many in Britain identified as uniquely American. The “Americanization” of the British press has occupied more than a number of scholars, and it was a hotly debated subject in the early twentieth century.100 The press would be a crucial vector for this discussion, because so- called American methods had a demonstrable impact on the reconfiguration of popular reporting in Britain. The Americanness of these innovations,

tabloid

majorities.” 95

experiences

centered

economic

photographers

however, is disputable and many of the elements of “tabloidism,” as it was called, were quite homegrown. The tabloid press, in fact, has often been seen as uniquely American, though in truth, tabloid reporting is a product of a very particular cross-pollination between the journalistic nerve centers of London and New York City.101 A better understanding of the Anglo-American origins of the tabloids contributes to debates about the so-called special relationship.102 The chapters of this book bring together these diverse source materials and concerns to excavate the history and aesthetics of tabloid celebrity The first chapter resuscitates the important photographic contributions of the tabloid press. Placing the growth of the British tabloids within the history of photojournalism, this chapter shows how the tabloids emerged in response to a perceived cultural desire for photographic representations, and were an attempt to tap into and create new markets of readers with the appeal of photographs. The tabloids drew attention to the unique of photographic witnessing, making photographic viewership part of the pleasure of buying a newspaper. Chapter 2 is both a social history of the early press photographer as well as a formal analysis of the types of images that he produced. The first generation of tabloid press photographers revolutionized the way that mass audiences saw and celebrities. The language of the press photographer’s snapshot was informational and documentary, not idealizing and romantic. Precisely because it appeared to be a genuine and unpretentious representation of a celebrity’s appearance, the snapshot image posed as a document with a special relationship to how celebrities “really” looked and “really” acted. Photographers and newspaper editors helped construct the idea that the candid image offered a more accurate representation than the “masks” worn in the photographer’s studio. Chapter 3 illustrates how tabloid photojournalism has worked to peel back the public face of the most photographed people in Britain (and perhaps the world): the royal family. The tabloid photographer transformed how the British people saw the monarchy, working to erode the pomp and ceremony of traditional royal representation. This chapter in an analysis of the photographic coverage of the relationship of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. The political response to the king’s affair with Simpson was an effort to preserve the royal image from the corrosive effect of the new mass media. Further the tabloids’ fascination with traditional social elites, Chapter 4 argues that a closer focus on mass culture, and celebrity culture in particular, illustrates a more complex and ambivalent picture of aristocratic “decline” in early-twentieth-century Britain. In particular, I examine the celebrity of the aristocratic debutantes such as Margaret Whigham (later Duchess of Argyll), one of the most visible media figures of the 1930s. To many cultural critics, Whigham, and the culture of debutantes for which she was a symbol, seemed to represent aristocracy stripped of any substantive meaning and incorporating all that was egotistical and materialistic about the modern culture of fame. Understanding the decline of aristocracy through the press representations of aristocratic leisure illustrates the extent to which celebrity culture democratized aristocracy, while revealing how celebrity culture is itself rooted in a culture of aristocratic visibility. Exploring the legal and legislative issues incited by the emergence of the tabloids, the final two chapters illustrate how concerns about the increasing role of press photography

methodological photography.

qualities

experienced offering

culminates

exploring

in public life were crucial to the genesis of a modern language of privacy rights in Britain in the years after 1900. While Chapter 5 explores the discursive construction of the tabloid photographer as a predatory stalker, the final chapter focuses on two legal trials involving a Daily Mirror press photographer, which led to the first definitive affirmations of privacy rights in Britain. Lea’s case hinged on the press photographer’s “ungentlemanly” invasion of privacy, which embedded the debate about privacy in a language of social conduct and class deference. The arguments heard in his case were perhaps the clearest articulation of the relationship between privacy and propriety that had characterized the legal of privacy since its origin. This book takes the tabloids seriously as a source and a subject. Startlingly in their day, the first tabloids laid the foundation for some of the most enduring and inescapable aspects of twentieth-century media culture. What follows can be thought of as a genealogy of a form of mass media that has come to infiltrate much of our universe, through traditional news outlets as well as the internet feeds that more and more of our waking lives. The photographic culture of the early tabloids put in place much of what we now take for granted, and much of what we rue, about the current media landscape. The emergence of this news form synthesized many of the contemporaneous trends in popular entertainment and photographic practice, creating a unique interface between the mass public and the human subjects at the center of news reporting. In the process, the tabloids sparked debate and fueled fears of a cutthroat and intrusive journalistic culture. Many of these debates are still very much with us.

discussion innovative informational consume

1 TABLOIDISM: PHOTOJOURNALISM IN LONDON, 1904-38 Writing in his autobiography, Felix H. Man, one of Britain’s premier photojournalists and star photographer of Picture Post magazine, remarked that when he moved to England in the mid-1930s from his native Germany, “there was only one daily paper which was in pictures . . . This was the Daily Mirror . . . My colleagues at the Mirror were most charming people, keenly interested in photo-journalism. They were already using Leica and Contax cameras, an exceptional thing at this date for newspaper photographers.” 1 Man had himself worked for the Daily Mirror before taking up his position at Picture Post, a magazine that brought a new kind of populist photojournalism to Britain, inspired by Continental magazines such as Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung and Vu. What is remarkable about his recollection is not so much that he cites the Daily Mirror as a leader in news reporting—the newspaper’s pioneering status as the world’s first “all newspaper”2 is well documented—but that he identifies a tabloid newspaper as a form of “photo-journalism.” Tabloid newspapers such as the Daily Mirror are rarely discussed in the context of photojournalism, let alone identified as pioneers in the field.3 This chapter tracks the development of two overlapping phenomena: the emergence of the tabloid press as a distinctive form of journalism and mass communication, and the progress and increasing sophistication of photographic news reporting. These two forms of mass communication are intimately interrelated, and cannot be understood in isolation.4 As Man’s statement makes clear, the tabloids played a key role in British photojournalism. Instead of parallel stories, involving two distinct forms of production—one respectable, one not—I show how they interacted and cross-pollinated, especially in Britain. The tabloids emerged just after the dawn of the twentieth century during a moment of fervent innovation in journalism and mass communication. The founders of the first tabloids synthesized a number of trends in reporting and popular entertainment to create a unique news form. The tabloids bore the influence of the technological innovations of illustrated reporting, the “feminine” appeal of women’s journalism, stage entertainment, sensational exposés, human-interest narratives, and the influence of cinema. 5 This heady concoction cohered into a news form that would eventually conquer the globe. The Daily Mirror and Picture Post are important characters in this story, and the lives of both journals will be explored in depth below.6 The two photographically illustrated

interested

photographic photographic

PUBLIC IMAGES

periodicals—while very different in their origin, execution, and address—are understood as part of the same history. For that reason, the dates bracketing this chapter—1904 and 1938—coincide with the founding of both journals. In the history of photojournalism in Britain—and in some ways the world—these dates are foundational.

New Journalism and "tabloidism" Many of the developments in illustrated reporting at the end of the nineteenth century resulted from the innovative pressures of the so-called New Journalism, seen most saliently in W. T. Stead’s Pall Mall Gazette and T. P. O’Connor’s Star. 7 Inspired by aspects of American and French mass journalism, British muckrakers upended many of the of staid Victorian news reporting.8 The New Journalism, with its tendency toward brevity and sensational reporting, was designed to appeal to women, workingclass, and lower-middle-class readers, many of whom had never before been the target audience of newspaper proprietors.9 By the end of the nineteenth century, new kinds of newspaper readers consumed the news differently than had been common a generation before. 10 Smaller format with abundant images appealed to mobile, urban audiences; the small size for reading on trains on the commute to and from work. The Star’s O’Connor suggested that

commonplaces

newspapers convenient

the Newspaper is not read in the secrecy and silence of the closet as is the book. It is picked up at a railway station, hurried over in a railway carriage, dropped incontinently when read. To get your ideas through the hurried eyes into the whirling brains that are employed in the reading of a newspaper there must be no mistake about your meaning . . . you must strike your reader right between the eyes.11 New Journalism was a response to, and a central component of, the accelerated pace of modern, urban life. New Journalism in Britain is most closely identified with the newspapers of Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe), who laid claim to inventing tabloid journalism. Though Harmsworth did little that was novel, he had the most success of any of the news moguls in synthesizing the various strands of journalistic innovation occurring in the late century, seen most saliently in his spectacularly successful newspaper for the masses, the Daily Mail. 12 It was when Harmsworth came to New York—at the invitation of Joseph Pulitzer—that he might be said to have invented tabloid journalism. Given editorial control of Pulitzer’s World for one day—January 1, 1901—Harmsworth radically reduced the size of the (to about the size of a magazine) and insisted that no article in the paper exceed 250 words. He labeled his abbreviated news format “tabloid journalism,” borrowing the term from a popular pharmaceutical combining “tablet” and “alkaloid.”13 The tabloid was concentrated news: pre-digested content meant for rapid and mobile consumption. The resulting issue sold out quickly, requiring a second printing.14 Though impressed by the

nineteenth

newspaper

TABLOIDISM

tabloid’s success, Pulitzer did not maintain Harmsworth’s tabloid format, and returned to business as usual. Harmsworth, certain of the viability of his new format, brought his innovation back to London, where he would soon put it to use in the creation of his own tabloid newspaper. In response to Harmsworth’s reinvention of the World, the American journalist Maurice Low published a piece in the journal Forum under the title, “Tabloid Journalism: Its Causes and Effects.” The first instance in which the term “tabloid journalism” was used in a forum, the piece illustrates some of the qualities, and the criticisms, that would come to be associated with tabloid journalism for the next century. Of this novel form, Low wrote, “This is an age of tabloids, which is only another name for . . . It is all characteristic of the rush, hurry, superficiality.” The tabloid newspaper was the perfect form of communication for urban audiences:

published journalistic concentration

Mr. Harmsworth . . . saw in London a mine so rich and so easily to be worked that its golden possibilities were staggering. Education in England had succeeded in turning out every year an ever-increasing host of half-baked sciolists of both sexes . . . Crude, immature, raw, and unable to assimilate the little knowledge which had been tabloidly furnished to them, the result of education, in nine cases out of ten, was to give them a vague longing for something which they could not define or express. 15

admirably

“The psychological explanation of tabloidism,” Low continued, lay in the fact that “the whole world at this day [is] trying not to think, but simply to amuse itself.”16 “Tabloid,” from its very origins, was a word associated with a form of news intended to amuse, meant as entertainment for distractible working- and lower-class audiences. The association with photographic reporting was not yet a part of the language of Low’s “tabloidism.” Low was precocious in his use of the term, as it would not become common until the 1920s, at which time its identification with photography would be unavoidable. Even in this early analysis of tabloid journalism, however, the emphasis on condensation, pith, and the easily digestible snippet designed for consumption by a barely literate public dovetailed quite nicely with the revolutions in halftone printing taking place at the turn of the century. The transformations in mass journalism would have their most demonstrable impacts on illustrated news formats.

The "new illustrated journalism" A reliable and affordable technique for reproducing photographs on the printed page developed haltingly over the course of the mid- and late nineteenth century.17 Known as the halftone process, this mechanical engraving technology translated photographs onto metal plates, allowing for the reproduction of images alongside text.18 By the mid-1890s, improved halftone screens, new kinds of paper and ink, and anastigmatic camera lenses fed a boom in illustrated news formats. The advent of photographic agencies, which made halftone images much more readily available, only further accelerated this growth.19

A spate of newspapers—the Daily Graphic (1889), the Sketch (1893), the Golden Penny (1895), the Penny Pictorial Magazine (1899), the Illustrated Mail (1899), and the Sphere (1900)—embraced the halftone on an unprecedented scale.20 The founding of the illustrated weekly newspaper Sketch in 1893 would help a new and influential form of photographic reporting. The newspaper was a product of New Journalistic methods and the advances in halftone printing. It was formed as an “amusing” spin-off of the sober Victorian institution Illustrated London News.21 As Gerry Beegan has shown, the Sketch established a novel form of reporting defined around photographic representations of modern urban life, theatre, Society, and celebrity journalism. 22 It was tabloid in size—smaller than a broadsheet and folded in half as with a magazine—and meant for casual reading in trains, at cafes, and as a conversation piece at home. Clement Shorter, the man responsible for the Sketch, played a crucial role in the of photojournalism. He claimed to have been “the first man in the chair of a picture paper to become a fanatical champion of the photograph and the process block.”23 In its columns and on its masthead, the Sketch highlighted its commitment to photographic reporting at the expense of wood engraving. Shorter even claimed (inaccurately) that the Sketch was the first newspaper in the world produced entirely by halftone, without engraved illustrations. 24 Shorter’s autobiography provides a revealing look into conceptions of photographic reporting at its moment of origin. His commitment to the photograph was a product of his belief in the superiority of the photographic image. He wrote, “I saw the public would have a photograph with its air of absolute likeness to the original rather than an engraved portrait in which much of the likeness was destroyed by the intervention of a handcraftsman.”25 Never mind the fact that, as Beegan has shown, the process of producing the halftone involved much “intervention” into the photographic image. For Shorter, the halftone provided a more authentic experience because it was physically bound to with its claims to truthfulness and instantaneity.26 The engraved image, though perhaps more artful, was simply inefficient for modern newspaper conditions. Shorter wanted his new style of photographically illustrated journalism to reach that he thought were ignored by mainstream journals. Of the original idea behind the newspaper, he wrote,

formalize

historian

history

photography,

audiences

I had not been the editor of the ILN [Illustrated London News] for much more than two years when I realised the great possibility of a newspaper on less serious lines . . . I persuaded Ingram [the proprietor of the ILN] to accompany me to the Empire musichall, and pointed out the crowded audience. “There is,” I declared, “no illustrated paper for these people.”27 The newspaper, in other words, was designed to appeal to the kinds of people who attended and enjoyed popular forms of visual entertainment, but who had not been taken seriously as a newspaper reading demographic. Shorter made a direct appeal to female readers with his new journal. In this he was not alone. A defining aspect of popular print culture in the late nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries was the cultivation of female audiences. 28 In truth, one of the factors for the push to increase visual reporting was the desire to attract women who were thought to respond more positively to visual stimuli.29 Shorter’s previous experience working on a woman’s illustrated paper informed his practice. He recognized women’s journals as pioneers in photographic news, and incorporated some of its components, including its interest in fashion, personal interviews with Society women, and theatre gossip. Sketch was, by Shorter’s own admission, “a wildly frivolous newspaper, as I intended it to be.” 30 Its departure from the established traditions of visual reporting was announced proudly in its first issue: “While our venerable parent [the Illustrated London News] pursues her stately flight down the broad avenues of public life, we shall hunt and illustrate that sudden and slippery worm, the popular whim, in all its haunts.”31 The newspaper in theatrical subjects, furnishing its readers with abundant photographs of theatrical personalities. Each issue began with a portrait on the front page, with a brief biographical story. This format would be standard for the next several years, until celebrity portraits completely displaced all text into a small caption beneath a large halftone reproduction. Compared to its cousin the Illustrated London News, which held onto newsy illustrations into the twentieth century, the Sketch announced its commitment to the halftone image, and to a different notion of what was “front-page news.” The success of the Sketch fundamentally influenced the nature of photographic in Britain for decades to come. Shorter later congratulated himself, suggesting, “Now the Sketch, being the forerunner of a revolution in the whole of illustrated journalism, transforming it entirely, separating the old from the new by a great gulf . . . All the of modern illustrated journalism have been entirely evolved from that one 32 While this statement was self-flattery, Shorter was not alone in attributing to the Sketch a sea change in journalistic standards. The founding of the Tatler in 1901 saw the Sketch’s commitment to “frivolous” news taken one step further. The Tatler, like the Sketch, was the brainchild of Shorter. And like its predecessor, the Tatler was a hybrid newspaper and magazine.33 Just as he had the Sketch as the “amusing” spin off of the Illustrated London News, Shorter was asked by the proprietors of the Sphere to create a “second newspaper on more frivolous lines.”34 Poaching the title from Richard Steele’s famous eighteenth-century journal of the same name, the modern instantiation of the Tatler was a sixpenny illustrated journal, similar in size and character to the Sketch. The only difference between the two was that while the Sketch emphasized theatrical news and photographs, the Tatler catered to a perceived public thirst for information about the celebrities of High Society.35 The first edition of the Tatler announced the ways in which the editors and journalists reconceptualized the newspaper and its social purpose:

motivating readers, fundamental

specialized

journalism

successes departure.” created

Our main idea . . . is simply to give pleasure . . . We have noticed that the modern public likes a paper that deals brightly and genially with Society and the Drama. We, then, are going to try to deal with Society and the Drama even more brightly and more genially than they have been dealt with elsewhere . . . and to give the public as many illustrations of them as can be crowded into our space . . . So long as the smart lady or

the popular actress dresses elaborately, we shall describe and reproduce her costume, and shall say how nice she looks in it . . . We live in an age of universal education, an age of chatty scraps and snappy snatches. To write slowly and sedately would be to kill the paper for which one was writing. 36 The idea that this new form of illustrated journalism existed solely to give pleasure, to require little cognitive engagement, to traffic only in topics that would amuse, and maintain the reader’s attention in “an age of chatty scraps and snappy snatches,” might be thought of as a manifesto for tabloid news as it would develop across the twentieth century and beyond. The Tatler helped solidify the link between journalistic brevity, compactness of size, and a photographic interest in celebrities and popular amusements. The emphasis on speed and dynamism evident in the newspaper’s self-description reveals how the consciously cultivated urban readers. An advertisement for the newspaper in 1909 proclaimed: “The Tatler, owing to its size, is a popular paper with the travelling public.” 37 While it still relied heavily upon subscription, to be read in the comfort of drawing rooms, the Tatler was also sold at newsstands and in train kiosks, designed to attract visual for peripatetic passersby. Though the Tatler struggled to attract an audience in its first few months of existence, it would quickly become one of the most popular and influential illustrated journals in London.38 The newspaper’s eventual success came thanks in part to Edward Huskinson, who Shorter assigned to assume the editorship. Characteristically hyperbolic, Shorter proclaimed that under Huskinson the Tatler was “the most successful illustrated in the world.” Exaggeration aside, it is true that the newspaper attracted great interest among the public and competing news proprietors. Its features—such as “The Searchlight in Society,” “The Camera in Society,” and “Tattlings from the Riviera”—and derivations on those themes, would be mimicked by a number of newspapers in the Edwardian years. The Tatler’s success even influenced its predecessor the Sketch, which eventually reduced its focus on theatrical celebrities, art exhibitions, and literature reviews in order to focus more on Society photography and celebrity gossip.39 The Tatler had the most direct influence on the Bystander, a newspaper founded as the “light” news wing of the Graphic in 1903. Williams Comyns Beaumont, who had worked on a number of illustrated newspapers, played a dominant role in forging the style and ethos of the new newspaper, acting as its on-again-off-again chief editor for more than two decades.40 The Bystander was by no means a carbon copy of the Tatler, though the impetus to create the newspaper came in response to the Tatler’s success, and the two shared much in common, particularly when it came to mode of address, the preference for photographic images, and an interest in celebrity leisure. Perhaps in an effort to outdo the Tatler, the Bystander was reproduced in an even smaller format, hoping that its smaller size would have a unique appeal to a mobile, modern audience. Until it grew in size after the First World War, the newspaper was remarkably small for its time, each page about the size of a piece of legal paper, and even when splayed opened it was still small enough to rest in one’s lap. The first issue of the

newspaper

interest

newspaper

previously

newspaper highlighted this fact, announcing, “With its extremely convenient size and its large, clear type, it forms an ideal publication for railway reading, being much more than the usual weekly illustrated paper which at present finds vogue.”41 Early issues of the Bystander reveal both the influence of the Tatler and the Sketch, as well as illustrating some of the ways in which the Bystander deviated from the mold set by those two journals. A modicum more urbane than the Tatler, the Bystander, in the words of Beaumont, “concern[ed] itself with the lighter side of life, Society, travel, sport, art, books and so on,”42 but in a jab to the Tatler and the Sketch, the first issue read, “It will be our endeavour to provide absolutely first-class quality, our object being that The Bystander shall not be glanced through and then thrown away but read as well.” 43 Beaumont’s boasted of his journal’s emphasis on “public affairs”—what would have been requisite in any other newspaper—which reveals some of the entrenched between photographically illustrated newspapers and a type of journalism that eschewed serious political and social commentary.44 Photographic reporting was central to the identity of the paper, and in many ways, determined its formal choices. While reproducing news photographs of a kind that the Tatler and the Sketch never did— photographs of floods, earthquakes, and current events—the vast majority of the content of the newspaper shared much in common with its predecessors. Like the Sketch and the Tatler, each issue of the Bystander began with a front-page of a notable (again almost always female) celebrity. Halftone portraits of theatrical celebrities filled the inside pages, and the editors dedicated many pages to photographs of sporting events and personalities. The halftone changed not only how newspapers looked, but also how they were The Sketch, the Tatler, and the Bystander each cost sixpence, an indication that they were not truly “mass” newspapers, because such a price was out of reach of most lower-class families. That said, by appealing to mobile, urban audiences composed of women and middle-class commuters, these newspapers helped cultivate a new for print journalism. These developments would have profound impacts on the newspapers that developed in their wake.

compact

theatre,

associations self-consciously

photographic photograph

consumed.

audience illustrated "The world's first tabloid"

The Daily Mirror debuted in 1903 as an illustrated paper made by and for women. The brainchild of Harmsworth, the newspaper was the first in the world to be produced by an entirely female staff. The editors of the Daily Mirror borrowed directly from the weeklies and monthlies, such as the Sketch and the Tatler.45 The first issues of the Daily Mirror aped the style of the weekly women’s magazines, offering news, fashion advice, and celebrity gossip for middle- and lower-middle-class women at the cost of one penny. The idea was to offer access to a life of wealthy leisure that most who purchased the newspaper could only dream of living. Harmsworth wrote, “women especially like to read papers which seem to be intended for persons of superior social standing . . . You must make the Mirror suggest that it is produced for people in Society; for those who first

photographic

adopt new fashions; for those who have leisure and large means.” 46 He was banking that the model pioneered by Shorter would appeal to a much less well-to-do clientele. For all of its ambition, Harmsworth’s vision of a daily newspaper directed at women proved disastrously misconceived. Though the initial issues sold in large numbers, had dropped to abysmal lows within a matter of weeks. After hemorrhaging money, Harmsworth changed course, fired the female staff, and set about producing a illustrated journal for the masses. The new version of the Daily Mirror debuted on January 27, 1904.47 The reinvention of the Daily Mirror as the Illustrated Daily Mirror—“A Paper for Men and Women”—reduced from a penny to a halfpenny, revived the moribund paper and helped define a new mode of photographic daily news. Harmsworth made use of the format that he had pioneered in his one-day tenure at the World—the newspaper was folded down the center, as with a magazine, and reduced to what are now described as “tabloid” dimensions. Though the “Illustrated” did not remain in the title for long, the newspaper’s commitment to small format, photographic reporting had enduring consequences. The transition to all-photographic reporting was rapid, but not immediate. It would take several months before photographs replaced all other forms of illustrated journalism in the Daily Mirror, and for it to become the first “all photographically illustrated newspaper in the world.”48 Graphic illustration dominated the visual element of the newspaper for several weeks after its reinvention. The first all-halftone cover appeared in March, and by April the front page featured only halftone images (Figure 1.1 ). The three men responsible for the successful application of photography to the pages of the Daily Mirror were Hamilton Fyfe, the editor, Hannen Swaffer, the art editor, and Arkas Sapt, the man who successfully united the halftone with the rotogravure press.49 The Daily Mirror’s drive to be the first and most successful all-photographic daily led to a number of innovations that advanced the state of photographic At the urging of Fyfe and the forceful insistence of Swaffer, Sapt was given the time and resources to experiment with a number of technologies in the Daily Mirror’s printing rooms.50 Within weeks, Fyfe gave the go ahead for the full-scale use of Sapt’s new halftone press, which could print 24,000 pages per hour, a record for the time. 51 While the smudgy images produced by these rudimentary presses did not initially impress Harmsworth—who asked, “Were they all taken in a fog?”—the rapid rise in circulation justified the investment in halftone technologies.52 Photography was central to the Daily Mirror’s new identity. The lead editors made efforts to identify photography as a primary and privileged mode of communication. The newspaper declared on its masthead, “See the News through the Camera,” and “Something Unique in Daily Journalism,” and it delivered on that promise.53 The uniqueness of the Daily Mirror—or so its self-advertising suggested—was in its bold embrace of modern methods of reporting, photography key among them. Photographs appeared on the front page, intermittently throughout its news features, in the center two pages (what would come to be called the rotogravure page), as well as on the final page. Placed beside the other newspapers to have allegedly “revolutionized” popular in Britain during these years—the Daily Mail and the Daily Express—the Daily Mirror’s new format is unmistakable. While even the boldest experiments in New Journalism still

circulation photographically

newspaper reporting. rotogravure

promised,

journalism

Figure 1.1 Daily Illustrated Mirror, March 23, 1904. © The British Library Board

consisted of undifferentiated columns of text, the Daily Mirror worked to redefine news in a way that was inseparable from photography. Incorporating photography as a fundamental component of the news required a rethinking of what it meant to witness news events. The first edition of the reinvigorated Daily Mirror proclaimed on its front page, “The old tradition that pictures were only a makeweight, only a sop to the curiosity of the less serious kind of reader, has altogether passed away. Our pictures do not merely accompany the printed news. They are help to the understanding of it.”54 The Daily Mirror deliberately cultivated a public of spectators who experienced the news as distracted, visual participants. Northcliffe insisted that Daily Mirror “is aimed now at readers of very simple intellect. Everything is to be explained to them in words of one syllable—or as near as that may be.” 55 Photographs were ideal in this regard, because they did not require any reading at all. Throughout the first ten years of the Daily Mirror’s life, the proprietor and chief editor took a marked interest in fine-tuning the process of producing photographic images. Northcliffe and Alexander Kenealy, who assumed the position of editor in 1907, exchanged frequent letters relating to the technological aspects of the newspaper’s photographic content. Kenealy arranged with French newspapers to transmit and receive autotelegraph halftones, keeping the Daily Mirror in constant supply of photographs from abroad.56 He encouraged the use of Thorne Baker telegraph machines that printed images quadruple the size of any other photographs sent by wire.57 When Northcliffe moved the headquarters from Whitefriar’s Street to Carmelite Street in 1905, he installed an arsenal of new printers custom designed for halftone production. The Master Printer and Newspaper Owner reported, “The Daily Mirror states that it can take a photograph on the premises, engrave it, stereotype it, and print it.”58 Kenealy employed eye-catching to emphasize the Daily Mirror’s use of halftone images. In one case, he produced front-page photographs printed in red ink, literally highlighting the newspaper’s to halftone reproductions.59 When Northcliffe encouraged Kenealy to break up the halftone content of the with the occasional engraved image, Kenealy steadfastly defended the use of 60 He wrote to Northcliffe,

valuable

newspaper’s

novelties commitment newspaper halftones.

One of the objections to mixing up wash drawings with real photographs is that when you get a genuine photograph at great trouble and expense, people will think it is a wash drawing, faked in the office. We have heretofore confined ourselves exclusively to photographs, and I think it is well known that everything that appears in the “Mirror” is an actual photograph. This is of great value, I believe.61 In such instances, Kenealy asserted the superiority of the halftone image, and the desire to provide images that did not seem “faked.” He was so convincing that several months later, Northcliffe wrote to remind him (in an about-face), “Line drawings mixed up with photographs have always been a failure.”62 The editorial staff of the Daily Mirror made a concerted effort to ensure the success of the photographic reproductions that appeared in the newspapers. Guy Bartholomew, assistant art editor, even went so far as to take photographs and etch the halftone blocks

himself to ensure the right results.63 Bartholomew was the first to utilize the Korn Telefoto apparatus—a method of transmitting photographs by wire—for the purposes of illustration. 64 Bartholomew was also one half of the duo who would, in 1920, invent the Bartlane photographic transmission device that transmitted photographs through undersea cables.65 The Daily Mirror’s privileging of halftone images helped define a new way of and reporting the news. The newspaper had to accommodate the new demands of photographic news reporting. The operators created a photographs department that ran as “an independent concern,” in Kenealy’s words, under the management of Kennedy Jones. 66 The Daily Mirror was among the first daily newspapers in the world to hire photographic staff. The growth of press photography as a profession was partly a response to the need for more photographs than the photographic agencies and the studios could provide. 67 The newspaper employed some of the most notable figures in press photography of the early twentieth century, such as James Jarché and Bernard Grant. The contributions of press photographers significantly changed the photographic content of the newspaper. While in 1904 the photographic component of the newspaper consisted mostly of posed portraits attributed to major West End photographers or agencies, the numbers of snapshots increased over the decade. Within a few years, photographs bearing the caption “Daily Mirror Photographer” competed for space with the work of studio photographers. The imprint of early cinema is clearly seen in the composition and display techniques of the first issues of the Daily Mirror. The cinematic voyeurism of everyday life was a constituent element of the tabloid press from its very origin.68 As scholars such as Tom Gunning have shown, the “cinema of attractions” was a chaotic mix of visual poached from music hall, circuses, expositions, and local pageants and parades. 69 The Daily Mirror’s photographic content shared much with early cinema’s spectacularization of daily life, and “rotogravure” sections appropriated the cinema’s “actualities” style, featuring a busy mix of urban entertainments, representing actresses, novelty acts, and acrobats. The rotogravure page was initially titled “Daily Mirror: Cinematographer,” proclaiming its indebtedness to that competing form of entertainment. The title was eventually altered to the equally suggestive “Daily Mirror: Cameragraph,” which often featured representations of a man with a box press camera in the midst of snapping a photograph in a way that mirrored the urban perambulations of the early (Figure 1.2 ). The tabloids also resembled the visual culture of the cinema in its preference for notable personalities. Just as the cinema developed its own cult of personality, so too would the tabloids. One of Northcliffe’s “Ten Commandments” for the new newspaper was “Thou shalt remember that People are more interesting than Things.”70 This commandment the development of the Daily Mirror in its first years. Celebrity photographs, images, and snapshots of stage players, aristocrats, royals, politicians, and figures participating in a court cases represented the largest proportion of the types of images represented. 71 On the most basic level, photographs of celebrities served the pragmatic function of identifying people whose names appear elsewhere in the paper, which worked to educate the public on the physical appearance of notable people.

newspaper

gathering

permanent portrait photographic

entertainments,

cinematographer influenced studio

Figure 1.2 Daily Mirror, November 25, 1904. © The British Library Board

The Daily Mirror was a watershed in the history of photographic journalism. Its astounding success—rapidly becoming the world’s most widely circulated newspaper—meant that it became a standard bearer for a new kind of news and entertainment.72 One journalist wrote, “In the morning trains fairing Citywards every other person had the Mirror . . . the Daily Mirror spelt revolution.”73 Northcliffe and Kenealy recognized that their photographic newspaper challenged the conventional wisdom about what a newspaper should provide. The privileging of photographic imagery was an essential piece of a broader restructuring of the entire concept of what news was, who it spoke to, and what it was intended to do. News, human and photographic reporting became intimately intertwined in ways that would prove to be very hard to disentangle.

interest,

The impact of the Daily Mirror While many imitators emerged in its wake, the Daily Mirror’s influence can best be seen in the Daily Sketch, started by the news mogul Edwar d Hulton in Manchester in 1908. Its rapid rise to popularity depended largely upon its appeal to the market that the Daily Mirror had cultivated for the previous half-decade. Art editor Hannen Swaffer would later remark of the Daily Sketch, “an imitation of us and a disgraceful one.”74 The competition between the two newspapers was cutthroat, only exacerbated by

the Daily Sketch’s move to Fleet Street.75 For years after the Daily Sketch moved its headquarters to London, Northcliffe sent letters to Kenealy reminding his editor to keep vigilant of the new arrival and to maintain the Daily Mirror’s lead over the competitor, particularly with regard to photographic reporting.76 This competition only became fiercer after Swaffer—who had done so much to champion during his tenure as art editor—was terminated from the Daily Mirror and took up employment in a similar capacity at the Daily Sketch, in part as a way to spite his former employer.77 The layout and structure of the Daily Sketch closely resembled the Daily Mirror. Printed in a tabloid format, the newspaper’s front page was populated by halftone images, and its inside pages consisted of a recognizable mix of brief news paragraphs, court reporting, Society gossip with halftone portraits, theatrical news, a rotogravure section, sport, and various other human-interest features. Though never outpacing the Daily Mirror in terms of circulation, the proprietor and editors of the Daily Sketch clearly attempted to siphon some of the market share for themselves. By 1911, the newspaper proudly announced itself as “London’s Premier Picture Paper.”78 The race to provide the public with photographic news was well under way. By the outbreak of the First World War, the daily photographic press had become such a prominent feature of British journalism that many in the industry attempted to take stock of its impact on news culture. A revealing exchange in the trade journal Sell’s Dictionary of the Press in 1914 asked, “The Future of Illustrated Papers: Will the Daily Oust the Weekly?” 79 A number of leading editors—from the Illustrated London News, the Sketch, the Daily Mirror, the Tatler, the Bystander, and Country Life—opined on the subject, giving shape to competing and overlapping ideas about the nature and ultimate future of journalism. The agreed-upon answer to the feature’s rhetorical question was emphatically “no.” The commentators postulated that the success of the daily tabloid press would not result in the ruin of weekly illustrated reporting, but only make photography a greater and greater part of the experience of consuming the news in all formats. In his contribution, Kenealy suggested,

ascendant photography

fashion,

photographic

There’s room for us all . . . But you have to teach people what they want . . . they don’t know themselves. When I first came here, nearly ten years ago, I had a conference with the circulation travelers. “We don’t want so many pictures,” they said. It was the same with the staff. Every night at the Press Club a band of irreconcilables declared that “the little paper would be all right if it weren’t for those beastly pictures.” The only reply needed is that, in the intervening years, our circulation has grown from 30,000 until to-day the figure before me show that our circulation is 864,000. Kenealy’s comment offers a direct acknowledgment that the Daily Mirror sought to“teach” consumers how to read photographs as news, and worked to make the photograph an inextricable part of mainstream journalism. Kenealy ended by proudly reminding his from the more expensive weekly press that “even their pictures mostly seem to come from us.” 80

counterparts

The response from editors of the illustrated weekly newspapers reveals a desire to their form of journalism from the daily tabloid press. Clement Shorter responded,

distinguish

We may occasionally buy the best material from the dailies, but when these picture are printed upon art paper they are quite a different thing from the daily reproductions . . . During the past year the Illustrated and Sketch have spent thousands of pounds in developing the photogravure process, and have brought the work weekly produced in these papers to a high state of perfection.81 The other editors of the weeklies echoed Shorter’s comments asserting their faith in the continued vitality of the weekly model, predicated on thoughtful commentary and delivery. Whatever their differences, the coexistence of numerous photographic dailies and weeklies on Fleet Street revealed that London had become a vital center for photographic news production. Competition spurred on rapid growth in photographic reporting. As Shorter suggested, “Indeed, the advent of pictures in the dailies has given a fillip to the weeklies . . . the public throbs to news, and it is news pictures, presented by the best methods, which it is my aim to give them.”82 The success of the iDaily Mirror confirmed that halftones could reap huge profits, and ensured that photographic journalism was here to stay.

artful

"The lighter side of war" The First World War was a boon for photographic journalism. Photographic none more so than the daily tabloids, helped sate a public desire for images of life on the frontlines.83 While the restrictions of the Defense of the Realm Act (DORA) limited the press’s ability to represent the harsher realities of war, photographs from the various theatres still made their way to Fleet Street’s newsrooms.84 Seeking a edge over their rivals, editors and proprietors tested new technologies of and production. One commentator declared that “owing to the great public demand for illustrated newspapers that has recently sprung into being . . . the of any newspaper being able to publish photographs several days before its rivals is obvious.”85 For many newspapers, success during wartime hinged on the ability to appease a public that had become increasingly accustomed to seeing the news through photographs. Despite the wartime limitations placed on the size of newspapers, the tabloids as many photographs as possible. An increase in the price of the Daily Mirror in 1917—to one penny—illustrated that despite wartime hardship, people were willing to pay more for photographic news. Except for the first heady months of the war in the summer and fall of 1914, when most news coverage focused on the difficult realities of the looming cataclysm, most of the photographic content of the tabloids differed little from the types of amusements represented across the previous decade. Rotogravure features still exhibited the same mix of royalty, theatre, and novelties, but began to

newspapers,

competitive transmission advantage reproduced

incorporate images of life on the warfront as well. Some features played on jingoistic fears of the “Hun” and reproduced devastation from the war in a propagandistic appeal to the emotions. The established tradition of reproducing portraits of stage, Society, or political celebrities on the front page melded with a popular fascination with war heroes, and the tabloids helped create military celebrities. Keeping with the tradition of offering “amusing” news features (and certainly abetted by DORA restrictions), tabloids offered sunny representations of life in the trenches. Photographs often represented, as in one feature from 1916, “The Lighter Side of War,” with smiling nurses and soldiers joyfully playing on the Western Front. 86 The popularity of photographic news formats during the war inspired a race between the two leading photographic tabloids to launch their respective Sunday editions. Hearing of Edward Hulton’s plan to create a Sunday edition of the Daily Sketch, called the Illustrated Sunday Herald, the new owner of the Daily Mirror, Lord Rothermere (Northcliffe’s brother), hastily created the Sunday Pictorial in a few short months, launching it in March 1915 in order to ensure that his newspaper would be the first to make it to press.87 These two Sunday tabloids quickly attracted huge readerships and endured for several decades, eventually becoming the Sunday Graphic and the Sunday Mirror, respectively. Wartime revealed an entrenched commitment to the photographic image as a mode of reportage. The desire for photographs from the warfront dovetailed with an established visual culture of entertainment and spectacle conveyed through the image, illustrating how photography was employed in the service of as much as hard news. By the end of the war, the success of the British tabloids caught the attention of the world’s journalists, editors, and proprietors.

privileged photographic entertainment Exporting photographic journalism In the years immediately following the First World War, the British successes in

photographic journalism inspired proprietors and editors around the world. Some Parisian newspapers had, even before the war, adopted the size and photographic format of the British tabloids. L’Excelsior and Le Miroir, founded in 1910 and 1913, looked very much like the British tabloids, from which the latter quite clearly had poached the name.88 The Newspaper World reported in 1919 of the arrival of Georges Koister, art editor of the Paris Le Matin, who visited London to see for himself the speed with which the London photographic dailies could reproduce a photograph, declaring, “The length of time seemed almost incredible to Mr. Koister. A quick demonstration showed that a photograph taken of Mr. Koister at the London Embankment could be processed and transferred to a halftone block and printed in 34 minutes, to which the visiting guest reacted with incredulity.”89 The same journal remarked later that year (somewhat chauvinistically to be sure) that, “in recent years, however, there has been a marked tendency in the press, notably in Paris, to adopt some of the features of English journalism.”90 The blend of photography, a small format designed for busy urbanites, and the preference for sensation and celebrity reporting proved a highly successful export across the Channel.

respectively,

The tabloids had even more success on the other side of the Atlantic. The New York press proved to be the most adept at appropriating the British tabloid format. The New York Daily News, founded in 1919, consciously mimicked the London tabloids, even reproducing a photograph of the Prince of Wales on its inaugural cover, revealing the close ties to the established photographic culture evinced in the British press. The Daily News was immediately successful, prompting the growth of two more tabloids within the next few years: W. R. Hearst’s the Daily Mirror, and the notoriously raunchy New York Evening Graphic. The New York tabloids, while taking inspiration from their London equivalents, a visual culture that was uniquely American.91 The American tabloids went far beyond the British in their pursuit of sensation. Within one or two years of their into the New York market, they seemed to encapsulate some of the violence and tumult of that city in the dizzy, chaotic years of the 1920s. 92 Photographs and stories that wedded sex and violence, complete with gratuitous gore and shocking, bold headlines, typified the more egregious of the New York tabloids in the 1920s and 1930s. The Daily News’s notorious photograph of the murderer Ruth Snyder, taken as she was executed by electric chair, was only one example of the lengths to which the American tabloids seemed willing to go to attract curious readers (Figure 1.3 ). Perhaps because they attracted so much negative attention, the New York tabloids inspired the first sustained analyses of the tabloids as a distinct mode of journalism. Paradoxically, despite their direct copying of the British model of tabloid reporting, the American tabloids would come to stand in for tabloid journalism more broadly. Though Northcliffe had coined the term “tabloid” in 1901, most journalists and did not use the term until the 1920s, and then only with regard to the American tabloids.93 The first scholarly analysis of the tabloids came in the midst of the proliferation of the New York tabloids: a 1925 thesis written by Arthur Sarell Rudd at Columbia University. Rudd excavated the origins of tabloid journalism:

established introduction

commentators

A half dozen years ago the average American newspaper man thought of tabloid as a sort of English ‘circulation stunt’ with which the name of Lord Northcliffe was in some way connected . . . it was the success of the English tabloids, and of the London Daily Mirror . . . that encouraged [the creators of the New York Daily News] to follow the Englishman’s advice. 94

journalism especially

He attributed the success of the tabloids in Britain, and eventually in the United States, to the appeal of photographs. He contended that the Daily Mirror revolutionized news reporting by elevating photography to a privileged status: “For the first time in British journalism, or in journalism, for that matter, photographic beats became as important as news beats.”95 Rudd’s emphasis on the importance of the model established by the Daily Mirror that historians need to be careful not to identify tabloids too closely with the shock tactics of the New York tabloids of the late 1920s. Though the association of tabloids with violent crime and unusual oddities would become central to the identity of the tabloid

suggests

Figure 1.3 Daily News, January 13, 1928. Front page of the Daily News showing Ruth Snyder being executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison

press across the world, especially after the Second World War, the tabloids in Britain did not actually take up such reporting in earnest until the middle of the 1930s, as we will see.96 As photographic journalism spread through the major cities of the Western world, the British tabloids were often the model and exemplar. The early innovations of the found a home in an expanding number of newspapers.

tabloids

The "tabloidization" of the broadsheet press Writing in 1923, a regular commentator on the state of journalism in Britain declared: “This is an age of tabloids.” 97 The tabloids came to stand in for not only the physical evolution of newspaper formats, but also for a broader orientation to news, entertainment, and In his guide for would-be reporters, journalist Michael Joseph proclaimed,

information.

Brevity is the soul of modern journalism . . . The number of small newspaper who are adopting the ideas and methods introduced into Fleet Street by Lord Northcliffe (Alfred Harmsworth) . . . is growing every year . . . Harmsworth was the of modern journalism (‘tabloid journalism,’ it has been called) . . . We live in an age of hustle, and a picture of the havoc caused by an earthquake or of the Royal Family in the enclosure at Ascot is tabloid journalism at its best. 98

owners pioneer

The tabloid newspapers started by Northcliffe—the Daily Mirror chief among them—had become industry leaders, propelling photographic reporting to the center of news and influencing the look, tone, and tenor of all popular newspapers.World’s Press News explained to its readers “Why Tabloids Are Successful,” claiming that the of the tabloids “ask themselves, ‘What interests 9,000,000 out of 10,000,000 people near here?’ and they concentrate on that. They realise the force of pictures and recognise the fact that strong pictures can portray in a second what would require half a page of words.”99 The article admonished its readers to attempt to emulate the successes of the tabloids’ use of photographic reporting. Much of the motive for adopting tabloid methods was financial. Any circulation was acutely felt in the 1920s and 1930s, which saw an unprecedented struggle for market share among the major newspaper proprietors.100 While national sales grew from 3.1 million newspapers per day in 1918 to 10.6 million per day in 1939, the number of daily newspapers shrank rapidly, as fewer and fewer newspapers monopolized the market.101 The use of photographs was one method of remaining competitive. Photographic continued to be seen by many in the industry to appeal to non-habitual newspaper readers, particularly female consumers unaccustomed to reading daily newspapers, but thought to be willing to purchase them as a form of visual distraction.102 The Newspaper World informed its readers: “A ‘picture’ brightens up a report, and from the point of view of circulation is distinctly useful.”103 The Labour Party mouthpiece the Daily Herald was one of the most successful newspapers to make effective use of photographic reporting, earning a reputation as a leader in the field, and eventually claiming to have the “world’s largest daily net sale” of over 2 million copies. 104 When the Times, whose editors had long protested the trend toward photographic news, began including a photographic page in 1923, it was clear that photography had spread far beyond its initial frontiers. 105 The Daily Express, in particular, capitalized on photographic reporting and journalism, consciously attempting to cultivate a young, urban readership.106 Lord Beaverbrook, the newspaper’s proprietor, purchased the Daily Sketch in the early 1920s, and though he did not hold on to it long, it is clear that such an acquisition is evidence of

discourse, editors

advantage

reporting

sensational

a faith in the viability and success of the tabloid format. The editors of the Daily Express, who had been slow to apply halftones to its pages before the First World War, began to include increasing numbers of photographs throughout, and eventually introduced an entirely photographic “Photo News” feature on the final page that looked very much like rotogravure section of the tabloids. After the implementation of this feature in 1923, The Newspaper World remarked of “The Value of the Picture Page”: “The striking methods adopted by the Daily Express to introduce its new feature—pictures on the back page— have also provided fresh evidence, if any were needed, of the indispensability of reproductions in the daily newspaper.”107 Photographic reporting became one element that helped make the Daily Express the highest selling newspaper in Britain, which spurred other newspapers to follow in its footsteps.108 The back-page feature became almost universal in the popular press. The robust market in press photographs was reflected in the institutions constructed to cater to this growing industry. Most notably, The Amalgamated Press’s gargantuan building on London’s Southbank, designed for the production and distribution of halftone plates, was “the biggest factory building attempted in Europe in ferro-concrete lines.” The company produced plates for domestic and international newspaper trade, and inspired awe among many observers: “in their new headquarters which is made largely of glass and reminded [one] of the Crystal Palace . . . an average complete block was turned out every three-quarters of a minute all through the day, and one complete weekly paper was turned out every three quarters of an hour.”109 The increasing influence of photography as a mode of reporting raised familiar about the decline in standards of the press. David Ockham, a vitriolic critic of the developments in British journalism, put it most clearly when he hissed, “Both the Popular Press and the ‘Pictures’ appeal largely to a class which is easier to reach through the eye than through an appeal to the intellect, which demands a little imagination. The popular newspapers have lately begun to break out in a pictorial eczema through their pages.”110 The popularity of the tabloids had encouraged a trend toward the increasing use of which had spread, in Ockham’s quaint characterization, like a disease. For Ockham and others, photography seemed unavoidably to lead to repetitive and coverage that required very little contemplation. The German journalist Kurt von Stutterheim, writing about the British press, suggested, “To a certain extent intelligibility must be the aim of every paper; but with these papers [the Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch] it degenerates into a cult of superficiality, particularly dangerous amongst a distinguished for its lack of intellectual strenuousness.” 111 He added, “Of these it has been said that they are meant for those readers who not only cannot think but also cannot read.” 112 The commentator Paul Cohen-Portheim was even harsher in his condemnation of the tabloids and their readers. He wrote, “What is happening to us is a regression to the picture writing of primitive peoples . . . the Daily Mirror and its rival the Daily Sketch have cut their printed matter down to the absolute minimum; they convey information by means of pictures and bad ones at that, as is inevitable in mass-production.”113 At their most generous, such critics identified the rotogravure page as the “dumping ground” of the nation’s photography.114

photographic

photographic

concerns

photography, superficial

population

As these criticisms indicate, photography was seen by some to abet the worst in by simplifying the news, and appealing to a “class” that had little experience with sustained, intellectual endeavor. While certainly bigoted, the fundamentals of Ockham’s observation are fairly sound. Photography did, in fact, appeal to new readerships, the social base of those who consumed print journalism. The rapid rise to in the circulations of newspapers such as the Daily Express and the Daily Herald was evidence enough of that. And what was more, the Daily Mirror, the innovator of many of the journalistic trends that irritated critics and pleased millions of readers, was only just beginning.

journalism

broadening

The Daily Mirror changes its stripes The 1930s witnessed dramatic transformations in the modes and methods of the tabloids in Britain. Lord Rothermere, who had taken over editorship of the Daily Mirror from his brother in 1914, had no genuine interest in running the newspaper, and largely neglected to implement needed changes. The lack of innovation throughout the 1920s eventually affected the bottom line of the newspaper, as well as its key competitor, the Daily Sketch. While both newspapers started the decade with the highest circulations in the world, by the first years of the 1930s, they were selling fewer than a million copies per day, the readers since before the First World War. Except for superficial differences in display techniques, very little differentiated the daily tabloids in 1930 from their counterparts in 1910. Both the Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch were inoffensive, largely conservative papers by 1930. The Daily Express’s R. D. Blumenfeld remarked in 1933, “The ‘tabloids’ of Great Britain have something to learn [from America] in the matter of vulgarity and bad form.”115 By the mid-1930s, Blumenfeld would eat his words, as the Daily Mirror facilitated transformations in the photographic and journalistic style of the tabloids in Britain. Cecil King breathed new life into the newspaper after he took control of the newspaper’s finances from his disinterested uncle Rothermere. A newly invigorated editorship under Guy Bartholomew led to rapid changes in the format of the Daily Mirror, and the emphasized as never before sensational crime, illicit activity, and celebrity scandal.116 Bartholomew did much to codify the features of tabloid reporting that have come to the British tabloids to this day. The Daily Mirror looked for inspiration in the crude and shocking American tabloid newspapers that had, ironically, originally used the Daily Mirror as their model.117 Hugh Cudlipp, who became editor of the Daily Mirror’s Sunday edition in 1937, and would take the helm at the Daily Mirror in the 1950s, later wrote,

fewest

dramatic

newspaper characterize

The newspaper changed course in the mid-thirties, selected the correct course either by instinct or intellect or both, came out of its coma and began to breathe without aid . . . It attracted new and younger readers, and at a swifter rate than it lost old readers through natural causes or shock at the bizarre tone of its contents.118

artificial

The visual language of the revamped newspaper reflected its changed ethos. As Cudlipp suggested, “The whole appearance of the Mirror changed. The picture paper

tradition of photographs on the centre pages was blown sky-high and sensational news took their place.” 119 Cudlipp saw Bartholomew as a prophet, sweeping away the anodyne reporting on Society celebrities and garden parties, and creating a rejuvenated, populist news medium.120 As the Daily Mirror restructured its journalistic objectives, photography would be a key tool in its arsenal. A bolder photographic style melded with the on sensation and scandal. After its facelift, the newspaper simplified the information included on the page, and focused on a few main subjects displayed in a more visually dynamic way. The newspaper brought an array of new faces into view, focusing less on established stars and social elites (though they certainly continued to appear) and more on figures who had recently engaged in criminal or sensational activities. Headlines were larger and used more dramatic language that highlighted the gory or salacious elements in a story. Photographs appeared in more complex arrangements with text, no longer cloistered away in rotogravure sections (Figure 1.4 ). Photographic reporting also images of partial nudity, and utilized dynamic and creative photographic that were uncommon before the mid-1930s (Figure 1.5 ). The candid photograph was employed as a tool to capture some of the speed and energy of modern life. The new format sought to tap into a working-class, urban population and deliberately abandoned its traditional female upper- and middle-class readership.121 The historian A. J. P. Taylor has remarked of the Daily Mirror under Bartholomew’s leadership: “the English people at last found their voice.” 122 It seems clear that the Daily Mirror’s transformation was in sync with a broader culture of populism during the years of the Great Slump. 123 The of the Daily Mirror through American methods of scandal reporting helped crystallize a popular conception of the tabloids as sensational newspapers designed for working-class audiences. It is important to note, however, that despite the growing consensus that tabloid

emphasis

incorporated compositions

reinvention

Figure 1.4 Daily Mirror, August 6, 1935. © The British Library Board

Figure 1.5 Daily Mirror, January 4, 1937. © The British Library Board

newspapers were a reflection of vulgar taste, the tabloids did not become identified as an exclusively working-class phenomenon until after the Second World War. As late as 1936, when such figures were first systematically collected, 25 percent of households reading the Daily Mirror earned over £1,000 per year (the highest income group in the survey), while only a little over 2 percent of reported readers earned less than £125 per year (the lowest income group).124 Similar proportions were shown for the Daily Sketch, the Sunday Graphic, and the Sunday Pictorial, the other dominant tabloid newspapers of the day. 125 The changes wrought by Bartholomew would be one of the main reasons that the tabloids became so closely associated with working-class readers. Before then, and even after, this association was not necessarily made, at least in the British context. The transformations in the Daily Mirror in the mid-1930s initially affected the and journalistic format of the Daily Sketch, most likely abetted by the editorship of Eric Travers who had previously worked for the Daily Mirror. As had been the case in the Edwardian years, the Daily Sketch seemed to be following the lead of the Daily Mirror. In January of 1938, however, the Daily Sketch published a proclamation that it would refuse to follow the path taken by the Daily Mirror. An editorial statement lambasted “degrading journalism” and “sordid pictures that appeal to lower instincts.” The article read, “Perhaps a picture newspaper has a special responsibility of its own. It is read by the young and the old, by the schoolboy, the schoolgirl, the typist and the young married woman as well as the older members of the household.”126 Despite the fact that it had been nearly from its competitor for the past two years, the Daily Sketch sanctimoniously

photographic

indistinguishable

presented itself as the wholesome alternative to the sensational tabloid tactics of the Daily Mirror. The cleaned-up image of the Daily Sketch did little to help its declining fortunes. It seems evident that the Daily Sketch resorted to this tactic less out of a dedication to “clean” journalism and more as an effort to carve out a niche for itself in popular journalism. If this was indeed the motivation, the plan failed. While both the Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch claimed just under 1 million readers in the early 1930s, by 1938, the former had increased its share to 1.6 million while the latter had fallen to as few as 600,000. The lesson seemed to be that tabloid journalism worked only when it was shocking.127 Dealing the final blow, the Daily Sketch was eventually subsumed by the Daily Mirror when the two newspapers merged in 1946. Taking stock of the transformations in British journalism, the Political and Economic Committee’s 1938 Report on the British Press sounded a warning that the appeal to popular tastes might have been taken too far. It cautioned that

photographic

a rather dangerous tendency has recently been manifesting itself, by which ceases to be ancillary to news and either supersedes it or absorbs it. In the daily newspapers, features take up almost as much space as news, and much of what appears in the news columns is only thinly veiled entertainment material, that has an added excuse or interest because it has actually happened . . . Many welcome a newspaper that under the guise of presenting the news, enables them to escape from the grimness of actual events and the effort of thought by opening the back-door of triviality and sex-appeal.128

entertainment pictorial

By focusing on the “pictorial dailies,” the Report conflated photographic journalism with this “dangerous” tendency toward trivial entertainment in news discourse. The tabloids had done too much, committee suggested, to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The transformation of the Daily Mirror in the mid-1930s marked the outer limit of the investment in a populist appeal through photographic reporting. What the newspaper had started thirty years prior, it seemed to be completing as it made good on its promises to speak to and for the common man. The Daily Sketch’s response, though leading the newspaper toward different ends, was still rooted in a conception of the photographic newspaper as uniquely suited to the tastes and interests of ordinary people. The two newspapers only differed on the matter of how to speak to those tastes and interests.

A new photojournalism In the mid-1930s, photojournalism would be further reconstituted in Britain as a result of the influence of Continental photojournalistic magazines. Despite the fact that, as we have seen, the tabloids had developed a sophisticated mode of photographic reporting at the turn of the century, the term “photojournalism” would come to be identified with a very particular photographic practice, one that was foreign to the British press at the start of the 1930s. Felix H. Man (born Hans Bauman), the German-born photojournalist who

started off this chapter praising the Daily Mirror’s culture of “photojournalism,” suggested that when he moved to London in 1933, “photo-journalism did not exist in England. The continental method of writing essays with a camera was unknown, and there were no illustrated weeklies of the continental type . . . The daily press, though realising the value of photographs, worked on the principle that the first picture to reach the news desk was the best.”129 Man would be among a number of Continental Europeans to move to London and revolutionize photographic reporting in Britain. The trend toward Continental photojournalistic methods in Britain was abetted by the Hungarian émigré Stefan Lorant. Through a series of innovative publications, he brought the photojournalistic magazine to Britain. He had worked on the German magazines Das Magazin and Munchner Illustrierte Presse, before fleeing the Third Reich by moving to London in 1933, where he introduced a novel way of communicating the news through the camera.130 Founded in 1934, the Weekly Illustrated was Lorant’s first attempt at exposing British audiences to the style of photojournalism that he had learned and helped to popularize in Central Europe (Figure 1.6 ).131 Lorant was given the opportunity by Odham’s Press to remake the faltering Clarion, a flaccid and underperforming Labour newspaper. He quickly remade the journal into a full-fledged photojournalistic magazine. The magazine was printed in a 16 x 11 ½ inch format, on newsprint paper, approximately the same size as a tabloid newspaper. Advertisements for the new journal announced,

nonetheless

More than a newspaper . . . a new kind of paper . . . geared to the changed needs of to-day . . . short-circuiting words . . . flashing its news direct to the mind in vivid . . . a “newshawk’s eye” view of the wide world every seven days . . . the cream of a thousand “stories” served up on big fifteen-by-twelve rotogravure pages with the real newspaper feel . . . a periodical planned for a civilization that is moving faster every day . . . twenty-four or more big pages that begin a new idea in journalism.132

pictures

And in truth, this was something different than what had come before. While the tabloids certainly relied heavily upon photographic reporting, the presentation of photographs was used as an augmentation or illustration of the main news stories. With the Weekly Illustrated, Lorant was attempting to communicate the news entirely through the image, making use of a feature never before seen in British print media: the photojournalistic story, told through a series of interconnected images. Lorant’s next venture, after leaving the Weekly Illustrated to different editors, was the unusual photojournalistic magazine Lilliput. This new journal was even bolder in its embrace of the artistry of candid photography. Lilliput was not a newspaper but rather a handheld monthly “pocket magazine for everyone” measuring 5 x 8 inches and in photographs by major British and Continental European artists. The front page of its first edition proclaimed, in simple terms, “10 articles, 10 short stories, 10 cartoons and coloured plates, 40 photographs.” 133 The journal was a forum for representing and discussing the latest examples of photographic style and form. The first issues included numerous photographic “studies” by prominent German photojournalists, as well as avant-garde photographers such as Brassaï, John Heartfield, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

photographic

specializing

Figure 1.6 Weekly Illustrated, July 10, 1937. © The British Library Board

Lorant’s impact on British photojournalism was most keenly felt in his famous and Picture Post. As his biographer has noted, Picture Post was the direct successor of the German magazines he produced in the preceding decade.134 Lorant’s attempts to convince the news mogul Edward Hulton to bankroll the venture finally proved when the threat of war with Germany promised to create a demand for photographic news. 135 The journal was designed very much along the lines of the Weekly Illustrated, though slightly reduced in size. Within a few months of its release in October 1938, it had a circulation of over 1,350,000. Its popularity would continue unabated for the next years, even after Lorant’s departure from Britain to the United States with the official outbreak of war. Picture Post legitimized and popularized a visual rhetoric of photographic reporting in Britain that was already firmly established in other European countries. The wellknown cover of the first issue of the magazine, showing two women in polka-dotted costumes bounding through the air, expresses some of the youthful energy and visual dynamism that characterized that journal. Lorant declared his fundamental approach to photojournalism in the 1938 Modern Photography annual: “the camera should be as the notebook of a trained reporter, recording contemporary events as they happen . . . everyday life should be portrayed in a realistic, unselfconscious way.”136 Like his two earlier ventures, the journal exhibited an embrace of photographic modernism, both in its layout and design and in its choice of photographers. Lorant cultivated close with photographers, helping to forge the careers of some of Britain’s most noted photojournalists.137 Similar to the Daily Mirror’s shift to a more populist and demotic reportage at the same moment, the Picture Post embraced a collectivist ethos (though not of the same variety as that embraced by the Daily Mirror). The magazine featured photographic features focused on the difficulties of ordinary people’s lives, the oddities and spectacles of popular the threat of war, and provided a keen outsider’s view into the British cult of Stuart Hall, reflecting on the importance of Picture Post, has suggested,

influential

successful several

relationships

amusements, monarchy.

Between the mid-Thirties and the end of the War, something happened in British which enabled some people to look hard at society in a new way—not but in a manner and to a degree unstructured by the traditional frameworks of class, deference and power which interposed such powerfully-constraining “ways of seeing” between the social experience and the camera lens.138

society comprehensively,

The photojournalistic magazines started by Lorant represented a shift not just in British society, but in the ways that photographic journalism in Britain interpreted and British society.139 Lorant defended his social politics in the pages of his journal, and distanced himself from the popular picture papers such as the tabloids: “Picture Post firmly believes in the ordinary man and woman; thinks they have had no fair share in picture journalism; believes their faces are more striking, their lives and doings more full of interest than those of the people whose faces and activities cram the ordinary picture papers.”140 He confirmed his belief that photojournalism had a responsibility to reveal the complexity of the lives of ordinary people.

represented

For all of their novelty and influence, the new photojournalistic magazines inherited much from the tabloids. Writing in 1934, just as Lorant entered the British news market, the German Kurt von Stutterheim, compared British photographic journalism to that of his own country, the historical home of photojournalism. He remarked, The art of press photography is naturally highly developed in a country where even The Times has its picture page . . . Thus the English press has trained a staff of who are unrivalled in the art of discovering quaint and amusing situations and in the speed of their service, while the quality of English newsprint permits a standard of reproduction which German dailies with their inferior paper cannot hope to attain. If we add the considerable demand for pictures emanating from Society papers like the Tatler and Sketch it is not to be wondered at if England has a veritable army of press photographers working side by side with journalistic reporters.141

photographers

The tabloids established a sophisticated culture of photojournalism long before the coming of Picture Post, which even gave a nod to the two dominant tabloid newspapers in Britain in an article included in its inaugural issue. Of the Daily Mirror, the article stated: “The most successful picture daily in the world, the Mirror has another claim to fame. It is accepted as being the forerunner and inspiration of all ‘tabloid’ papers.” 142 The tabloids set a as the editors of Picture Post clearly understood, that had influenced photographic reporting for over three decades. The growth of photojournalistic magazines from the mid-1930s onward reveals the paradoxical state of photographic reporting in Britain. At once a pioneer with perhaps more photographic newspapers than any national press industry, the British press lagged behind its Continental counterparts in the development of new kinds of photojournalism. Lorant’s impact on photographic reporting in Britain was not only manifest in the three influential magazines that he created and edited, it was also evident in the in tabloid photojournalism. The tabloids, though they had been crucial in making photojournalism possible, as Lorant and others recognized, were profoundly affected by the influence of photojournalistic magazines. The use of photography abetted a tendency toward increasingly populist journalism. The simultaneous transformations in the modes and methods of the Daily Mirror and the spread of Lorant’s photojournalistic magazines illustrate a correlation between reporting and an appeal to popular tastes. The halftone attracted a new kind of newspaper reader, and created a new way of consuming newsprint. The annual exhibition organized by the Institute of British Photographers in 1938, which highlighted achievements in press photography across all types of newspapers, helped to insert the tabloids back into the history of photojournalism. Discussing the advent of magazines, the accompanying catalogue read, “And since the early days, the photograph has come to have yet another quality in the minds of the people—news value. This is due, of course, to the immense amount of photographic reporting that is now done by every newspaper.”143 The catalogue did not distinguish between various forms of photographic reporting. Certainly those differences existed, and this chapter has attempted to illuminate some of the diversity of photojournalistic practice in Britain. But it

precedent,

transformations

photographic

photojournalistic

was clear that the photographic image had become “news” by 1938, and this could not have happened without the pioneering efforts of the producers of tabloid newspapers. The tabloids played a fundamental role in altering expectations about what newspaper readers could expect to see in photographic form. By inserting the camera into an everexpanding sphere of public life, the tabloids provided unprecedented visual access to newsworthy people and events. The pressures of this new culture of visibility would be seen perhaps most saliently in the celebrity culture that the tabloids played such a crucial role in producing. It is toward that culture that the next chapter, and the remainder of this book, turns.

SHOOTING PEOPLE: THE PRESS PHOTOGRAPHER AND THE CANDID PORTRAIT In one of his guides to photographic portraiture, under the telling subtitle “Stalking Your Victim,” the Dutch-born British photographer Hugo van Wadenoyen recommended, “Whenever possible, use the stealthy approach. Take your victim unawares.”1 Such he insisted, allowed photographers to see beyond a sitter’s public face, and reveal something profoundly true about his or her character. This required an entirely new approach to portraiture, one that did away with many of the trappings of tradition: “Many of the old rules of composition can be ignored, innumerable conventions may be thrown overboard; we need no longer be bothered to make people look graceful, dignified, pretty; we are no longer confined to certain permissible static poses, nor are we limited to a range of suitable backgrounds.”2 Adopting the technologies and methods of press photography, he sought new approaches to his medium—approaches that could the unpretentious casualness that was the press photographer’s stock-in-trade.3 By “stalking” his sitters, he was applying a language and a practice of portraiture that was explicitly indebted to press photography. In so doing, he willingly abandoned portraiture’s longtime associations with all that was “graceful, dignified, pretty.” This chapter explores how the emergence of press photography profoundly influenced the nature of portraiture. The first generation of press photographers revolutionized the way that mass audiences saw and experienced celebrities. The press photographer’s snapshot did not heed the same protocols of representation as the painted portrait or the studio photograph. The language of the snapshot was informational and documentary, not idealizing and romantic. What the Kodak camera had done in the 1880s and 1890s to the family portrait, the tabloid press photographer would do to the celebrity photograph. 4 The new technologies of photographic capture and mass reproduction that emerged at the turn of the twentieth century allowed readers of early tabloid newspapers to “bear to the lives of celebrities as they had never been able to before.5 The early tabloids offered a mass readership, for the first time in history, photographic evidence of famous people in action, without the pretense of the photographic pose. The advent of snapshot photography produced a new rhetoric of instantaneity and documentary access that amplified the inherent truth claims of the camera. As Annie Rudd has argued, the years between 1900 and 1940 saw the triumph of hidden camera

tactics,

narrow capture

witness”

PUBLIC IMAGES

photography in Britain, in the press and beyond, which created new expectations for photographic truthfulness. 6 According to practitioners and contemporary commentators, the snapshot image offered a genuine and unpretentious representation of a person’s appearance, and when taken without the knowledge of the person photographed, it promised a more accurate view of how celebrities really looked and acted. Photographers and newspaper editors helped construct the idea that the candid image provided a more accurate representation than the “masks” worn in the photographer’s studio. Like the “human-interest” journalism that emerged at approximately the same historical moment, promising to bring readers closer to the real person behind the celebrity façade through biographical exposés, the candid photograph promised access to the truth of celebrity life.7 Because celebrity culture is predicated on the inherent tension between idealization and debasement—between celebration and denigration—the snapshot photograph is a necessary corollary to idealized celebrity portrait, offering a competing version of how celebrities look and comport themselves.8 This push for candid photographs set the stage for a confrontation between press photographers and their subjects. The desire for natural, unselfconscious portraits, if taken to its logical conclusion, required a form of photographic assault, inviting (even requiring) an adversarial relationship between photographer and subject. This chapter explores the relationship between the aesthetic of candor and the ramifications it had on the consensual nature of photographic portraiture.

The birth of the press photographer The introduction of halftone technologies into the British press in the 1890s created a huge demand for photographic news that was satiated by a new, largely ad hoc of journalists with cameras.9 Though lacking a coherent professional presence or identity, these photographers were the first to take up the camera as a tool for news events.10 The numbers of such photographers grew steadily, and by 1899 the journal Photographic News could already claim, “The skilled photo-journalist is not an uncommon object in the neighbourhood of Fleet Street.”11 The number of photographers on Fleet Street mushroomed in the years after 1900, which saw remarkable growth in the profession of press photography and in the use of the camera as a tool of journalistic practice across the Western world.12 The proliferation of photographic newspapers in London created a market for press photographs anywhere else in the world, making the city a center for the growth of press Though the increase in the numbers of photographers is indisputable, exact figures are hard to come by as very few actually held permanent employment.13 Until the middle of the 1930s, most newspapers—with the salient exception of photographic tabloids such as the Daily Mirror and Daily Sketch—did not hire staff photographers at all.14 Many press photographers worked freelance, and many more worked in an entirely amateur capacity, occasionally selling photographs for reproduction in the press but otherwise having very little involvement in journalistic culture. 15 The proliferation of photographers on Fleet Street was facilitated in large part by the growth of photographic agencies, such as the London Illustrated Press Bureau, Central Press Photos, and World’s Graphic Press

constituency representing

unparalleled photography.

SHOOTING PEOPLE

Agency. These agencies hired permanent and freelance press photographers in order to supply the burgeoning photographic press with much-needed images.16 Despite their large numbers, little is known about the Fleet Street photographer of these years.17 Very few archives house information about individual press photographers, in part because their photographic practice did not at the time signify as the work of an individual creator worth keeping.18 The richest sources of information about press from this period are the dozens of memoirs, autobiographies, photographic manuals, and professional guidebooks that photographers produced.19 If it was not for the willingness of press photographers to write down their experiences, they most likely would have been entirely lost to history, as the Marquess of Donegall joked in the to press photographer Edward “Lucky” Dean’s autobiography: “What happens to photographers who do not write books I have never discovered. I suppose they eventually explode!”20 Even given these archival limitations, it is still possible to identify several distinct features shared by many of those who made up the first generation of Fleet Street press photographers. Typically born in the decades on either side of 1900, they tend to have come from working-class neighborhoods in and around London, and started work on Fleet Street while still adolescents.21 Two notable exceptions were A. V. Swaebe who took up press photography as a profession in 1925 at the age of 46 after an unsuccessful career as an actor, and Brodrick Haldane, a Scottish aristocrat who made a name for photographing Society figures for the press in the 1930s.22 Almost without exception, press photographers were men.23 Judging from autobiographies and memoirs, most of these men grew up with an intimate relationship with photography, journalism, or some other form of popular entertainment. James Jarché, for one, was born to French émigré parents who moved to London because “photography in Paris was not a paying 24 He got his start processing crime photographs with his father and working in a music hall, two experiences he credited with informing his later photographic style. 25 These press photographers operated under, and helped give shape to, the and creative imperatives of tabloid newspapers. Because the tabloids provided the largest market for press photographs for most of the period before the Second World War, and because the Daily Mirror, the Daily Graphic, and the Daily Sketch were the only major newspapers to hire permanent press photographers before the mid-1920s, most photographers had extensive experience with what the tabloids wanted. Jarché worked as a staff photographer for the Daily Sketch from 1912 until taking up employment with the Daily Herald in the 1930s. William Turner worked for the Daily Mirror as early as 1910, Stanley Devon worked for the Daily Sketch. Bernard Grant, one of the three “brothers Grant” working as photographers on Fleet Street, took up employment with the Daily Mirror and another Fleet Street tabloid, the Sunday Pictorial. The photographic language of the tabloids derived in large part from the innovations of these pioneering men. The profession of the press photographer developed largely in response to a need for more photographs of celebrities than portrait studios could supply. Victorian illustrated periodicals had relied heavily upon prominent West End firms such as Bassano, Lafayette, and Elliot & Fry to provide portraits for conversion to engravings or halftone.26 With the advent of the Daily Mirror and the newspapers that followed in its wake, new wells had to be tapped in order to maintain a fresh supply of images.

photography

introduction

demographic

himself

proposition.” institutional

photographic

The memoirs and autobiographies of press photographers from this period reveal the importance of photographing celebrities. As early as 1901, Henry Snowden Ward would-be press photographers to acquire images of “The Homes and Haunts of Celebrities” if they ever hoped to succeed.27 Nearly every book published by press in this period dedicated a sizable proportion of its pages to recounting stories of acquiring images of celebrities either without their consent or through some means of subterfuge.28 Jarché made a point of broadcasting his relationship with the famous, telling his readers in the aptly named People I Have Shot about his time tracking down and, usually with great skill, acquiring pictures that many others would have failed to capture.29 Other photographers included chapters entitled “Celebrities and the Camera,” “Riveted to Royalty,” and “Meeting the Famous,” which conveyed a similar message. 30 This first generation of press photographers, precisely because they were conditioned to find photographs of celebrities, helped forge a new form of instantaneous documentary portraiture to be consumed by mass audiences.

admonished photographers

The rhetoric of the candid portrait The rapid sophistication of camera technologies in the years after 1890 made the candid photograph possible. Even the most resourceful Victorian photographer was hard pressed to produce snapshot portraits for the purposes of the press. The bulkiness of the camera and its various accoutrements in the late nineteenth century put definite physical limitations on the production of candid photographs. Kodak and other popular snapshot cameras did not produce adequate negatives for conversion into halftone, so were of very little use for the pressman. Nearly all halftones appearing in the press in the late nineteenth century would have been studio portraits, images of urban monuments, or posed groups of athletes or performers. New technologies made it possible for press photographers to produce high quality snapshot images with negatives containing the necessary detail and contrast needed for reproduction in halftone, freeing the photographer from the studio and the tripod. 31 The significant reduction in the size and weight of cameras transformed how could take photographs, allowing for unprecedented mobility and The debut of the Goerz Anschutz box camera in 1896 proved auspicious for British journalism, becoming, along with its British- made equivalents such as the Soho, the standard press camera on Fleet Street. 32 The “detective” and “pocket” cameras that proliferated at this moment were reduced enough in size to fit into the sole of a shoe, but most photographers selling their images to the press could not make much use of these cameras due to their small negatives and the difficulty in translating the captured image to the halftone plate. 33 The handheld reflex camera provided a satisfactory compromise, small enough to carry, but with room for glass plate negatives sufficient for reproduction. The tabloid press ensured the success of the snapshot image as a new form of visual documentation, helping to enshrine the snapshot as a mode of portraiture for the age of mass media. The rise of the press photographer and the images he produced reflected a changed relationship to the very concept of what portraiture was designed to do. Art encouraged photographers to catch people in motion, to “photograph people doing

photographers inconspicuousness.

editors

something.”34 Newspapers remunerated photographers at twice the rate for good as they would for posed images.35 London’s first tabloid newspapers trumpeted their ability to catch celebrities off-guard with the candid eye of the camera, made evident in the Penny Pictorial Magazine’s photographic feature, “Caught Unawares: Photographs of Celebrated People.”36 Tabloids celebrated successful snapshot images, highlighting the skill of photographers in “snapshotting” celebrities in candid postures (Figure 2.1 ). By encouraging press photographers to seek candid images, the tabloids helped transform the relationship between celebrities and photographers. In many ways, the snapshot image militated against a consensual relationship. Snapshot press images were taken quickly, relatively quietly, and often furtively. If the ways that press photographers spoke about their own burgeoning profession are any index, it seems that the more a photograph was taken, the better. Writing in 1914, Fleet Street photographer

snapshots

clandestinely

Figure 2.1 Daily Mirror, July 19, 1905. © The British Library Board

John Everard suggested, “The demand of the public for the ‘peep-behind-the-scenes’ kind of picture is insatiable,” and encouraged photographers to seek images that caught people unaware. 37 In his praise of the merits of “hand camera” work, photographer Walter Kilbey admonished his readers, “to conceal from the subject your intention to photograph him or her . . . You must exercise cheek, and plenty of it. Go to work with a of getting what you require, and allow no false modesty to cause hesitancy, or you will assuredly fail.” He went on to provide a guide for capturing such photographs, which revealed much about how these kinds of images eventually made it to print:

determination

My plan is to adjust the stop, set the shutter . . . some distance from the subject, or at any rate quite unseen by him. I then usually walk (or stroll) up to the distance upon—generally 15 feet for figure studies—with my hands and camera behind me. Do not look straight at the person, but watch him out of the corner of your eyes, and when he assumes the unconscious attitude bring your camera coolly and to the front: a rapid glance in your finder, let go your shutter, and pass along, changing your plate as you walk away.38

determined

unflinchingly

Kilbey proudly confessed to stalking his subjects and taking photographs without

consent. By coaching would-be photographers in the art of clandestine photography, he advocated for a style of image making unencumbered by the artificiality of the portrait studio. Snapshot images of celebrities engaged in mundane activities constituted one of the early tabloids’ most common visual tropes. Bert Garai, the lead editor of the Keystone photographic agency in London, bemoaned, “London editors at that time were only with unauthorised snaps of some celebrity ‘arriving’ or ‘leaving’ or ‘getting out of his car.’” 39 One photograph taken from a 1905 issue of the Daily Mirror testifies to the truth of Garai’s claim. The image shows the Duchess of Richmond leaning into her phaeton, appearing to give orders to her chauffeur (Figure 2.2 ). The image is, on the surface, rather unremarkable. The news value of the image is slight, if not to say nil, other than acting as a stand-in for the “Sale of Irving Relics.” 40 Viewing the photograph next to the images included in the column directly to its right, the value of the photograph becomes clearer. Photographs of wild animals in mid-stride testify to a new way of seeing the world in newsprint. The press photograph expresses an interest in catching the fleeting moment. Like the intrepid lions caught by the camera, the photograph of the Duchess of Richmond is a symbol of the abilities of photographers to arrest time. She is an object of surveillance, caught unaware by the roving eye of the press photographer. While all tabloid newspapers included photographs of wealthy socialites and engaging in social activities, from walks in Hyde Park to fox hunts and weddings, no newspaper was as committed to this form of reporting as the Tatler, where the snapshot photograph was almost a raison d’être. Finding timely photographs of the world’s wealthy holidaymakers was a profitable enough enterprise to subsidize a highly mobile, global fleet of press photographers who chased celebrities to exotic locations, especially the resort cities of the French Riviera (Figure 2.3 ).41 The newspaper’s one-time editor boasted, “The Tatler was the first weekly paper to devote itself to snapshots of

satisfied

celebrities celebrity

Figure 2.2 Daily Mirror, December 15, 1905. © The British Library Board

well-known people, instead of relying, as most papers had previously done, upon the studio pictures. The snapshot, if a good one, is always more indicative of the true looks and characteristics of any personality—male or female.” 42 As the above statement indicates, snapshots were not only useful as visual testimony of the activities of notable people, they were also seen to be superior, more “truthful,”

Figure 2.3 Tatler, April 2, 1913. © The British Library Board

representations than the studio portrait. By reproducing such images by the thousands, the tabloids created a new way of seeing famous people. Without the artifice of the studio environment, with its flattering lighting, costuming, and retouching of the negative, the snapshot seemed to offer a view behind the “mask” of public life. The nineteenth- century photographic portrait was widely acknowledged, by contemporaries as well as historians, as a highly contrived visual medium, based upon idealization and manufacture in ways that inherited much of the basic logic of the painted portrait. 43 Conversely, because they offered very little visual information about the appearance of their ostensible subjects, press snapshots were highly unorthodox portraits. They could be remarkably unforgiving, especially if snapshots appeared in close proximity to manicured studio photographs, as they often did. A snapshot of Margot Asquith, wife of the prime minister underscores the stark contrast between posed and snapshot portraits (Figure 2.4 ). Never an photogenic woman, Asquith appears pinched, pale, almost skeletal in the her dress crumpled, and her expression menacing. The florid, soft-focus studio photographs of the women around her throw her into sharp relief.

extraordinarily photograph,

Figure 2.4 Daily Mirror, January 18, 1911. © The British Library Board

The oddity of snapshot photographs of celebrities was lampooned in a Punch of 1913, depicting exactly the kinds of snapshots of celebrities on holiday that had become a staple of the tabloid press in the preceding decade (Figure 2.5 ). The caricature mockingly re-creates four photographs of Society figures walking on the promenades of Monte Carlo. The figures are in various states of exaggerated contortion, parts of their faces veiled in shadow. Canes, umbrellas, and handbags flail. With the caption “With acknowledgements to the Monte Carlo representatives of our photographic Punch suggests that the press photographer produced laughable of his subjects—comparable to the caricatures that were the stock-in-trade of the lampooning magazine. 44 The snapshot stood in comical contrast to the clear, coherent, staged formality of the portrait that had been the typical way of seeing people in for over half a century. Professional photographers contended with the affect of the snapshot on the art of portraiture. One contributor to the British Journal of Photography opined that the press snapshot “can only have the effect of vulgarising photography,” precisely because the images were so carelessly acquired and reproduced. The journal continued,

cartoon

contemporaries,” representations photographs

Nobody who takes up the daily newspapers can fail to be struck by the poor of much of what passes as press photography. No doubt the publishers of the daily press know their public and are able to convince their readers of the value of some smudge of half-tone as a representation of a celebrity . . . We think we see unmistakable signs of sacrificing excellence in the photographic result to speed in securing it.45

quality

The combination of poor reproduction values and hastily acquired images, the journal suggested, came at the expense of high-quality portraits of famous figures. The contrast between the snapshot photograph and the established language of celebrity portraiture can be seen in a revealing debate included in the Sell’s World’s Press in 1914, tellingly entitled “Portrait versus Snapshot.” The debate featured editors of illustrated newspapers, weighing in on the question of whether or not the snapshot was going to replace the studio portrait for good. Speaking for the affirmative camp, the art editor E. Wroughton stated frankly,

leading

The “snapshot” is slowly, but surely, ousting the studio “portrait” from the pages of the illustrated papers . . . the newspaper which insists on portraits is often in danger of getting a picture that is ludicrously out of date . . . [Moreover,] the studio portrait, speaking generally, does not convey so good a likeness as the snapshot does. As a rule, the person least competent to say whether a photograph is a good likeness is the person who sat for the photograph . . . Rarely is the snapshot marred by that selfconsciousness—or camera consciousness—which spoils the portrait. The constraint of a pose disguises the real man: the snapshot catches those elusive characteristics which reveal him. 46

Figure 2.5 Punch, March 19, 1913. Reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd., www.punch.co.uk

Wroughton encapsulates much about the appeal of the press snapshot by 1914. Not only was it quicker and more reliable to find snapshots, the snapshot image was more “real,” shattering the façade constructed through traditional means of portraiture. On the other side of the aisle, denouncing the increasing presence of the snapshot, the studio portraitist J. Lafayette remarked, Setting aside (as admitted) the essential feature of a studio portrait—an artistic production—and looking at it from an editorial standpoint, the former is miles ahead of the grotesque representations so frequently seen in the illustrated papers. Indeed, to those who are uninitiated into the mysteries of the Press, it is a matter for wonder as to why snapshots are so often reproduced . . . often the very conditions under which these “snaps” are taken are not conducive to truth. 47 For Lafayette, who had an obvious professional investment in “artistic” portraiture, the snapshot did not obey the logic of “art” portraiture, which necessarily invalidates its claims to accurate representation. Only art is true, and the snapshot is not art. One of Lafayette’s key complaints was that the photographer in search of snapshots was simply a nuisance; his pushy style militated against the taking of flattering portraits. Whatever the merits of the snapshot versus the studio portrait, it was clear that the press photographer was becoming an essential and unavoidable aspect of public life. His presence at public events had the effect of training celebrities to recognize and respond to his presence. The “photo-op” was the compromise struck, and the stagey, if still “snapshot” photograph was the most common celebrity image by the outbreak of the First World War.48 Such images allowed press photographers to do their job, while securing celebrities from some of the most unflattering aspects of the snapshot The photo-op image represented the triumph and acceptance of the snapshot as a language of celebrity reportage. Understanding the limits of this compromise—of what constitutes consent—would be one of the central tensions of photojournalism in the years to come.

technically photograph.

Institutionalizing the snapshot portrait The First World War presented unique challenges for press photographers. While it might seem that the new army of press photographers would have been put to good use in the fields of war, the draconian DORA laws prevented unauthorized images documenting the conflict. All of the war images that made it to press were either or posed photo-opportunities largely dictated by the official limitations on photographic representation.49 Even at home, away from the battlefields, press had to exercise an abundance of caution to ensure all photographs conformed to wartime restrictions. As the war dragged on, press photographers protested the inconsistencies and of the DORA laws. They accused the War Office of abetting unfair discrimination against press photographers. One press photographer railed,

reenactments photographers

severity

Under war conditions [the press photographer] has been called upon to conform to all sorts of regulations and restrictions, and this he has very rigidly done . . . Thus it is gall and wormwood for an enthusiastic Pressman to “cover” an event and find privileged soldiers openly walking about with their cameras, and, without let or hindrance, pictures, while the unfortunate civilian operator tries to squeeze himself through the crowd and surreptitiously take a chance shot at an incident under such circumstances as may prevail. The fact of his taking a picture surreptitiously emphasises his and does not mean that he is doing something which is forbidden.50

securing

difficulties,

The press photographer’s statement reveals both an anxiety to prove the propriety of the press photographer’s actions as well as an eagerness to suggest that it is the professional right of press photographers to acquire snapshots of major public figures. Official denied the press photographer of the basic material of his practice. As the conscientiously professional tone of the above quotation indicates, the years during and after the end of the war saw the consolidation of the amorphous body of press photographers into an increasingly coherent professional group. The Press Photographers’ Association—emboldened in part through its role in mitigating DORA complaints—provides but one indication of the newfound professional voice of press photography. The National Union of Journalists (NUJ), established in 1907, recognized photographers as among their potential members in 1921.51 By the end of the First World War, the NUJ included an increasing number of reports relating to the employment needs of press photographers in their official publication, The Journalist. The Professional Photographers’ Association (PPA), founded in 1901 and incorporated in 1922 (it would become the Institute of British Photographers in 1938) would also help forge a new coherency of purpose, affording a venue for the discussion of issues germane to the task of press photography.52 Trade journals such as the British Journal of Photography and the Newspaper World helped formalize the professional voice of press photography through its recurring features aimed directly at press photographers. By the founding of the World’s Press News in 1929, press photography was a central aspect of journalistic discourse, only confirmed by the creation of a spin-off of that journal, Photography, in 1932.53 Within these various professional mouthpieces, the 1920s witnessed an amplification of the calls for images depicting figures in action, further facilitating the increase in the numbers of press photographers on the hunt for celebrities. The voices of professionalization were also the most vociferous in support of candid press photography. The Newspaper World informed its readers, “The cry of the national papers is for pictures that show life and movements, and it is of no use to submit a picture unless it shows doing something.”54 Many people taking these photographs had no interest—and often no hope—of actually making press photography a paying proposition, but they still sold their wares on Fleet Street in large numbers. The desire for celebrity snapshots was so intense that the founder of the Tatler, Clement Shorter, remarked, “Everyone who is anyone is snapshotted at all kinds of public functions or even walking in the streets. A number of agencies make a special business of this kind of work, and day by day every newspaper office is supplied with hundreds of pictures to select from.” 55

disqcrimination

professional

somebody

Many commentators worried that too many press photographers meant too much competition, with damaging repercussions both for the quality of press photographs and for the reputation of the burgeoning profession. The Journalist sounded a shrill call: “The time has come for Press photographers to close their ranks . . . Hordes of young duds swarm into Fleet Street offering themselves at very low salaries; their knowledge of even elementary photography is a negligible quality. Etiquette and education are not part of their equipment.”56 This statement reflects how the journal cultivated a language of professionalization, intended not only to protect the jobs of its members, but also to project an image of the unionized press photographer as someone who produced quality images without the impudence that comes with lack of experience. The sanction of professional organizations marked the institutional recognition of the snapshot as a new form of portraiture for the age of the mass photographic image. As The Journalist’s warnings intimate, however, professional decorum dictated a particular standard of behavior when acquiring such images. It was not tolerable for inexperienced photographers to aggressively hunt down subjects in search of a quick pound. A quality snapshot was key, but the boundaries of professional conduct needed to be patrolled.

James Jarché and the art of candid photography A leading voice for candid press photography, and one with a particular verve for

describing his exploits, was James Jarché. He worked for a number of tabloid newspapers and photojournalistic magazines, and became one of the central figures in British photographic reporting in the years proceeding and during the Second World War.57 He advocated for a bold and unceremonious relationship to how, when, and by what means press photographers should seek suitable subjects. Like many press photographers of his generation, he spent a good amount of his time tracking down celebrities, a fact that he gleefully recounted in his autobiography, People I Have Shot. As his colorful choice of title indicates, he incorporated a renegade—even confrontational—energy into his pursuit of subjects. One key venue where Jarché exercised his skill at “shooting people” was the Society wedding. Photographs taken on the occasion of aristocratic marriages represented a remarkable proportion of photographs in popular newspapers, making the Society an important site for the production of celebrity photojournalism.58 The photographs typically consisted of little more than squarely positioned figures, with their family and wedding party staring woodenly into the camera. The wedding was a space in which the participants expected to be photographed and willingly submitted to the camera, which made the job of the press photographer much easier, but also made the photographs predictable and cliché.59 Jarché, for his part, refused to wait for the sanctioned moment to snap a photograph that promised to be identical to every other. He gloatingly cited many examples of his resourceful picture gathering in his memoir. Among the most notable was a photograph

wedding

he shot of the famous socialite and actress Lady Diana Manners at her wedding to Duff Cooper. Jarché reveled in his good fortune and skill: A whole bunch of photographers were outside the Duke of Rutland’s house, but her car drew up, a footman pulled all the curtains, screening the windows on the ground floor. A minute later, however, the bride herself drew a curtain back, and stood for a second in a perfect pose, looking into the street. Then she saw me and dodged back, just too late, for I had already shot. 60 The photograph, printed on the cover of the Daily Sketch in 1919, shows the bride-tobe dressed in full bridal attire on her wedding day. She opens the curtains of her home, which had been drawn shut to shield the prying eyes of a crowd of onlookers and press gathered to see her depart for the church. As Jarché described, he waited for the exact moment that the bride let her guard down to take a look outside. The resulting photograph captures her seemingly unaware, her face marked by a jaunty, inquisitive expression. Her left hand clutches the curtains nervously as she stares out at what by all accounts was an enormous crowd. The photograph bears the caption “Daily Sketch Exclusive.”61 What made the photograph unique—and what gave Jarché bragging rights—was exactly the fact that it was unsolicited. The photograph bears witness to a moment unlike the stagey scenes caught later in the day by scores of pressmen who had gathered in front of the church of St. Margaret, the wedding venue. Snapping a photograph of a Society bride could be accomplished by even the most inept press photographer, but this moment—in which the impenetrable walls of her home appear to open up for his camera—proved Jarché’s skill and excellent timing. The fact that he publicly gloated of his accomplishment illustrates his faith that this type of photography—taken not only quickly, but against the wishes of the sitter—was a way of providing an “exclusive” photograph. Capturing photographs of unwilling subjects was often a difficult task, and typically involved subterfuge and dissimulation. Jarché reminded press photographers, “Clothes sometimes make a most efficient screen to one’s identity.” 62 He used costuming and on a number of occasions, none more spectacularly than in his successful attempt at photographing the wedding of Lady Louise Mountbatten and Prince Gustav Adolf of Sweden at St. James’s Palace in 1923. Jarché‘s tactics not only involved disguising but also bordered on breaking and entering. Responding to the call of his Daily Graphic editor, who demanded that he “hit on something more exciting than the usual wedding procession,” Jarché set off to the palace eager to get inside and capture images of the couple before they could be seen by the army of press photographers swarming the entrance. Donning his nicest tie and hat, he arrived at the rear entrance of the where he was greeting by a liveried valet. Jarché imitated his best Swedish accent, and pretended to be a photographer commissioned by the royal couple to document the proceedings. Making his way into the room where the shoot had been planned, Jarché waited for the moment that the official photographer had arranged the scene. Jarché then removed his camera from his jacket, and snapped a photograph. With the booty of his raid secured on his photographic plate, he ran past the angered security attendants and back to his Fleet Street bureau.63

documenting

disguise

himself,

building,

Although he poached the composition from a studio portraitist, Jarché lived up to his editor’s expectations to photograph something more “exciting” than the typical wedding photograph. What made it exciting was the story behind its creation. The news value resided not so much in the particular merits of the image itself, but rather, in the manner in which it was acquired. The fact that he had violated the private space of rich and powerful people lent the image an aura of bravery and heroism. These examples—only two among the many that Jarché recapitulated in his book—illustrate the extent to which he was working in defiance of particular mode of social His boisterous celebration of his violation of the intimate spaces of aristocratic and royal figures is evidence of a bold disavowal of basic tenets of respect due to social superiors. Working-class men like him were meant, if standards of decorum were to be upheld, to ask permission to approach, let alone photograph, people of that stature. His pursuit of candid portraits required a more liberal orientation to social protocol.

deference.

“A modern system of photography” The triumph of candid press photography could not have happened without a few key technologies that emerged in the years around 1930. One of the most important of these was the “miniature” camera, made famous by the Leica, but also including a number of American and European-made models, such as the Miniature Speed Graphic. Using film negatives instead of glass plates, the miniature camera built upon, and radically the candid photographic practices that had emerged over the previous three decades. The miniature camera was the successor of the detective cameras used by Edwardian photographers. British press photographers first used miniature cameras in the mid-1920s, and they were touted for their ease of handling, improved focusing and above all their “inconspicuously” small size, ideal for portability and for disguising the apparatus when focused on a subject. 64 They were perfect for specialized work that required stealth. Most press photographers in Britain were slow to adopt the miniature camera, opting instead to utilize the range of equipment that had been the agreed apparatus for more than twenty years.65 Photographic equipment was often quite bulky, which only threw into relief the benefits of the miniature. While some British and foreign camera producers had already begun the process of shrinking the size of glass plate press cameras, they remained large compared to their miniature counterparts. 66 A photograph from 1939 of a group of British press photographers gives some indication of the types of cameras in operation in the 1930s (Figure 2.6 ). The majority of the men still used rather large reflex cameras, though one among them employs a “miniature” camera that appears to be a Graflex. The most innovative and adventurous press photographers hailed the miniature as revolutionizing the practice of press photography. Freelance press photographer Bernard Alfieri told the readers of the British Journal of Photography, “If we decide which camera is most suitable for every problem that comes within the work of a Press the miniature camera would score highest marks if judged by those who are really proficient in its use.” 67 Unquestionably the loudest voice in Britain in favor of the miniature

transformed,

capacity,

relatively

camera

photographer,

Figure 2.6 Press Photographers, 1939. National Science and Media Museum/Science and Society Picture Library

camera was Jarché. In a roundtable discussion published in the Photographic Journal, he admitted, “In Press photography the miniature camera is becoming invaluable and is gradually coming more and more into use in Fleet Street . . . I have discarded my old Press camera.”68 He recognized that the miniature had a particular utility when photographing people: “I only wish I had had a miniature camera twenty years ago. Can you imagine . . . if I had then had a miniature camera and caught Mr. Winston Churchill looking round the doorway in various attitudes? Knowing what I know now, I realize that I could have taken pictures practically without being seen.”69 Lionel Vining, who became the Daily Mirror’s first “miniature camera photographer”70 in 1936, wrote revealingly that the miniature “is not just a ‘small camera’; it is a modern system of photography.”71 For Vining and many other press photographers, the miniature camera changed the face of press photography and allowed for the production of a new way of seeing the news. A writer for Photography opined, “Apart from optical advantages, the miniature camera gives him a different air. He can mix without being recognised as a photographer, and as he is not handicapped in his movements, his photographs will be more natural and not show camera 72 The miniature made it easier than ever before to produce high-quality images without attracting attention. The 1930s also saw the sophistication of other technologies of candid photography that had emerged in fits and starts over the past three decades. The advent of the flash

consciousness.”

bulb in 1929 completely altered how press photographers documented dimly lit or environments. Bulbs did not require photographers to handle hazardous explosive material, or lead to the obtrusive presence of the plumes of smoke produced by the flash powders in use since the turn of the century. Synchronized flash technologies that the flash automatically when the camera shutter opened also made their way into the arsenal of the British press photographer.73 By the 1930s, the telephoto lens was also in widespread use, both for portrait and press photography. 74 Jarché admitted to owning two of the long focus lenses.75 The press photographer Bell R. Bell wrote, as early as 1927,

nocturnal

triggered

At functions of any character where “personalities” with news value are present, and large size figures or “heads” are desired without having to operate too close to the subject; and on dozens of other occasions, a telephoto lens of such small size, large aperture, and complete dependability . . . is a practical necessity nowadays in the equipment of the Press photographer.76 The telephoto lens abetted the tendency to take photographs without the recognition or consent of those photographed. Angled viewfinders also allowed press photographers to snap pictures of celebrities unaware. With this added to any camera, photographers could stand at a right angle to the subject—appearing to photograph something or else—and still register their likeness on the plate. Whether or not individual photographers chose to make use of these technologies, the reality was that the search for the completely candid photograph became sine qua non for the pr ess photographer working in Britain in the 1930s. The 1930s represented the full flowering of the photographic culture of the candid photograph. By 1936 J. C. Kinkaid remarked of the “candid camera” that “probably no other branch of press work has clicked with readers and editors alike as has this.”77 A photographer writing into the Times suggested, “The Press photographer avoids making his subject ‘camera conscious’ as a rule, though deplorable records of presentations in which the principals stare fixedly at the lens are still often seen . . . but only those who have had experience can appreciate his success in exploiting the fluidity and freedom which are unique of photography.” 78 Though certainly the photographer engages in a bit of romantic self-congratulation, the suggestion is a potent one. The posed photo-op photograph is a “deplorable record” compared to the “fluidity and freedom” of the candid image. It was the latter, the author proclaimed, toward which all good photographers should strive.

someone

properties

The Continental model Throughout the 1930s, photojournalists in Britain looked toward the Continent, especially Central European photojournalistic magazines, for inspiration. The term “candid in fact, was coined by a British observer of German photography, referring to the work of Erich Salomon. 79 The journal Photography opined in 1934,

photography,”

British Photography is too Civilized . . . Continental—especially German—photography, is diametrically opposed to [the British] conception of photographic technique. Its first aim is to do justice to the species and there is, consequently, a determination at all costs to avoid picturesque impressions . . . it is the outcome of realistic application of a technical process.80 In the photographic discourse of the time, the German candid cameraman was to be the most straightforward and honest form of photographic practice. What was more, the miniature camera—the instrument par excellence of candid camera work—tended to connote German photojournalism in the British trade periodicals.81 Though clearly developing out of homegrown trends already firmly in place in the tabloid press, as we have seen, the culture of candid photography in Britain was by the founding of the photojournalistic magazines the Weekly Illustrated (1934), Lilliput (1935), and eventually Picture Post (1938). Stefan Lorant, the Hungarian-born founder of these magazines, announced his photographic ethos by proclaiming: “The photograph should not be posed . . . people should be photographed as they really are and not as they would like to appear.’”82 Lorant and his staff of photographers gave form to this sentiment in the content of the magazines—gleefully exhibiting photographs of people taken without their knowledge, or using the photographic image to poke fun at the physical appearance of politicians and other powerful figures. Lorant used Lilliput as a venue for satirizing famous figures, as in his “picture comparisons” features, which juxtaposed celebrities with farm animals and domestic pets in order to render them preposterous by visual analogy. These images used photography as a means of critique and satire. Two of the most prominent and influential photographers employed by Lorant, the Germans Kurt Hutton and Felix H. Man (anglicized from Kurt Hubschmann and Hans Bauman) would be key interlocutors in the discussion of press photography in Britain from the 1930s to the 1970s. 83 Man, who began his career in Britain in 1934, crystallized the ethos of candid photography when he wrote, “Portrait photography has developed from rather primitive but honest beginnings into an industry practiced mostly in the atmosphere of the studio, where the wretched sitter is surrounded by powerful lights designed to bring out his features in the most flattering form. This technique produces no more than counterfeit portraits.” 84 Hutton echoed this sentiment, proclaiming, “I abhor the unnatural, artificial picture . . . The posed portrait so often shows a blank mask.”85 The good press photographer, then, worked to provide the truthful counterpoint to these “counterfeit” representations. Among the most outspoken advocates for a candid photographic style were another two Continental ex-pats: Hugo van Wadenoyen and E. O. Hoppé. Neither man was, by training, a press photographer, and both established their reputations as studio Despite that, their writing had profound impact on press photography in their adopted country. Wadenoyen, a Dutchman born in 1892 who emigrated to Britain in his youth, offered some of the most eloquent affirmations of what he called “the new portraiture.”86 Wadenoyen was very conscious of the fact that his “new portraiture” was influenced by transformations in press photography. He suggested that “the growth of the illustrated

understood

abetted

uncomfortable

portraitists.

press during and after the great European war encouraged a new method of the world to the world. The public suddenly became interested in the documentary content of photographs rather than in the manner of their presentation . . . open[ing] a new way to unposed naturalism.”87 It was this desire for the “unposed” that animated his practice, as well as his guidebooks for would-be photographers. It is unsurprising, then, given Wadenoyen’s interest in the aesthetics of photojournalism, that his photographs often appeared in the most innovative photojournalistic magazines of the 1930s. His close relationship with Lorant ensured that Wadenoyen’s photographic studies would appear in magazines such as Lilliput and Picture Post. Hoppé’s career provides perhaps the most potent testimony of the triumph of candid photography during the 1930s. Born in Munich in 1878, Hoppé made London his home just after the turn of the century, and founded his West End studio, operated under the name Dorien Leigh, in 1907.88 He quickly earned a reputation as a high-class producing elegant images of notable celebrities. By the outbreak of the First World War, his photographic portraits of celebrities appeared regularly in the daily tabloids as well as the upmarket weeklies. 89 By the mid-1920s, Hoppé’s innovations in portraiture would find him appropriating the methods and practices of the press photographer.90 With the sophistication of miniature camera technologies in the late 1920s, Hoppé was one of the first studio photographers to utilize cameras such as the Leica. Smaller cameras allowed him to “break loose from the artificiality which was typical of the studio portrait of that period.”91 And because he owned one of the largest studio spaces in London, he was also able to utilize cutting edge lens technologies, such as the telephoto lens, which allowed him to snap his sitters from across the room without them knowing.92 Growing impatient with the constraints of the studio, Hoppé increasingly moved beyond it. By the mid-1920s, he had started the transition into street photography. His mannered portraits of the 1910s and 1920s would eventually make way for dynamic urban scenes and snapshot portraits by the 1930s 93 He eventually abandoned studio portraiture and took what he called the “plunge into journalism,” and worked for magazines such as Weekly Illustrated. 94 He was one of the few prominent studio portraitists to make a clear transition to a career as a press photographer. He wrote, “Is a studio necessary? When I began professional photography, sitters visited the photographer as a matter of course . . . But the advent of miniature cameras caused the most profound and significant changes in technique . . . The essence of good photography is freedom from artificiality, and creating artificiality is bad art and bad business.”95 It would take his “plunge” into press photographer to fully free him from the constraints of the studio portrait. Many homegrown photographers also took the lead in propagating the merits of candid image making. As Annie Rudd has shown in her research on the photographer Humphrey Spender, the logic of the “unposed” photograph was a central component of documentary image making across a variety of fields—including film, the press, and social policy—in the 1930s.96 It is telling that in 1937 the British press photographer Victor Chamberlain championed the candid press photograph in the following way: “The of these pictures is due to the fact that they are so real and have caught the subject exactly as he or she was engaged in activity . . . They are the exact opposite of the posed

presenting

portraitist,

average

altogether

success

picture.”97 This search for the truthful candid portrait would have profound impacts on the nature of life in the public eye.

Humiliating photographs The purpose of candid celebrity photography in the 1930s appears to have been a matter of intensifying the visual scrutiny of famous people—offering not only a more accurate, but an altogether alternative view of the subject represented. In the words of one contributor to the journal Photography, “The candid camera [has become] a legitimate tool of the pictorial journalist. For the first time people see important personages as they really [are], not as they want to be seen.”98 Candid images of celebrities afforded the opportunity to comment upon physical appearance, sartorial habits, hairstyles, and even posture and composure. They became testimony to the superficial flaws and inadequacies of famous people. And at worst, they became an opportunity to elicit rage and anger from unwitting subjects. Taken to its logical extreme, such scrutiny could turn into humiliation. Reflecting back on the boom in candid press photography since 1930, a contributor to the journal Photography wrote in 1938, “It soon became evident that many editors were more in catching such personages in embarrassing positions than in showing them in characteristic poses.”99 In some ways, the desire to “catch” celebrities at embarrassing or awkward moments is as old as snapshot photography itself.100 While working as art editor of the Daily Mirror in the early years of the century, Hannen Swaffer encouraged his press photographers, “When stalking a prominent man track him down in all legitimate ways, till you have him playing a part in some scene of human interest . . . Balfour at the golfing ground, [if] followed by a man with the press photographer’s instinct and—who knows?—might have been snapped just after the golf-ball struck him.”101 Swaffer made this remark with tongue in cheek, and it is typical of his notoriously venomous relationship with celebrities. 102 In its winking acknowledgment of the frisson of catching public figures off guard, however, he was speaking for many on Fleet Street. The 1930s represented the coming to fruition of the humiliating press photograph, inheriting three decades of journalistic and technological developments that allowed and encouraged photographers to engage in candid photographic practices.103 The vogue for embarrassing photographs took hold perhaps most soundly in the United States, where it was taken to controversial extremes, but the British press photographer was in no way with such practices, and many learned them from their colleagues across the Atlantic. Many photographers in the 1930s gloated of their abilities to catch people off guard in postures. George Dymond, a journalist for the Daily Mirror, wrote of his “luck” during one encounter with the Duke and Duchess of Kent in the 1930s: “Both looked fatigued after a busy day. They met no one at the door and glanced in our direction believing, apparently, that we had something to do with the reception. It was a most awkward and embarrassing moment . . . Things that go wrong like that provide golden opportunities. Be on the watch for them.” 104 In 1938, the journal Photography offered cheeky advice for aspiring of embarrassing situations: “Get pictures of people who claim they don’t want them taken . . . Shoot them before they pose. They’ll look one hundred per cent better.”105

interested

unfamiliar unbecoming

photographer

A photograph included in the Daily Mirror in 1935 plays on the idea of witnessing a moment in which the contrived façade of fame comes crumbling down. The image depicts the actress Fay Wray about to take a large bite from a plate of food (Figure 2.7 ). Her mouth is extended to its fullest circumference, ready to accommodate a large and unidentifiable mound. Her left hand appears foreshortened and disfigured. The caption teasingly remarks: “It’s not often you get a chance to see a lovely film star eating so take a good look at this one!” 106 The photograph simultaneously establishes Wray as ordinary—engaging in a mundane activity—and relishes in the ability to offer an alternative, even crudely animal, view of a famous personality. A. V. Swaebe characterized the appeal of such images by suggesting, “Nobody looks very picturesque while eating. But they do look human!”107 The candid photograph was not only about making people seem less poised, but also about reminding viewers of the subject’s base humanity. What was more, the advent of flashbulb photography further multiplied the to capture unflattering portraits. True to their irreverent spirit, the tabloids poked fun at the shock effect produced by the flash. A feature in the Bystander of 1937, under the title “Faces and Figures Reflected by Flashes,” exhibits seven flashbulb snapshots (Figure 2.8 ). A photograph of Fred Astaire underscores how irritating the flashbulb could be. The caption reads, “Fred Astaire looks like crying, but it was only camera-shyness all of a sudden.”108 His squinted eyes and the fact that his head is dramatically turned from the camera indicate that the flash itself was the reason for his “shyness.”

opportunities

Figure 2.7 Daily Mirror, December 20, 1935. © The British Library Board

Figure 2.8 Bystander, October 13, 1937. © The British Library Board

The fear of falling prey to this type of unflattering photograph generated a heated debate about the merits of candid photography. The complicated etiquette of portraiture, many observers thought, had been destroyed, the consent between sitter and photographer shattered by new possibilities in photographic practice. A letter to the editor appearing in the Times in 1937, revealingly entitled “Cameras in Waiting: The Unauthorized Snapshot, Sitters Willing and Unwilling,” gave voice to these concerns. The author remarked that any person “does well to find time to condemn the Press photographer who lies in wait to take a picture of the oyster or the caviare as it passes in to the interior some distinguished politician.”109 Such criticisms focused on exactly those elements of candid photographs that sought to humiliate by means of the camera. Many commentators refused to see such images as “true” at all—suggesting that they pervert, in fact, the truth of the appearance of those depicted. One correspondent in the British Journal of Photography weighed in on this topic under the heading “The Untruthful Camera”: “The camera . . . is supposed to be so objective in its attack that it cannot possibly distort nature so grotesquely, though the truth is that we are so used to the conventions and imperfections of the photographic process that we have at length come to believe that they actually represent the truth.”110 Photography as a medium, the author suggested, is inherently unreliable, so to believe such “attacking” photography would be to be duped by its fallacies twice over. Many commentators feared that the consensual studio portrait was increasingly an artifact of the past, replaced by a portraiture based on hostility and sabotage. The journal Photography opined, “The candid camerist is mainly concerned with the embarrassing or ludicrous aspects of our affairs, and his perpetuations of them may leap out at us at any moment. He has none of the earmarks that characterised the old-time photographer . . . Such a thing as a conventional, posed portrait can be found only in museums and the archives of historical societies.”111 The article expressed a fear that the press had assaulted and destroyed any semblance of the artistic, flattering portrait. To punctuate the point, the author included examples of the “embarrassing or ludicrous” types of images that the press photographer produced, showing people dodging the camera and masking their faces from view (Figure 2.9 ). The images reproduced in the Photography article a radically new kind of imagery that the tabloid brought into being—one that has now become something of an icon of photojournalism. Images of people attempting hiding their face from the camera starting in the late 1920s, and newspapers often drew attention to the subject’s vain attempts to block the press photographer’s view. One such photograph reproduced in the Tatler depicts two well-dressed Society figures on their way to a wedding, one of whom (the man on the right) shields his face from the camera with his hand (Figure 2.10 ). The caption reads, “Miss Joy Herney and her shy brother outside St. Peter’s,” mocking his attempts to avoid photographic publicity.112 Not to be outdone by this small gesture of modesty, the newspaper made sure to poke fun at this act of defiance. Such images were ubiquitous enough to spark conversation in the photographic and journalistic trade journals. The inaugural edition of World’s Press News in March 1929 included a bold headline proclaiming, “Pity the Press Photographer!” along with a press snapshot of the heavyweight boxer Gene Tunney shielding his face from the camera (Figure 2.11 ). Tunney had recently resorted to more extreme measures to keep a photographer from

reasonable

photographer

celebrity proliferated

Figure 2.9 Photography, May 1938. © The British Library Board

capturing an image of his face. As the article read, “The camera-man’s work is not of the easiest. Many celebrities go out of their way to defeat him. Gene Tunney, even went so far to knock a too persistent photographer down.”113 Physical violence was the natural extension of the defiant gesture of covering one’s face—a desperate measure to resist the cameraman’s incursions. Occasionally, press photographers took such extremes measures in their pursuit of candid photographs that the public’s worst suspicions appeared to be corroborated. One such instance occurred on the estate of T. E. Lawrence, the celebrated military officer better known as “Lawrence of Arabia.” When, in 1935, a number of press photographers came to his home at Clouds Hill, Lawrence refused to pose for them. Apparently angered by the rebuff, the press photographers, according to one report, “would not go away, and kept banging on his door and shouting at him.” 114 Lawrence punched one of the men in the eye, escaping from the rear exit of his home on a small motorcycle. Not aware that Lawrence had escaped, some of the men climbed to the ridge of a hill immediately behind

Figure 2.10 Tatler, May 7, 1930. © The British Library Board

his house in order to throw large stones onto his roof. The remaining cameramen sat in bushes in front of the house, eager to snap photographs of the furious Lawrence when he finally emerged.115 The cameramen stayed holed up until forced out by friends of Lawrence who assured them that no photograph would be taken, as Lawrence was no longer home. Though no photographers gloated about their involvement in this particular episode, it seems in line with the general ethos of press photographers hunting for unflattering images. The fact that photographers wore these photographic conquests as badges of honor reveals, if anything, the triumph of a particular discourse. The ability to catch celebrities in their most intimate spaces served as a barrier of entry into the field of The episode involving Lawrence, however, hints at a desire for images that went beyond the search for candid images. The photographers waiting outside his door, expecting him to emerge flailing in anger, did not only want to see the “true” Lawrence, but hoped to capture him at his worst—wrathful and antagonistic, and anything but the genteel imperialist of lore.

hidden

photojournalism.

Figure 2.11 World’s Press News, March 7, 1929. © The British Library Board

Neither genuine “news,” nor accurate depictions of their subjects, the embarrassing snapshot posed an aesthetic as well as a social problem. Whatever these candid might have been, they were not portraits in the traditional sense. They were a new form of representation unique to the modern age, based upon the premise that the photograph taken without the knowledge of the subject provided a deeper, less artificial access to the person represented. Taken to its logical extreme, the rhetoric of the candid image resulted in a kind of siege mentality that employed strategies of attack as a way to illicit raw, uninhibited, and uniquely “newsworthy” photographs. News of such aggressive activity confirmed a deep distrust of the press photographer and the types of portraits that he produced. Although certainly not all press photographers embraced candid photography in quite the same way, or to the same extent, the “candid camerist” sought to disturb the delicately composed public face of celebrities. The press photographer had the ability to infiltrate the spaces of celebrity leisure and return to his editors with stolen photographs of startling—occasionally even humiliating—candor.

photographs

powerful

The tabloid press, by encouraging photographers to seek candid images, fostered a mode of reportage that consciously eschewed protocols of photographic etiquette, occasionally even common social decency. In this way, the press photographer worked to redefine the dynamics of life in the public eye. Celebrities could no longer be so sure that their own likenesses staring back at them from the newspaper page would be likenesses of which they approved. The photographic scrutiny of the tabloid press was felt most intensely by the most famous family in the world: the British royals. The decades between the dawning of the twentieth century and the outbreak of the Second World War marked a key moment in the development of relations between the media and the royal family. The press photographer would quickly become a bugbear for the royals, the foundations of the iconography of one of Europe’s oldest and most powerful remaining monarchies.

threatening

SNAPPING THE ROYALS: THE PRESS PHOTOGRAPHER AND THE CHALLENGE TO THE BRITISH MONARCHY A photograph of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, taken by Cecil Beaton on their wedding day in 1937, depicts the couple perched on the terrace of the Château de Condé in Northern France (Figure 3.1 ). Beaton was the key royal iconographer of the mid-twentieth century, and true to form, he offers a beatific representation of the ducal couple. The two figures look away from the camera, their faces illuminated ethereally from above. An ornamented balustrade serves as a dramatic barrier between the couple and the photographer. Tucked away in a quasi-medieval fortress, the duke and duchess are the picture of regal aloofness. The flattering formality of Beaton’s photograph was surely meant as an antidote to the reality of the couple’s life in front of the camera, a counterpoint to the photographs that appeared in the tabloid press during the crisis that erupted several months previously, leading to the then-King Edward VIII’s abdication in December 1936. Another taken just outside the perimeter of the château, shows a battery of photographers and film cameramen attempting to document the wedding ceremony (igure 3.2 . The image crystallizes the media’s interventions into the couple’s intimate life. Staging himself at the center of the frame, a press photographer holding an enormous camera appears on the verge of unleashing an assault. Armed with a long- ocus lens that resembles a military-grade weapon, the photographer makes use of whatever means necessary to catch a momentary glimpse of the royal romance. The press photographer became an enduring symbol of the couple’s relationship and the impact of the abdication crisis on royal life. The life of King Edward VIII (known as the Prince of Wales until his ascent to the throne in January 1936, and the Duke of Windsor after his abdication) serves as a testament to the transformation of the British royals into “celebrities” in the modern sense. By the outbreak of the First World War, the royals were products of and participants in a culture of mass communications and the spread of rapidly reproducible photographic images. 1 In an age of movies and photographic fan magazines, the royals succumbed to broader shifts in the media production of celebrity.

photograph,

PUBLIC IMAGES

Figure 3.1 Cecil Beaton, The Duke and Duchess of Windsor at the Chateau de Condé, 1937. © Cecil Beaton/ Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Tabloid photojournalism worked to peel back the public face of the royal family. The photographing of the royals for the tabloid press grew out of a much longer tradition of visual reporting and press commentary that sought to dig beneath the sanctioned image of the monarchy. 2 Journalism and royal scandal have a long and interdependent history.3 The tabloid photographer transformed the way that the British people saw the monarchy, establishing a new and enduring idiom of photographing the British royals based on visual immediacy and documentary access. The photographic coverage of the couple’s affair constructed the royal family as objects of visual surveillance as never before, placing the king and Simpson at a key juncture in the history of photographing celebrities before the growth of paparazzi in the late twentieth century. 4 The photographic treatment

adulterous

SNAPPING THE ROYALS

Figure 3.2 Press Photographers and Film Cameraman Outside the Chateau de Condé, 1937. National Science and Media Museum/Science and Society Picture Library

of Edward VIII portended the media frenzy that would follow Princess Margaret in the late 1950s and Princess Diana in the late 1990s.5 The political response to the king’s affair with Simpson was an effort to preserve the royal image from the corrosive effect of the new mass media. While much has been about the relationship itself— and the constitutional crisis that it threatened to incite— very little has been said of the significance of photographic reporting in the making of the crisis. 6 As historians such as Philip Williamson have argued, the turmoil over the king’s relationship with Simpson was rooted in Conservative political principles that had defined the royal family as the symbolic head of Britain and the empire.7 Because the only real political authority of the monarchy derived from its symbolism, transmitted through staged spectacles and grand portraits, the press photographs of the couple’s affair represented a challenge to monarchical power. 8 By exposing the secret activities that had once been the material of gossip and lampoon, photojournalism dragged gossip into the realm of evidence. The result was, quite literally, a new way of seeing the monarchy.

written

incontrovertible Photography and the royal image

Queen Victoria famously embraced photography in the construction and preservation of a virtuous image of the royal family. The start of Victoria’s reign marked a new era in monarchical representation, coinciding almost exactly with the advent of photography and the widespread proliferation of illustrated journalism.9 Victoria’s court

challenging

photographers helped produce the image of a simple, sober, and domestic “bourgeois Queen.” 10 Victoria understood how photography could be used not only to ingratiate herself to her subjects, but also as a means of controlling and maintaining a commanding public image. Official portraits carried a royal seal reading “By Royal Permission,” the fact that photography worked in the service of the sanctioned monarchical image. Photography played an important role in the “Invention of Tradition” that saw the mythologizing of the royal family as an immortal institution symbolizing the best of the nation. 11 For the first sixty years of its existence, photography was a powerful weapon in the arsenal of royal iconography. The emergence of the press photographer as a journalistic force in the years around 1900 did not, at least immediately, mean an end to traditions of the royal photographic portrait. For one, official state portraits continued to appear in print for decades to come. Even “snapshots” that made it into newspapers adhered to rather strict de facto protocols. The compromise between press photographers and royalty was a mutual embrace of a set of photographic clichés—mutually agreed upon poses taken at convenient times.12 Press photographs typically consisted of images taken during official state processions, and even the most unrehearsed images showed little more than a royal personage staring expectantly at the camera. Quite often photographic snapshots were retouched or painted over to the point of approximating the look of a painted portrait. Edward VII (r.1901–10) was the first British monarch to confront press photographers with any regularity, and he would also be the first to take issue with their tactics and photographic practices.13 Edward was known to have a strong aversion to unsolicited photographs, and he actively sought to discourage representatives of the press from his picture until he had given his consent.14 Yet not all press photographers deferred to the king’s wishes. As the twentieth century progressed, a bolder, more invasive brand of photographer sought to catch the royal family in such a way as to defy stereotypes and introduce an element of surprise. Photographers often circled Sandringham—Edward’s country residence of choice—in an attempt to catch the king hunting, and in one instance, some extremely intrepid photographers were found smuggled into bread trucks, to capture images of the royal children. 15 It was his misfortune that Edward, so averse to having his photograph taken without his consent, would be the first royal to die in the age of the tabloids. His death sparked a macabre and frenzied desire to publish the first images of the king’s corpse. After hearing about a photograph of the king lying on his deathbed, the Daily Mirror’s art editor Hannen Swaffer, armed with bribery money amounting to the prodigious sum of £ 100, hunted down and acquired the original negative from a susceptible representative of the studio that had been commissioned to take the photograph.16 On May 16, one week after the king died, Swaffer published the photograph on the front page of the tabloid, with a larger version printed across the interior centerfold. It depicted the king looking skeletal and pallid just moments after passing, accompanied by a reading, “Another magnificent photograph of the late King Edward, as he appeared after death, a photograph upon which no one will be able to gaze without feeling deeply moved.”17 The photograph pushed the sales of the May 16 edition of the Mirror, already

underscoring

mutually

taking

attempting

portrait approximately caption

the world’s leading photographic tabloid newspaper, to over two million copies, shattering global circulation records.18 The success of the Daily Mirror’s photographic coup inspired newspapers and press photographers to acquire their own images of the dead king. Photographers arrived en masse at the funeral. The spectacle of Fleet Street’s pushiest breed angling for of the royal body made many present squeamish, no matter how accustomed they were to the frenzied pace of journalistic life. The journalist Philip Gibbs wrote of the funeral of King Edward in 1910:

photographs

His death chamber was disturbed by what seemed to me an outrageous invasion of vulgarity. In life King Edward had resented the click of the camera wherever he walked, but in death the camera men had their will of him. A dozen or more of them surrounded his bed, snapping him at all angles, arranging the curtains for new effects of light, fixing their lenses close to his dead face. There was something ghoulish in this photographic orgy about his death-bed.19 What the king could resist through direct and indirect pressure during his lifetime, he could not resist in death. King Edward would not be the last British royal to experience such a “photographic orgy” as he lay dead, but he was certainly the first. Edward’s heir shared his father’s suspicion toward press photographers. The reign of George V and his wife, Queen Mary, represented royalty at its most vigilant of the perils of public ridicule. 20 Like his grandmother, Victoria, George embodied all of the aloof for which the Windsors have become so known. Meticulously strict dress codes and an onerous attention to etiquette made his public appearances, and the photographs of them, the most calculated of affairs. George’s attempt to control the gaze of the camera was such that he forbade all press photographers but one—the redoubtable Sir John Benjamin Stone—from Westminster Abbey on the day of his coronation.21 Stone was required to conceal his presence behind a tomb so that his camera would not distract or disturb those present. George V hired the first official press secretary for the royal household, Clive Wigram. 22 Wigram’s task was to ensure the best publicity that social coercion could buy, and a sanguine relationship with many press representatives. Attempts to harness the new mechanisms of publicity associated with the tabloid press were often quite direct. The front page of an issue of the Daily Mirror from July 1914 features portrait of the king and queen in stately court dress. The headline at the top of the page reads: “King George and Queen Mary Congratulate ‘The Daily Mirror’ on World’s Record of 1,000,000 Copies a Day.”23 A short, handwritten letter from a secretary at Buckingham Palace expresses the congratulations of the royal couple on the prodigious circulation of the world’s leading tabloid newspaper. The letter, and the Daily Mirror’s proud exhibition of it, clearly shows the royal family’s desire to tame the new technologies of celebrity, as well as illustrating their close, and interconnected, relationship with the tabloids from the earliest days of their existence. George V’s restrictions on press activity could be quite draconian. Security and police prevented the photographing of members of the royal family at all times, save functions

staunchness

parliamentarian cultivated

photographs

where a press presence was unavoidable.24 As early as 1919, a contributor to The Newspaper World expressed frustration at the lack of cooperation between pressmen and the royal family: Some time ago there was an assurance made that the relations between the Press and officials at Buckingham Palace were to be more close and more congenial. More publicity, greater favours on the part of the officials, were to be the order of the day, but I find that there are journalists besides the writer who are yet awaiting this reform. 25 Given this unquenchable thirst for photographs, and the frustration with restrictions felt by many agents of the press, breaches in the royal façade were inevitable. Security was never watertight, and photographers managed to take photographs without official which occasionally involved collusion between photographers and guards.26 Under ordinary circumstances, the desire for photographs of members of the royal family incentivized photographers to push the boundaries in pursuit of images. With the ascendance of the next king, this desire would reach frenzied intensity.

consent,

"The photographic attack on His Royal Highness" No royal figure before, and few since, contended with the army of Fleet Street press in quite the same way as George V’s eldest son, Edward, who became Prince of Wales in July 1911 at the age of 17, and took the throne as King Edward VIII in 1936.27 A handsome, young, and “modern” man about town, the prince made perfect copy for the kinds of newspapers whose circulation depended upon securing images of celebrities. 28 His more casual social manner and style of dress helped to create the image of the royal family as willing to accommodate the transformations of the modern world, including increased press involvement in his personal affairs.29 Even his official biography, released in 1929, seemed to endorse and celebrate the prince’s embrace of a flamboyant modern lifestyle. The biography occasionally assumed the tone of a gossip column, appearing to perpetuate an image of the prince as a popular celebrity:

photographers photogenic

In view of the amount of newspaper space devoted to the doings and amusements of people whom the majority of readers have never seen, particularly their attendance at theatres, dances, and nightclubs, it may perhaps be of interest to chronicle a ‘night out’ in the life of the Prince . . . many a time have I seen him at dances or at night- clubs footing it with the best.30

typical

The prince’s image seemed almost manufactured to suit the popular culture of the jazz age. In part because he had positioned himself as the accessible young prince, he found it increasingly difficult to ward off the desire for access to the private details of his life.

Looking back on his experiences with the press photographer, he remarked with some nostalgia, The thought occurs to me that one of the most inconvenient developments since the days of my boyhood has been the disappearance of privacy. I grew up before the age of the flash camera, when newspapers still employed large staffs of artists to depict the daily events with pen sketches. This artistic form of illustration seldom achieved the harsh or cruel accuracy of the present-day photographer dogging his often victim or waiting in ambush for a candid shot. 31

unsuspecting

Despite his seeming embrace of popular media, press photographers proved to be a constant source of anxiety in his life, and the young prince never quite adapted to the camera’s invasive gaze. Press photographers recognized the trickiness of photographing the prince, who was a lucrative photographic subject as well as an occasionally uncooperative one. The Daily Mirror press photographer Bernard Grant characterized the prince’s fraught relationship with the photographic press by suggesting, “The most photographed man in the world to-day is the Prince of Wales . . . but it is certain this would not be the case if his wishes were consulted. He has had so much of it that I am quite sure he hates the sight of a camera.”32 Judging from the memoirs of press photographers of the day, very few ever “consulted” the prince when taking his picture, and most freely admitted to acquiring by any means possible. 33 William Turner remarked that the “photographic attack on His Royal Highness” was an inevitable outcome of the prince’s renown:

photographs

The nation- wide popularity of the Prince of Wales demands that we follow him on all his excursions in public with a conscientiousness which must as exasperating to him as it is tiring to us . . . At the same time, I feel he knows we do not haunt him of our own free will, but because we are expected to “carry home the goods.” There is no denying, however, that his patience has been severely tested, and nowadays nothing will more readily incur his disapproval than a battery of cameras.34 Beginning in the early 1920s, the stage was set for a confrontation between the private demands of the Prince of Wales and his role as a public figure. Press photographers increasingly assailed the distinction between the two. It was the prince’s worldwide fame that made the press photographer a problem for Buckingham Palace officials. It was one thing to have the British press—with its (but weakening) traditions of deferring to the royal will—recording the behavior of the royal household, but it was quite another to have to contend with the European and American press as well. In an age in which photographs from around the world circulated through Fleet Street’s major photographic agencies, it was all but impossible to keep photographs from appearing in newspapers. The American tabloid press, in particular, followed every move of the prince, and Americans demanded photographs of royals that did not heed the stuffy protocols obeyed by many on Fleet Street.35

established

To Buckingham Palace officials it seemed that press photographers—especially American ones—wanted only to humiliate the young heir to the throne, representing him as if he were a decadent playboy. The prince wrote with some exasperation, “Because I was the Prince of Wales and because newspaper readers then [in the 1920s] had less serious problems in the world to distract them, the mere report from some obscure village that I had been seen with ‘mud on my back’ or with my top hat ‘stove-in’ would assume world importance.”36 During the prince’s tour of the United States in the 1920s, photographs appearing in the American—and subsequently the British—tabloids gave the king and the royal advisors plenty of reasons to worry. The king was “outraged at what he called the ‘effrontery’ of American editors in daring to portray his eldest son so flippantly,” and subsequently did everything in his power to prevent any of his sons from returning to the United States, for fear of the lack of deference exhibited by its pressman. 37 Even back at home, however, the police tasked with guarding the prince identified the press photographer as a source of acute concern.38 A letter written by the inspector in charge of security reported that the prince “complained on one or two occasions of annoyance caused by Press photographers following him on golf links, etc., and in with local police steps were taken to prevent the annoyance as far as was The increasingly unwieldy mobs of press photographers around the prince inspired the implementation of the rota system that limited the numbers of press photographers allowed at royal events. 40 Police protection was the formalized, institutional expression of a more diffuse social pressure not to interfere in the royal family’s private life. Subtle intimidation had long been applied to journalists and photographers to keep their distance and withhold sensitive information. The royal entourage intervened directly in the work of photographers, to a sense of pity for a man hounded day and night, even feigning that the prince was ill in order to keep the cameras from flashing. 41 The prince used his own personal charisma to influence the behavior of journalists and photographers. His word carried a significant amount of social power, and many photographers recognized this. Press A. V. Swaebe, who made his name photographing celebrities in restaurants and nightclubs, admitted that in his encounters with the prince, “A nod, to indicate that on this particular evening he didn’t want me to take any pictures, and I would go away.”42

momentarily

conjunction possible.” 39

appealing

photographer

Even when potentially compromising news and images made it to press, the prince’s

private secretary, Godfrey Thomas, did his best to eliminate prurient innuendo or revelation. Thomas made use of his close relationship with the Sunday Express editor-in-chief and general man-about-Fleet-Street Ralph Blumenfeld to prevent the publication of anything seen to compromise the prince’s moral standing in the eyes of his subjects.43 A letter to Blumenfeld, written in 1931, reveals much about the anxieties of palace officials about the implications of press coverage, as well as some of the real institutional coercion faced by editors:

salacious

My dear Blum. This is a private letter, and I am only constrained to write it to you by the number of people who have spoken to me about the enclosed article from the front page of the

“Sunday Express.” I do not for a moment suggest that an interview with one of “The Prince’s dancing partners” is not fair news, only this kind of stuff (and, Gosh what a headline) does HRH an infinity of harm in almost every quarter. I suppose your bright modern journalist would reply by talking a lot of rot about the “human touch” and the kind of news the public want! But frankly that won’t wash nowadays, and from all that I hear people are getting heartily sick of this kind of thing about HRH . . . I don’t there is anything you can do about it but you are a good enough friend to forgive me letting off steam at you. Yrs. ever. Godfrey44

suppose

Thomas makes no attempt to hide his obvious distaste for the “bright modern journalist” and celebrity reporting in general. This combination of outrage and thinly veiled social pressure is evident in the many letters that exist between Thomas and Blumenfeld, which are littered with requests to rectify suggestive reporting relating to the most mundane aspects of the prince’s activities. 45 Resourceful photographers quickly learned that in order to get good pictures of the prince, they had to work stealthily. Many freely confessed to the sneaky means by which they caught the prince on camera. Hiding and disguising oneself from the royal security detail quickly became common practice.46 Of his experiences photographing the prince, Stanley Devon remarked candidly, [Press photographers] knew that [we were] bound somehow to sneak a picture worth printing . . . We were crushed between the police and our chiefs . . . It was now our wits against the police. Sometimes there was a wall to climb where the police might leave us in peace. Sometimes we bobbed back at the last minute and daringly exposed [our photographic plates] between the legs of the law while his eyes were turned in duty on the Prince. 47 Given the intense desire to protect the prince from photographers, it is surprising how remarkably indiscreet he could be about his own private life. The prince carried on two affairs with married women with whom he was often seen cavorting in public— and this was before he met Simpson, who would be his third married mistress. What might be seen as a bold affirmation of his unconventional lifestyle was in fact an odd mix of ignorance about and impatience with the growing power of the press over the means of royal representation. Godfrey Thomas probably said it best when he remarked with some incredulity that the Prince earnestly thought, “provided he out his public duties to the satisfaction of the Press and the man in the street, his private life is entirely his own concern.”48 For most of his life as prince, this almost seemed to be the case. Given the institutional and social pressure keeping news about his affairs from going to print, he might be excused for appearing to think his private life untouchable. He would, of course, be proven spectacularly wrong in his next affair with a married woman.

carries

Edward and Wallis Nothing that the prince did in his long life in front of the camera inspired as much attention—and press photographic activity—as his romance and eventual marriage to the American divorceé Wallis Simpson. The prince met Simpson in 1931 while she was still married to her second husband. By the time Edward became king, in January of 1936, Simpson was widely recognized as the royal mistress. Tensions arose when Simpson filed for divorce, and gossip spread that the king would choose her as his bride. Complicating matters was a Conservative administration headed by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin who made it known that any marriage between the king and Simpson would not be tolerated by the supreme power in the land, the Parliament. Nor would the Anglican Church, which did not condone divorce, allow the king (nominal head of the church) to marry a woman with two divorces behind her. The situation came to a head in December of 1936, when after weeks of negotiation the king finally abdicated the throne. The political history of King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson is well documented, as is the relationship between the press and Buckingham Palace; but somehow, in all of that voluminous analysis, the vast trove of photographic information inspired by the affair has gone unexamined. 49 In what seems almost unbelievable today—given the notoriously rowdy and invasive reputation of the British tabloids—nearly every British newspaper refrained from reporting on the relationship until a few days before the abdication was announced.50 The audible silence on the subject was the product of a very deliberate conspiracy between the king and Fleet Street’s main editors, primarily the Daily Express’s Lord Beaverbrook. In October 1936, with the Simpson divorce proceedings imminent, the king begged Beaverbrook to use his significant authority on Fleet Street to advocate censorship. 51 The aggressive and invasive tactics of photographers waiting outside the court in Ipswich, where the divorce was made decree nisi, gave profound warning to the king and convinced many editors and proprietors to eliminate any suggestive coverage.52 As Fleet Street restrained itself, European and American newspapers overflowed with information about the relationship. The American Press, officials feared, “suffered from no inhibitions and printed the most sensational stories.”53 The New York City tabloids presented the story with their characteristic frankness, declaring as early as October 26, over a month before the story broke in Britain, “KING TO MARRY ‘WALLY.’ ” 54 As a result of their lack of discretion, American newspapers entering Britain were carefully censored, not by governmental order, but by dutiful distributors fearful that they were peddling gossip. 55 The New York tabloids made a point of emphasizing that their British counterparts were cowed by a traditional sense of deference. An extensive exposé appearing in a September 1936 issue of the New York Daily News proclaimed, “Europe’s Newspapers Blind to Ruler’s Companion.” The article read, “For the most part, they [the King’s British subjects] don’t know much about the private life of their monarch . . . Only the press fails to see Mrs. Simpson, ever at Ruler’s side . . . Official courtesy demanded that should be blind to stories which were front page news in any language.” The article

worldwide

newspaper

scurrilous

newspapers

suggested that photographs posed the largest problem for royal officials, and included (unconfirmed) quotes from Simpson, suggesting, “There’s one thing that makes the King nervous . . . ‘It’s the sudden appearance of photographers. It’s not that he objects to a picture taken, but he wants to know about it beforehand.’ ”56 Whether or not Simpson actually uttered these words is less important than the Daily News’s emphasis on the importance of the photographic image. It illustrates an awareness of the particularly fraught nature of photographic evidence, and recognizes photographs as a source of anxiety (at least a perceived one) for the king and Simpson. The French newspaper Paris Soir responded to the leak of the news in the American press, and confirmed many of the details of those reports. The author used the to take a few jabs at the archaic formality and convention of British life, especially when it came to the royals: “It would be, indeed, a deep desolation, for the most country in the world, to give allegiance to a monarch who had not married someone of his own rank.” Paris Soir did not refrain from making its own prurient claims, suggesting, “It is known that King Edward VIII . . . shows himself highly intransigent about the respect which all must observe regarding his private life. This much is true, that the King— who alone could do it officially—will no doubt refrain from denying the rumor of his marriage to Mrs. Simpson.”57 Increasingly, the censoriousness of the British press influenced editorial policy on the Continent. British journalists and government officials pressured European editors to refrain from reporting. Sir George Clerk, the editor of a Paris edition of the Daily Mail, boasted of convincing French reporters to keep silent, and celebrated the restraint of the French press. He congratulated the journalist Madame Tabouis who had reported on the relationship in L’Oeuvre to publicly retract the story, apologizing for giving offense the king. German newspapers, in part because of Hitler’s avowed respect for the British monarchy and the British upper classes more generally, kept altogether silent on the issue. 58 The prime minister was certainly happy to see the press silence itself, at least until the situation could be contained. Baldwin worked to forge a brand of media-savvy that recognized the importance of press publicity in maintaining, somewhat paradoxically, the traditional values that he made such a centerpiece of his administration and his personality.59 Baldwin met with press officials to multiply the pressure on to suppress coverage, and he worked closely with Geoffrey Dawson at the Times to make sure that Britain’s most respectable newspaper would tow the government line.60 While Baldwin disliked Simpson, and in some ways even the king, his objections to the relationship were not merely personal. 61 He fervently detested the couple’s unwillingness to respect the power of the press and its impact on the public’s image of the monarchy, both at home and in the Dominions. 62 In one letter he wrote pointedly of Simpson, “I have grown to hate that woman. She has done more in nine months to damage the monarchy than Victoria and George the Fifth did to repair it in half a century.”63 The very nature of their relationship, and its confirmation in word and picture in the press, posed a threat to the established monarchical order bound up in the protocols of representation set by his predecessors.

opportunity traditionalist

conservatism

newspapers

The photographs of the couple were of particular concern to the prime minister, who warned the king to avoid being photographed while with Simpson. The tabloids—as the more “sensational” wing of the British press, and that most concerned with images—posed a particular problem for those who wanted to keep news of the affair contained.64 A dispatch from a London-based reporter to a New York office expressed Baldwin’s fears: “Baldwin had approached King urged him give up Riviera holiday outpointing that too many unconventional photographs of King and girl friends been published of previous visits to Riviera by King when still Prince Wales Baldwin though repetition such photographs do Crown no good . . . unfortunately Baldwin’s hope that change of holiday plans would stop photographers uneventuated.” 65 In the terse language of the abbreviated dispatch, the reporter highlights the fraught nature of the photograph, for the king and his love interest, as well as those in charge of determining their fate. The enforced silence on Fleet Street was not entirely due to Beaverbrook’s pressuring, nor to the press’s uncritical deference to Baldwin. Much of it had to do with a very deeply entrenched sense of respect for the private affairs of royal figures, dating back to the Victorian era. 66 Photographers might be willing to snap photographs of the prince without his knowledge while golfing or engaging in some other casual activity, but to freely report on his intimate relationship with a married woman had to be dealt with in a much more manner. The Duke of Windsor himself—reflecting back on his abdication— remarked,

photographic

delicate

This was not for want of enterprise on the part of the editors . . . What had stayed their hands was Fleet Street’s long-standing reticence where the privacy of the Royal Family is concerned. There is nothing servile in this tradition . . . it is founded on the premise that, if the exalted position of the Monarchy is to be preserved in the face of the encroaching cynicism of modern life, it must be held above carping and criticism. 67 Others were less forgiving than the former king, suggesting that Fleet Street’s inability to report on the matter revealed how blinkered the British people were when it came to and how unwilling many were to see the faults of royal figures.68 The anxiety about how to report on the issue without fundamentally disturbing the image of the royal family revealed conflicting impulses within the culture of British Even once the floodgates had been opened, many newspapers puzzled over exactly what they could write (or show) about the relationship—particularly the that relied upon a certain amount of prurience as a matter of course. The Daily Mirror produced two versions of a front page the day the news broke, an early edition cautiously addressing the issue as a constitutional matter of state, and a later edition as a matter of royal romance (Figure 3.3).69 The flood of reporting that was to come exposed tensions that had been brewing for months. Newspapers might have been afraid to publish photographs of the couple, but they were not afraid to acquire them. In a matter of days, multiple years’ worth of photographs and stories flooded onto the sheets of newspapers. The concentrated intensity of this crisis makes the press of it a fascinating study in the power of the press in representing the private lives of royals.

royalty,

journalism. tabloids

representation

Shattering the royal image Well before December 3, when the self-imposed silence finally ended, British news editors had been asking press photographers to pursue the king and his love interest. Because British reporters had to refrain from direct comment, photographers were called upon to compile an archive of images (to be used when, inevitably, the story went to press) documenting one of the most sensational stories in the history of the modern British The existence of a market in photographs of the couple reveals that British press photographers were actively taking and peddling such images, despite official protest.70 While press photographers snapped photographs of the couple for years, even to sneak a few into the pages of newspapers, it was not until the late summer of 1936, when the king invited Simpson and several other close friends to join him on his holiday in the Adriatic aboard Lady Yule’s yacht Nahlin, that the world’s press began actively reporting on the relationship.71 The trip found the couple silently besieged by from around the world, many of whom camped out on seaside ridges in order to capture photographs of the couple on board the ship, and one intrepid photographer even masqueraded as a local fisherman to get nearer to the king.72 The photographic interest in the occasion was enough of a concern that Buckingham Palace officials sent multiple requests to newspapers to stop coverage of the trip, and to desist in sending

monarchy.

managing

photographers

photographers in pursuit of the Nahlin.73 The World’s Press News reported, “Despite two official intimations that as little as possible should be published concerning the King’s cruising holiday, newspapers are apparently still uncertain as to the amount of space in news and pictures that may be given to the trip.”74 While nearly every British newspaper kept quiet—some even jettisoned their planned coverage of the holiday— the story appeared prominently in at least two British On August 16, the Sunday Referee featured the couple together on the front page, 75 referring to Simpson by name, and reproduced several additional photographs of the pair on its back page. One week later, the Weekly Illustrated featured photographs of the as the lead story. The story included a photograph of the king and Simpson together, though the editors strategically omitted her name from the caption. These images would not appear again in a British newspaper until December of that year, once the news of the relationship had officially broken. Stanley Devon was one of the craftiest photographers in pursuit of the Nahlin, going to great lengths to snap photographs of the couple unaware. Devon was ordered by the editor of the Daily Sketch to bring back any usable photographs of the two together, in the recognition that such images would eventually be of use. Closely trailing his subjects, Devon was warned by the stationmaster at Salzburg, the king’s first point of call, “If you want to take photographs . . . that must not be seen. It is forbidden to take photographs by the King’s wish. The police are confiscating cameras.”76 Devon took this advice. He tossed his bulky camera case and rigged his camera to fit neatly inside of his coat. Once he had successfully tracked down the king’s yachting party, Devon subtly opened his coat at just the right moment, without anyone noticing, and snapped a photograph of the couple among a group of friends, the king appearing to look directly at the camera (Figure 3.4 ).77 Part of the allure of the photograph, for Devon and for his editors, was its illicit acquisition—taken against the will of one of the most powerful people in the world. He reproduced the photograph in his autobiography, captioning it “the forbidden picture.” During this same trip, Devon captured one of the most highly circulated photographs of the abdication period (Figure 3.5 bottom center). The image shows the couple in a pedal boat. The prince is shirtless and Simpson wears a bathing suit and a large straw hat that she uses to shield her face from the sun. Proud of his photographic Devon excitedly relayed the story of its acquisition. In a bold and inventive move, he circled the couple in a propeller plane that he had chartered, leaning out of an open side door with a magnifying camera lens. When the couple ventured from the yachting party for an intimate excursion, Devon engaged in what resembles a military assault: “We did three low- level attacks on the world’s most powerful reigning monarch. I took a picture on each.”78 The tabloids, starting with the Daily Sketch and quickly followed by its liberally reproduced the results of this photographic “attack” once the news of the affair had broken. Hurried and rough, the image shows signs of the stress of its making: blurry, and retouched to accentuate whatever detail was caught on camera. In its frantic lack of focus or compositional clarity, the image possesses a quality that would come to define tabloid photographs of celebrities in the next half century. Karin Becker has astutely argued that “technical ‘flaws’ like extreme graininess and underexposure have actually

newspapers.

holiday

accomplishment,

competitors,

distorted,

Figure 3.4 Stanley Devon, The Prince of Wales, Wallis Simpson, and Entourage Taken Unaware, Summer 1936. Reproduced in Stanley Devon, Glorious

become conventions of the tabloids’ style, visually stating the technical compromises the newspaper will accept in its commitment to presenting the ‘real’ story.”79 What makes Devon’s photograph successful—and what surely undergirded its appeal once the news had become public—was its disregard for the protocols of royal representation, and the

Figure 3.5 Sunday Graphic, December 6, 1936. Devon’s photograph taken from the air is bottom center. © The British Library Board

conventions of mainstream press photography. Precisely because they were so garbled, in other words, Devon’s photographs of the king and Simpson express a firm to seeing the “real” king—warts and all. In what may appear now as an innocuous photographic cliché, the image was even scandalously, novel when it was taken. It was the first photograph in history to exhibit the unclothed body of a British monarch for a mass audience; the first to show, quite unapologetically, that the emperor had no clothes. Going to great lengths—manning an air assault—was prurience, for sure, but it was also evidence of a dedication to eroding the defensive layers that had accumulated to protect the royal image. The desire for photographs of the royal pair—and all those involved in the cause célèbre—grew even more frenzied in the late days of November and early days of December 1936 after Simpson filed for divorce and speculation grew that she would be chosen as the king’s bride. As the relationship slowly became public knowledge and seemed to jeopardize the standing of the king, photographers from all over the world flooded to London to snap photographs of the two most sought-after faces in the world. Fleet Street photographer “Lucky” Dean wrote of the days after the news broke: “The Press of England and America went riotously wild over it, and the fellows who were assigned to cover it in all its aspects were pushed into a weary vigil that culminated in an excited and successful chase.” 80 By all accounts the hunger for images of the couple laid waste to any formalities proscribing photography during moments of personal duress. Reporters and photographers in great numbers clamored to get images and information

commitment remarkably,

suitable for print. The tenacity of journalists during the crisis inspired fear among many in the royal household, not least the king himself. He wrote, The sense of being in a state of siege was more than an illusion. The press, British and international, had meanwhile descended en masse . . . The photographers always more daring and less inhibited than the reporters, refused to be restrained by the high fence surrounding the property. Armored with long-range lenses, they closed about The Fort with the stealthy resolve of commandos.81 Photographers managed to breach the fortifications of the estate where the king was holed up. The guards were kept busy expelling unwanted journalist intruders from the property. Police were hired specifically to keep a look out for low-flying planes, in the fear that they could be transporting photographers.82 Press photographers profited greatly if they had been wise enough to disobey the official requests (and the prince’s protestations) not to photograph the couple. Newspapers from around the globe sent representatives and dispatches by the dozen to well-known London photographers, hoping to find photographs of the couple. A. V. Swaebe received requests not only from the leading Fleet Street papers but also from “the United States, France, Germany and almost every country in Europe.” Requests came from as far away as China and Japan. 83 He was able to convince the Daily Mirror to give him 100 guineas for a photograph that he happened to catch of the couple just weeks before Edward’s ascension to the throne.84 The need for photographs of Simpson was particularly acute. Devon remarked, “Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were forgotten. Instead, a woman whom very few in Britain had ever heard of the day before became No. 1 target for the world’s Press.”85 The battery of press photographers following Simpson raised fears for her safety. The newspaperman (and confidante to the king) Compton Mackenzie opined, Thanks to the . . . failure of the lighter Press to introduce her to the public without resisting the temptation to place a premium upon news value at the expense of good taste, it was inevitable that even her personal safety should be a source of grave and prudence made it imperative for her to be out of England while the problem remained unresolved. 86

concern, The press photographer was a particular source of anxiety for those in charge of

securing Simpson. Reporters and photographers stormed her home on Cumberland Terrace. 87 An unpublished photograph kept at the National Media Museum, taken by press photographer Edward Malindine, shows an exterior shot of Simpson’s residence the day after the news broke. A crowd of figures, one of whom is presumably Simpson, move in a cluster toward a waiting car. A constable walks commandingly down the driveway, his hand raised as if to shoo away the reporters and photographers gathered on the street. The image captures a crucial moment in which Simpson’s photographic image is being protected from the intrusions of the press photographer. Malindine’s photograph must have been the closest anyone got to photographing Simpson at her home. A photograph

reproduced in theDaily Express showing a constable standing resolutely outside Simpson’s home carries the caption “Photographers turned away by police guard.”88 The press photographer had been identified as a visible security threat. In an attempt to avoid the media frenzy in London, Simpson left in secrecy, absconding to Southern France. Following closely at her heels was an army of reporters and whose numbers only increased as many more French journalists joined the hunt. 89 Her time in France was spent dodging photographers and hatching elaborate plans to avoid further publicity. On one occasion, she crawled from a kitchen window in order to prevent photographers from knowing that she had left a restaurant.90 Most of her days were spent holed up in a villa in Cannes, with police enforcing a perimeter one hundred yards from her residence.91 Devon recounted the scene at Cannes, describing how the “villa was surrounded by gendarmes and photographers in hundreds . . . Mrs Simpson was as much a prisoner as if she had been locked up in the Tower.”92 Because she was delayed in making any direct statements to the press—her first public words came on December 8—photographs were the only evidence of her activities. Photo opportunities were offered to the press in exchange for all journalists to leave her alone.93 Though they gladly embraced the opportunity to take her picture, photographers rarely kept their end of the bargain. The photographs that appeared during the crisis represented royal figures in a way that they had never been seen before. Newspapers—particularly the photographic tabloids— willingly printed almost any photograph that they could find, many of which only register the penumbral blur of a face, or the faintest hint of a human presence. Because of the high security around the king and Mrs. Simpson, the photographs from the early days of the crisis that made it to print are difficult to decipher as photographs of anybody, let alone as the two most famous faces in the world. The first photograph taken of Simpson after the scandal had broken is a remarkable image, if a very bad likeness. Little more than a smear of ink with the slightest bit of patterning indicating her coat, Simpson is a spectral presence emerging from her French hideout.94 Similarly, the photographs printed of the king often showed him hunched in the back of an automobile, hands partially covering his face. Most remarkable of all of the photographs of the couple are those that have been retouched, or even entirely reworked. Retouching had been a part of “candid” camera photography since its inception, often used as a means of refining or effacing particular visual details of a photograph.95 One of the most widely circulated images of the period was taken during the Proclamation of the Accession, showing the soon-to-be king in St. James’s Palace standing alongside Simpson (see Figure 3.5 upper right). It is difficult, upon close examination, to determine where the photograph ends and where the retouching begins. The two faces are carved out of the darkness with the end of the retoucher’s tool, and even the windowpanes seem too distinct, too artificial, to have looked like that. Despite this heavy-handed graphic manipulation, the caption below the image still claims, “This picture is probably the only one in existence of His Majesty and Mrs. Simpson together in an English palace during a public ceremony,” suggesting that the image provides some kind of documentary proof of their time spent together. 96

photographers,

significantly

actually

This exact photograph, despite its obvious lack (or wholesale erasure) of photographic detail, played an important role in sealing the king’s fate. Beaverbrook would admit as much in an anecdote included in his history of the abdication crisis: The threat to the Throne was to come from quite another source [than his immediate inner circle]. While the popularity of the King was unchallenged and appeared to be unchallengeable, there were rumours in Fleet Street. These were strengthened by a photograph of a small group at a window of Saint James’s Palace watching a parade. It was an intimate gathering of the King’s close friends, but there was a woman among them whose face was unfamiliar. Who was this unknown lady? 97

ceremonial

The unknown lady, as he quickly discovered, was Simpson. In this statement, Beaverbrook revealed the role of photographic reporting in the making of the abdication crisis. If a existed showing Simpson at the king’s side from the very moment of his to the throne (while she was still married, no less), then the adulterous nature of the king’s relationship was not something that could be written off as mere “rumours in Fleet Street.” The photograph confirmed these rumors as fact. Through word and image, press coverage played a crucial role in pressing the king and the government to take immediate action.98 Too much was publicly known, and clearly visible in photographs, for the king simply to keep Simpson as his mistress or (worse as far as Baldwin was concerned) to take her as his morganatic wife. A letter from Beaverbrook to R. D. Elliot in December 15, 1936, suggested as much: “As things turned out, the publicity broke out in the press, and when that occurred the situation changed. It was no longer probable that a decision could be avoided. And the Government evidently took the view that the sooner the thing was settled, the better.”99 Writing in the aftermath of the abdication, Hamilton Fyfe blamed the tabloids specifically, remarking that despite its pro-king stance, “the Daily Mirror looks lately as if it were modeled on the New York tabloids . . . [and] was printing pages of ill-natured gossip about [the King] and Mrs. Simpson, which, whatever his own desire had been, would have made it impossible for him to stay.” 100 The tabloids self-consciously discussed the role of press photography in the king’s course of action. The Daily Mirror ran a story that identified doctored photographs—called “composographs”—as an important factor motivating the to push for abdication. The composograph was an image produced by significantly altering a photographic negative, or combining multiple photographs, in order to give the impression of a truthful photographic image. Immediately after the abdication, the Daily Mirror condemned this practice, shrilly announcing, “These Lies Poisoned the World! The Camera Can’t Lie—But This One Did!” and featured a photograph that had circulated widely, starting in a New York tabloid (Figure 3.6 ).101 The article went on:

photograph accession

determining government

The lies which have warped the minds of the Dominions have not been confined to print. Pictures, too, have offended. This picture, which appeared in one journal, bears a caption which states that the King and Mrs. Simpson are walking hand in hand. The

Figure 3.6 Daily Mirror, December 8, 1936. © The British Library Board

picture as it was published is obviously faked . . . By touching up and paint brush work it has been made to appear that they are walking hand in hand. 102 The article suggested that such photographs soured the public against the couple (and therefore determined their fate) by posing as truthful testaments to their adulterous affair. The existence of such an image revealed how the press could manipulate the deeply held belief in the veridical authority of the camera. The Daily Mirror emphasized that the press photograph (even if it had been manipulated) had forced the king’s hand in the matter of abdication. Interestingly, however, the newspaper used the image to position its own photographs as offering the “real story” of the affair, unmarred by mendacious retouching, by providing an alternative (and presumably less deceptive) representation of “The King’s Romance—In Pictures.” In the wake of the affair, the New York Daily News also suggested that press more than any other form of reporting, exposed the truth of the king’s secret romance. In a photographic featured entitled “Pictures that Made Two Private Lives Public,” which featured all of the widely reproduced photographs of the affair, the newspaper asserted that photographic images dissolved the barriers of access to the king’s private life. The press photographer penetrated the illusory façade of the king’s public persona, and offered readers the chance to view the truth of his private activities. Photographs, the logic ran, had a unique ability to expose and publicize private information.

photographs,

The photographs of the couple represented a direct assault on the image of the The king suggested that the photographs that appeared in many newspapers insulted his position. He wrote,

monarchy.

Publicity was part of my heritage, and I was never so naive as to suppose that my romance was a tender shoot to be protected from the prying curiosity of the press. But what stared at me from the newspapers that were brought to my room on Thursday morning [the first day the news broke] really shocked me. Could this be the King, or was I some common felon? The press creates; the press destroys. 103 Roger Hargreaves and Bill Deedes have argued that the photographs appearing late in the abdication crisis exhibited the king as a weak and broken man, reflecting his unpopularity.104 More than this, however, these images marked an important in the relationship of the royal family and the press more broadly. In their pursuit of photographs of the couple, photographers went to great lengths, significantly disrupting the traditional reverence many on Fleet Street felt for the royals. Press photographers, for a few short days, had shattered the covenant that had existed between Fleet Street and Buckingham Palace since the advent of photographic reportage. In light of the importance given to the press coverage of the event—and the coverage perhaps most potently—Edward VIII’s abdication speech takes on an added layer of meaning. He ended his speech with the poignant phrase: “I now quit altogether public affairs and I lay down my burden.” It seems safe to say that he referred not only to the burdens of monarchical rule, but also a burden of representation that went along with it. Monarchy in the age of the tabloid photographer proved a heavy burden indeed. Unfortunately for him, it was not as if the coverage of the abdicated king (now Duke of Windsor) and his new duchess ceased altogether after the announcement of December 10. Most British newspapers changed gears sharply, redirecting their attention to the new king and his family, but the presence of photographers around the ducal pair remained constant. Simpson publicly pleaded for cameramen— apparently the British and American cameramen were the most adamant—to “lift the siege” on her villa in Cannes. Many remained there for weeks after the abdication. 105 The couple chose an obscure French chateau as the venue for their wedding in large part to avoid photographic Simpson later wrote, “The thing we feared most was that the press, descending once again in a locust swarm would turn the occasion into a roadside carnival. So we needed a place that could not be overrun by intruders.” 106 In the end, however, the wedding retreat was indeed overrun with photographers. Cecil Beaton, who was selected to photograph the Windsors within castle walls, made sure to keep an eye out for those attempting to steal his compositions: “to avoid possible sightseers with telescopic lenses we had to confine ourselves to certain shielded parts of the house.” 107 But for all his vigilance, Beaton could not guarantee that his were the first photographs to make it to print. Keystone’s Bert Garai, using his leverage with W. Soper, the other photographer hired to photograph the event, was able to get photographs of the couple in wedding attire, and sell them to the Evening Standard before Beaton had even returned to London with his prints.108

increasing transition

photographic

photographers attention.

Figure 3.7 Daily Mirror, October 23, 1937. © The British Library Board

The Windsors, it was apparent, had lost control over how and when their photographs would appear to the public. Their celebrity status did not dim in the coming years, and they remained a staple subject for press photographers on the hunt for images of Society figures vacationing in sun-drenched locations.109 More soberingly, the couple’s ill-advised trip to the Third Reich to meet Hitler and his ministers also attracted a good deal of appearing to provide documentary proof of a happy entente between the British royals and the Nazi regime (Figure 3.7 ). The new royal family were not pleased with this news. The photographs of the Windsors arm-in-arm with Hitler worked only to further alienate the duke and duchess from the firmly anti-Nazi royal family. 110 Although they had plenty of evidence that their public activities were under the close scrutiny of press photographers, they seemed not to grasp the gravity of their public appearances. Photographs of the couple continued to threaten the image of the sober, nonpolitical British monarchy, as it had developed since the reign of Victoria.

publicity,

A new royal family Looking back on the events of late 1936, journalist and anti-monarchical republican Kingsley Martin suggested that “King Edward did the monarchy a good turn. For the British had lost their heads about the Crown.”111 What the scandal had done, Martin

suggested, was to make the British people abandon a view of the royal family as above reproach. The scandal associated with Edward VIII made the private lives of royal figures the subject of photographic coverage for the first time in history. Photographers no longer winced at the threats from Scotland Yard that photographs would not be allowed. The new monarch and his family helped ease the transition. The events of early December 1936 caught the Duke of York off guard, as he and his wife found themselves the potential new sovereigns of Great Britain.112 A widely reproduced photograph from the first days of the crisis reveals how eager the press was to photograph the potential new king, as well as his ambivalence about the weight of his new role. It shows him running from photographers as he exits his limousine and enters Buckingham Palace, with the headline “Duke of York in a hurry.”113 The fact that the tabloid press was keen to reproduce such photographs—which expose an obvious disinclination by their subjects to be photographed—says much about an altered relationship between the royals and the press. The new Georgian monarchy seemed to restore the image of royal life that Edward VIII had done so much to dismantle. If Edward had challenged the image of the monarchy as morally upright, then George VI set out to reconstitute the royal brand that had been affirmed by his father.114 The Daily Mirror included a photographic feature of the family just after the abdication, declaring, “The Homely Family Who Will Lead the Empire,” and “Intimate Pictures of their Simple Life.” 115 Of course there was nothing “simple” about the lives of one of the richest and most powerful patrician families in the world, but the Windsor monarchy depended upon this illusion.116 George VI embraced the press photographer as a means of affirming his and agreeable personality as a ruler. He frequently engaged in conversation with the photographers who snapped his picture, even allowing himself to be photographed learning how press cameras operated.117 The new queen also entertained the presence of press photographers in a way markedly different from previous monarchs.118 Devon remarked,

offering

personable

The new Queen Elizabeth made it seem a privilege for her to be photographed by us . . . Instinctively, she always did what we wanted her to do. After a while she even came to know what distance we focused for. It was normally five yards. And five yards away precisely, wherever she saw us, she would pause, smile, make the picture for us and wait until we had taken it. And if a flash-bulb failed to go off she would wait until the unlucky photographer had changed it and had a second shot.119 The new royal family seemed particularly primed for life in front of the camera—their accessibility as monarchs united with their willingness to be photographed for the press. In a new era of press photography, informality could cut both ways. While such certainly endeared the royals to their subjects, the amenability of the family often bred an expectation of universal access by press photographers. “Lucky” Dean wrote frankly about the bold and even potentially illegal methods of securing images of the new royal family. One story is particularly revealing:

qualities

I had instructions from Topical Press to get the Royal children at play on the beach, and the other photographers were issued with similar orders . . . [but] The place was full of detectives and local police officers who were detailed to prevent anybody from lurking in the vicinity of the spot where [the Queen] and her children usually spent their time in the open air . . . [One photographer] suggested a boat, expressing his belief that if we rowed to a spot near the children the police and detectives could do nothing about stopping us working . . . We hired a boat without a boatman . . . Two of the other Fleet Street boys elected to stay on shore so that they could continue to roam about with their cameras uncovered and so lure the policemen away from the water’s edge . . . We got as near as possible and started shooting, but the police officers spotted us and started running . . . Not to be outdone they began pacing about in front of the Royal children . . . but their efforts did not have the desired effect, because we were using long- focus lenses which foreshortened our pictures.120 It was only after being detained by police, and threatened with legal charges (later dropped) that Dean and his colleagues were able to rush to Fleet Street and print the booty of their raid. Though the bold attempts to capture photographs of the Prince of Wales in the 1920s and 1930s clearly presaged this type of photographic invasion, there does seem to be something new by the end of the 1930s in the willingness of photographers to breach the standards of etiquette associated with photographing the royal family. A threshold had been crossed, made possible by technological change as well as the transformations in the media’s relationship to the monarchy. The scandal involving Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson marked a key moment in up access to the royal family’s private life to the eyes of the press. Photojournalism created a new way of seeing the royals, helping to forge a new image of monarchy. In some ways, the star-crossed couple was a victim of circumstance. The mid-1930s marked a high moment in the development of technologies of candid photography, as well as the great proliferation of press photographers in Britain and around the world with a vested interest in capturing photographs of the British royals. The treatment of the couple by press photographers illustrates not only that Fleet Street in no way cowered from official restrictions on press coverage, but, perhaps even more than that, it reveals a vigorous new culture of photographic surveillance. Edward VIII’s difficult history with the press photographer’s camera reveals that he was ill equipped for (or perhaps simply unwilling to succumb to) the burden of publicity that was concomitant with royal life in the age of the tabloids. The tabloids worked to reinvent the royals as modern celebrities, subject to the whims of media publicity. Photographic reporting played an important role in communicating the news of the affair to the mass public, as well as determining how the king and those in power could respond. The unseemly nature of the king’s affair to a married woman jeopardized the image of the British monarchy. As the real political power of the monarchy was functionally an assault on the image of monarchy—a literal sabotaging of how the royal family appeared for their subjects to see—was an assault on the last source of authority and importance that the royal family seemed to possess. Baldwin and the administration that, and feared that the king was indifferent to the importance of tried and tested

opening

nonexistent,

recognized

protocols of royal behavior. His indiscreet behavior in public, especially in front of seemed proof enough of that. Royals would never again take the power of the photographic image for granted. It was due in large part to the photographic output associated with that event that Cecil Beaton could write in 1951, long before Princess Margaret herself became a tabloid scandal,

cameramen,

Now that Press photography of Royalty has become a part of daily life, many younger members of the royal family know exactly how best to face the onslaught of the and instinctively pose to the greatest advantage when confronted by a battery of press photographers. The Duchess of Kent knows to lower her chin, Princess Margaret when to raise hers.121

camera

Camera consciousness had become inevitable in the lives of the royal family. Raised in the glare of the flashbulb, a new generation of royalty would attempt (unsuccessfully perhaps) to learn from the events of November and December 1936. The tabloid press photographer, in short, occupied a powerfully influential position in the lives of monarchs. While King Edward’s issues with the press photographer may have been on a scale not seen by any previous monarch, they certainly were not without certain antecedents. From the days of King Edward VII, the monarchy was forced to adjust itself to the new reality of the tabloids and their privileging of photographic news. The press photographer became a “problem” for which the royals sought effective solutions. The press photographer played an important part in creating the monarchy that we have come to know, occupying a space somewhere between the mythologized world of royalist lore, and the smudgy, photographic pages of the tabloid newspaper. Of course, it was not only the monarchy that experienced the impact of the tabloid press and its new culture of photographic visibility. Anyone in the public eye had to with the new army of press photographers. As the next chapter shows, this had resonance with the subset of British society that had long been a source of public interest and scrutiny: the aristocratic elite.

celebrity

contend particular

4 PHOTOCRACY: CELEBRITY AND ARISTOCRATIC "DECLINE" IN THE 1930s In his 1933 satire The Society Racket, the aristocratic gossip columnist Patrick Balfour had few kind words for the debutante. In a passage dripping with venom, he wrote, “Society debutantes today, from the sub- debutante age . . . plaster themselves in orchids and make-up, they dye their hair and varnish their nails, and compete feverishly for like so many film stars. Their lives are led in the full glare of public curiosity, and their actions staged accordingly.”1 For Balfour, and many other social commentators of the 1930s, the actions of debutantes testified to the penetration of Hollywood exhibitionism into the heart of the exclusive world of the English upper crust. The debutante’s “feverish” desire for publicity was a clear index of the new conception of publicness and publicity that upset time-tested protocols of appropriate aristocratic behavior. Debutantes were only one set of characters in the broader media coverage of life. By the mid-1930s, British and foreign commentators regularly remarked on the strange ubiquity of the upper-classes in popular print journalism. Balfour succinctly referred to the phenomenon as the “Lordolatry” of the British press. 2 Aldous Huxley wrote, “I am always staggered . . . by the inordinate snobbery of the English press. In no other country do so many newspapers devote so large a proportion of their space to a of the activities of the merely rich or the merely ennobled.”3 More than any other newspapers, the tabloids fed and gave shape to this media fascination with the lives of the very rich. This intense press coverage revealed profound transformations in the public role and popular representation of Britain’s aristocracy. The “Society” referred to in the title of Balfour’s book, and the subject of Huxley’s slur, was a fairly recent invention in the 1930s. An amalgam of titled families and upwardly mobile nouveaux riches, Society with a “S” was an index of a changing aristocracy.4 Many scholars have identified the early twentieth century as the moment of terminal “decline” in the aristocratic class, witnessing its inexorable deterioration in the political, economic, and social spheres.5 This narrative of decline, however, does not do justice to the fact that aristocratic titles continued to wield an immense amount of cultural influence well into the 1960s, even if their economic and political influence of the historical nobility had undoubtedly waned.6 Aristocratic titles

publicity

aristocratic

chronicle

capital

PUBLIC IMAGES

served an important sociological function, conferring rank and authority to families that had “made it” into the upper echelons of British social life.7 Ross McKibbin has shown that after the First World War, as Society became less rigidly aristocratic, it evolved into “a picture of metropolitan glamour which none the less still legitimated the existing of wealth and social esteem.” 8 While on the one hand, the press attention focused on Society life revealed the displacement of landed families with new kinds of wealthy on the other hand, it exposed a continued fascination with nobility and the enduring cultural power of aristocratic titles. McKibbin’s use of “glamour” is key in this regard, as the term speaks to the ways in which celebrity culture renegotiated ideas of social worth. “Glamour” took on distinct in the 1920s as a result of its associations with Hollywood film stars, and the fact that it was often applied to Society figures by the 1930s reveals something crucial about the interaction of celebrity and social class.9 John Berger has argued, “Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion. The industrial society which has moved towards democracy and then stopped half way is the ideal society for generating such an emotion.”10 In his way, glamour was a term well suited to Society life. The enduring power and influence of Society revealed the limits of progress in Britain, even as it illustrated the increasing cultural sway of mass media. The press attention directed at traditional elites, then, complicates notions that is a reflection of democratic values. Leo Braudy has argued convincingly that celebrity is “democratized fame,” or the modern, meritocratic expression of the ancient concept of renown. Tabloid coverage of aristocratic socialites, however, is at once aristocratic and democratic in its social expression.11 It is potent evidence of a society “stopped half way” in its democratic evolution. Paradoxically, the charismatic pull of aristocratic titles dovetailed with the emerging cult of personality produced by twentieth-century mass media. 12 The photographic press was a key venue in the forging of Society as a “picture of metropolitan glamour,” to make use of McKibbin’s elegant phrase. Weeklies such as the Tatler, the Sketch, and the Bystander, as well as the daily tabloids the Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch, wer e important players in the production of Society life as mass On one level, the tabloids transferred an existing culture of class voyeurism, rooted in the traditional culture of spectatorship around rituals of aristocratic life, and on another, they facilitated a new way of consuming the private lives of the social elite. 13 The tabloids helped transform the aristocracy into a media spectacle to be consumed through photographs. The debutante provides a unique perspective into this discussion because she was the pinnacle of a culture of performance and photographic self-fashioning endemic to London Society in the interwar years. Often referred to in the press as “glamour girls,” debutantes were intimately identified with an embrace of the media as a vehicle for social advancement. A well-advertised debutante did not need to be born into the gentry because money and media visibility—photographic visibility perhaps most of all—became a means of accessing titles. For some debutantes, celebrity status held the promise of being a pathway to the aristocracy.

distribution socialites,

connotations

democratic democratized celebrity

entertainment.

PHOTOCRACY

The media attention directed at debutantes reveals the gendered construction of celebrity culture. The interwar debutantes were the prototype of a form of ephemeral celebrity focused on wealthy young women, which played itself out in a variety of ways as the twentieth century progressed.14 While their husbands, fathers, and brothers might have been running for parliament or serving as ministers in governmental cabinets, were often “famous for being famous,” attracting media attention because of how they looked, where they vacationed, and who they were going to marry.15 This tended to construct debutantes as frivolous, socially irresponsible girls with little more on their minds than frocks and finding husbands, which opened them up to ridicule and satire from all angles. Debutantes were some of the first victims of the growth of a more sensationalist tabloid press and the emergence of new styles of photojournalism in the 1930s, which created new pressures for those in the public eye.

debutantes

"The craving for publicity and advertisement" The tabloids developed exactly at the moment of the most rapid transition in the makeup of aristocratic Society, and played a crucial role in reconstructing the popular image of upper- class life. Over the course of the first decade of the twentieth century—just as the tabloids came into being—the aristocracy underwent profound changes deriving from a wide variety of factors, including the crippling burden of maintaining grand estates, new forms of progressive taxation, and by the end of that decade, diminished authority in Parliament.16 At the same time, the aristocratic families absorbed wealthy and parvenu Americans who injected capital into heavily indebted estates. In certain ways, the tabloids serve as a chronicle of the changing character of the aristocracy in Britain, revealing the evolution in its social composition, its public face, and its role in cultural life. The emergence of the tabloids put pressure on the historical prejudice in aristocratic life against the pursuit or embrace of publicity. As a matter of custom and prejudice, to have one’s name or picture appear in the newspapers, especially cheap mass conferred a distinctly vulgar taint, unbefitting true aristocrats. In his study of celebrity culture, David Marshall has suggested that in the mid- and late nineteenth century, when the term “celebrity” first came into widespread use, it was “a term that announces a vulgar sense of notoriety. In English culture, it may have articulated the separation of old wealth and new wealth.”17 The transience of celebrity seemed anathema to the endurance of noble blood.18 The photographic newspapers that proliferated around 1900 weakened the resolve of aristocrats attempting to remain unsullied by press attention. The tabloids made a direct appeal to the long-standing popular desire to see portraits of the social elite, a mass platform for consuming and commenting upon aristocratic personalities. 19 The Tatler was the most self-consciously invested in the appeal of aristocratic and elegantly composed portraits from major West End studios were a central feature of that newspaper’s photographic coverage. Similarly, despite the difference in audience, the tabloid dailies, such as the Daily Mirror, regularly reproduced portraits of

industrialists

newspapers,

creating portraiture,

aristocrats, in part because the photographic weeklies had served as an initial for the first tabloids.20 The widespread circulation of these portraits meant that the aristocratic faces printed on the front pages of newspapers became popular currency. Britain’s landed elite was a central part of the culture of visibility that the tabloids had helped to unleash. Photographic newspapers also produced and perpetuated a new form of reportage focused on Society leisure activities. Society events had long operated as a form of public entertainment, and as Leonore Davidoff has shown, events such as the races at Ascot placed Society spectators on display, creating a kind of theatrical setting that encouraged the middle and working classes to gaze upon their social 21 The press photographer quickly recognized that photographs of aristocrats at public events had a built-in audience, and could easily sell to the tabloids. Photographs of aristocrats attending the festivities at Ascot became a standard aspect of the tabloids’ visual culture, explicitly identifying aristocrats as “celebrities” ( Figure 4.1 ). Through such coverage, the tabloids made an existing form of class voyeurism available to a mass readership. While a few hundred people attending Ascot might have been able to see into the Royal Enclosure in person, millions could see its distinguished denizens reproduced in the newspaper. Ascot was only the most notable venue in which the press photographer could on the public’s interest in aristocracy. The press photographer colonized an increasing number of spaces of aristocratic leisure. Photographers captured images of aristocrats strolling in London’s parks, attending weddings, christenings, and other events that marked the meeting of great landed families. Holidays in the South of France and other sunny Continental destinations became a fixture of tabloid culture, particularly in the Tatler and the Bystander, which specialized in such images. Members of the aristocratic elite acknowledged the increasing presence of press and the impact of publicity on Society life. Many autobiographies and memoirs from the period discuss the ubiquity of journalists and photographers. 22 Leolia Ponsonby, for one, remarked of her adolescence in the years just before the First World War, “On weekdays we went to watch the riders in the Row . . . Between twelve and one it was often difficult to find an empty chair [due to] photographers hovering about, looking for titled folk to snap for the Tatler.” 23 This image of the pushy press photographer in pursuit of aristocrats conveniently elides the complicity of many of their subjects. Quite often, press photographers were encouraged to attend and document events. This was particularly true for the hunts held on great aristocratic estates, where photographers came at the express permission of the aristocratic owners. 24 The hunt was such a crucial site for photographing Society that a Fleet Street press photographer apprised his fellow photographers, “There are a number of famous Hunts to which many well-known Society people are drawn irresistibly . . . The meet is generally held at an easily accessible place, and at a time of the day when the winter or spring light is at its best. It is advisable to be there at least a quarter of an hour before the advertised time.”25 The entire event, down to the lighting and weather and the “advertised time,” seemed to be orchestrated for the press benefit.

inspiration

documentary

superiors.

capitalize

photographers

celebrities

photographer’s

Figure 4.1 Daily Mirror, June 24, 1905. © The British Library Boar

Society hostesses— as the impresarios of aristocratic social life—were the most at harnessing the powers of the media. 26 These women expertly drew attention to themselves and the balls and charity events that they organized. Society events—almost always sponsored and organized by prominent women—were social spaces that relied upon a certain amount of publicity as a matter of course. Familiarity with the press was expected and even necessary. What was more, studio portraits of Society hostesses were one of the main features of the earliest tabloids, often featured on front pages, gossip columns, and rotogravure spreads. The conservative owners of the Tatler built their brand on the strength of the appeal of these portraits, partly because they preferred Society women to the “brazen” women of the stage, and recognized the value of affirming traditional hierarchies.27 In this way, then, an element of self-publicity was baked into the lives of women of a particular class and stature. The increasing presence of the press in Society life stirred disquiet among traditionalist aristocrats. Arthur Ponsonby was one of the first figures to address the impact of media publicity on the aristocracy in his aptly named The Decline of Aristocracy from 1912. The text was more an elegy than an objective historical analysis. He recognized increasing press attention as a main cause of the decline of the traditional aristocratic order, but appeared divided over whether or not this was something that aristocrats actively He wrote,

sophisticated

encouraged.

It would be unfair to blame them for being victimised by the craving for publicity and advertisement, which is one of the ugliest features of our time. The very gang that wants to toady and extol them only succeeds in making them look ridiculous and While we read of their forefathers in the mellowed pages of memoirs and letters, we are supplied with intimate details of their own lives recorded with illustrations for monthly, weekly, and even daily consumption. Unfortunately, there are many more of them who submit to and even enjoy this treatment than there are who protest. Even one generation back a peer expressed his utmost disgust at finding a list of one of his house parties published in the newspapers.

contemptible.

One index of the aristocracy’s at least tacit embrace of media attention, he suggested, was evidenced in the fact that they were some of the largest consumers of such news: “Any one must be struck in visiting an old country house to see on the library shelves a full of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literature . . . but on the tables, for the daily consumption of the present owners, magazines, vulgar weekly periodicals.”28 If any one person embodied the transformations in British aristocratic life in the decades around 1900, it might be Margot Tennant, later the Countess of Oxford and Asquith. Though she was hardly the only outspoken, publicity-savvy socialite of the period, she was among the most noticeable, in part because of her own self-promotion, abetted by her high-profile role as wife of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith. A major social player beginning with her Society debut in 1881, she came from one of the most famous families in Britain.29 Many observers writing in the early twentieth century saw that her embrace of the new technologies of publicity-not least among them photography and the press—marked her as a transformational figure in the place of aristocratic Society in

collection

British culture. The press photographer Brodrick Haldane would later write, “The impact of the Tennant sisters on snobbish London had always fascinated me . . . the Tennants had ‘broken up the old aristocratic world.’ ” 30 Before and after she took her married name, Margot Asquith was a symbol of Society’s embrace of publicity. Her name and appeared regularly in women’s magazines and illustrated newspapers.31 She even penned a column for the tabloid the Sunday Graphic, inserting herself into the very center of the burgeoning publicity machine. In part because of her high profile and willingness to subject herself to public Asquith inspired the ire of those who were ill at ease with the transformations in aristocratic life. The publication of her autobiography in 1920 elicited vitriolic critiques that took aim at her perceived embrace of self-publicity.32 In truth, she did offer a level of access into her private life that might be described as exhibitionist, rooted as it was in her ties to the theater, and her penchant for flamboyant social gestures.33 The polarized many members of the British elite, and alienated Asquith from members of her family. What might now be seen as innocuous autobiography was seen by many at the time, in the words of one Times review, as a “scandal which cannot be justified or excused.”34 Harold Begbie’s mockingly titled The Glass of Fashion offered an excoriating critique not just of Asquith’s book and how it reflected upon her character, but also what it about the transformations in the English aristocracy. The book dissected Asquith’s life story, arguing that she corrupted and made a travesty out of aristocratic life. He began by qualifying her aristocratic credentials, declaring that she

photograph

scrutiny,

autobiography

suggested

belongs to the insurgent class of the commercial rich which broke into society soon after the Second Reform Bill, and during the years of King Edward’s reign completely overwhelmed it . . . Mrs. Asquith seems to me from the evidence of these pages to have sought notoriety by shock tactics . . . She is, decisively and victoriously, of the company known as People Who Are Talked About . . . She dances before us, grimaces, curtsies, kisses her hand to the public, without any fear that many may laugh and some may turn away with a shudder. 35

deliberately

What made Asquith so threatening, according to Begbie, was that she appeared to augur a fundamental transformation in the social prestige of the aristocracy. “There was a time,” he wrote, when the English aristocracy made its influence felt through the whole social organism from a privacy and a seclusion which were inviolate . . . That time has past . . . Society’s door has been opened from within, and we now look through that portal upon a which, where it does not disgust, either baffles us or bores us with ennui . . . the penalty of ceasing to be simple is that we become theatrical.36

spectacle

Through Asquith, Begbie saw the writing on the wall: her embrace of the media—her opening up of access to the aristocracy from the inside—represented a seismic shift in British Society life that threatened to expose it to the punishing glare of publicity.

The "photocracy" The First World War hastened the decline of the landed aristocracy, through increased taxation that further eroded their sources of wealth, a frenzied dispensation of new titles under the premiership of David Lloyd George, and the eradication of entire noble lines in battle.37 The Society that remained was even less “aristocratic” in a technical sense than before the war, and even further divorced from the reclusive, insular elite Begbie and others nostalgically eulogized. Transformations in the social makeup of Society were compounded by the more liberal culture of the 1920s, a period characterized by the of traditional behavioral proscriptions and the embrace of new social roles.38 The press attention focused on Society can be seen as one of the hallmarks of the interwar years in Britain.39 By the 1920s, the use and exploitation of the vehicles of personal became a regular feature of Society life, no longer limited to only the most notorious and media-savvy socialites, such as Asquith. In 1923, the Times remarked, “[This is] an age when the recently created aristocracy vies with the stage in its efforts to appear in the illustrated papers.”40 The epithet “Mayfair”—deriving from the exclusive West End neighborhood—came into popular usage in the 1920s, disseminated by the press as shorthand for the type of pleasure-loving aristocrats and leisured socialites with a lust for publicity.41 By the mid- 1920s, Society was not only the subject of journalism, but increasingly it was the force behind news production. Many aristocrats and Society figures took the lead of Asquith, and lent their names to gossip columns, theatre reviews, and fashion advice, even becoming press photographers, which tended to underscore the association of Society with celebrity culture.42 Already a generation old by the start of the 1920s, the tabloids and celebrity weeklies had become a fixture of Society life, which helped produced a new crop of socialites skilled in the art of effective photographic publicity. The magazine Sphere perhaps put it best when it referred to the denizens of Mayfair as the “photocracy,” a succinct collapsing of the two primary features of the celebrity culture of the illustrated press of the era: aristocratic social life and photographic coverage.43 The cultivation of press attention was seen most saliently in the so-called bright young people, who made a spectacle out of their embrace of publicity. 44 The attention-grabbing antics of that small group of well-publicized socialites were only the most visible aspect of a much larger phenomenon, in which the act of being photographed was a basic component of Society life. Arranging “sittings” with West End photographers became a common social activity, especially among elite women who folded trips to portrait studios into their regular activities.45 The star culture that emanated from Hollywood between the wars is an important backdrop for the reframing of the image of British High Society.46 Celebrity culture in the interwar years, in Britain as elsewhere, was intimately associated with the representational conventions of Hollywood stardom.47 Society and show business had long been linked through the theatre, but the growth of cinema as a standard bearer of beauty and fashion had a profound influence on upper-class social life.48 Several British aristocrats tried their hand in the film world, both in Hollywood and in Britain. The heiress and socialite Lady Diana Cooper made a widely discussed turn as a film actress, and she came to the blurring of divisions between Society and the screen. 49 The young Earl of Warwick traveled to Hollywood at the request of film director Mervyn LeRoy, quickly earning the

dissolution

publicity

photographic

symbolize

sobriquet “The Duke of Hollywood.” Though his career as a film star lasted little more than a year, Warwick returned to Britain to write a serialized feature for the tabloid the Sunday Graphic entitled “My Hollywood Adventures.”50 The relationship between Hollywood and London Society was further concretized through marriage, as films stars such as Douglas Fairbanks and Thelma Converse married into British titles. 51 Given the press-savvy of this new camera-ready generation, the opportunities for aristocrats engaged in social activity multiplied after the First World War. The 1920s and 1930s saw society move out of their private ballrooms (increasingly seen to be an untenable extravagance) and into restaurants, nightclubs, and rented venues, which had the effect of limiting many of the protective barriers that had once kept the press at bay. The increased public presence of leading members of Society meant that with the help of flashbulbs and smaller camera technologies, press photographers were able to an unprecedented variety of events that had once been off limits. Brodrick Haldane, who was himself of aristocratic pedigree and would also make a career of photographing such spaces, reflected back on this form of photojournalism, suggesting, “It is hard to imagine nowadays the impact of social photographs published in the pages of the weekly Tatler, Bystander and Sketch magazines during the 1920s and 1930s. The concept was entirely new. Photographs were regularly taken for publication at weddings, official and political meetings, but never before at private parties and dances.”52 This “entirely new” form of reportage placed upper-class life under scrutiny as never before. The press photographer A. V. Swaebe made a career out of photographing aristocrats eating, drinking, and dancing at West End nightclubs, taking advantage of new to infiltrate the spaces of Society leisure.53 Of his line of work, he remarked, “ ‘Society’, as I saw it, was just an extension of show business . . . Society came to see and be seen rather than to dine well.” 54 Swaebe arranged with the owners of major West End eateries such Quaglinos and Café de Paris to be the “official” photographer, reserving the right to sell his photographs to the press. The owner of the Café de Paris, Martin Poulsen, wanted to make his restaurant an elite destination, and recognized that in order to attract highprofile clientele he would have to build an atmosphere of excitement and publicity.55 In short, it was precisely because these spaces were designed for visual consumption that they became a locus of Society life. Photographers such as Swaebe transacted a form of voyeurism that allowed a broad mass readership, most of whom would never see the inside of these places, to sit at the tables of their social “betters.” Venues such as the Café de Paris involved a circular system of patronage. The given to these venues attracted customers, the photographer got his pictures, the newspapers could fill their pages, and the celebrities could (if all went well) see their made-up faces smiling back at them in print. The denizens of this “Café Society”56 had accepted their role as public entertainment, with some embracing it as a form of social validation. Swaebe remarked, “I can assure you there are plenty of people around who feel that the world is just aching to look at their faces in the newspapers, and pester or try to bribe cameramen into thinking the same.”57 Because Swaebe’s ability to photograph in these spaces was contingent on the approval of the owner, he had to operate with a certain amount of deference to his or risk angering paying customers. Nightlife photographs typically occupied a liminal

finding

document

presentations,

opportunities

publicity

subjects,

space, somewhere between the caught-in-the-act candid and the decorous portrait. In one series of photographs, two of which bear Swaebe’s name, well-dressed socialites grin and gnash their teeth (Figure 4.2 ). Nothing in these photographs suggests that the subjects are at all perturbed by the photographer’s flashing bulb. The caption beneath the photograph tells the readers that the pictures “are the results of a camera barrage at one

Figure 4.2 Tatler, February 8, 1933. The bottom two photographs credited to Swaebe. Mary Evans Picture Library

of Society’s favorite meeting and eating places—Quaglino’s.”58 The people in the knowingly dining at one of the most prominent and press-saturated of venues, must have prepared themselves for this photographic “barrage.” Swaebe’s photographs in the press revealed as much about the increasing role of the press photographer in public life as they did about the growing attempts to control and monitor his photographic practice. Restaurants such as the Café de Paris represented the successful penetration of the press photographer into the semiprivate spaces of celebrity leisure, revealing a desire to capture photographic evidence of the hitherto-unseen of the social elite. At the same time, the exclusive West End restaurant was a safe space where rigid protocols of social deference remained in force, as a matter of course. Swaebe’s presence there was contingent upon an unspoken covenant between owner, photographer, and guests that served the interests of all three participants.

photographs,

activities restaurant The debutante

Often at the center of this whirl of social activity sat one particular female figure: the The rituals surrounding the debutante and her “coming out” had been a vital part of Society life for at least a century, but she was not, at least before the First World War, a crucial part of the representations of aristocratic leisure. By the interwar years, as Society became increasingly identified with the activities and recreations of young people, much of the press coverage of the London Season oriented around the debutante and her introduction to the rituals of Society.59 The debutante season called attention to the ways in which infusions of new money, in conjunction with the mechanisms of celebrity and publicity, were remaking the aristocracy and the social character of Society. Most directly, the “marriage market” facilitated by balls played a crucial role in the adulteration of traditional aristocratic Society. These social rituals of marriage and courtship helped insolvent aristocratic men to find wealthy young brides to bolster their financial health, while also providing the opportunity for recently wealthy families to make connections with the landed elite. In order to position their as desirable to the peerage—and earn the family an attenuated place in the titled gentry—the parents of debutantes could spend upwards of £5,000 (an equivalent of nearly £150,000 in today’s money) to pay for the requisite dresses, invitations, decorations, and home rentals.60 “Chaperone agents” specialized in introducing debutantes to socially aristocratic women, a transaction that came with a considerable price tag. 61 Press agents and titled women with skills at cultivating press attention charged lavish sums with the promise that they could ensure enough publicity and visibility to result in auspicious prospects. Many young women—and their interested mothers—saw the press as an opportunity to sell themselves as beautiful, successful, aristocratic brides-to-be. Well-connected debutantes became celebrities overnight. Debutante culture in Britain—unlike in the United States—was a highly formalized affair, consisting of official balls and ceremonies orchestrated with the sanction of the state and the approval of the royal family.62 This formalization meant that debutantes had a very public and nationally visible role. The debutante, as soon as her name was included on the official debutante

debutante.

debutante

daughters

connected

marriage attention

list, was thrown in front of cameras, reporters, and eager gossip columnists.63 The regularly featured stories about, interviews with, and photographs of the leading debutantes of the season. The front page of the Daily Mirror from May 1929 shows debutantes, all dressed in their elaborate dresses and signature decorative (Figure 4.3 ). The large photograph on the left-hand side of the page shows two

tabloids several headpieces

Figure 4.3 Daily Mirror, May 10, 1929. © The British Library Board

debutantes exiting a building onto a mob of onlookers led by a group of press snapping their photographs. The image literalizes the debutante’s relationship to the press: her first steps outside her door exposed her to the glare of publicity. The rituals of the season staged these young women as objects of visual interest, orchestrating a series of events in which the debutante sat at the locus of the curious public gaze. The automobile entourage leading to the gate of Buckingham Palace, where debutantes waited to meet the royal family, represented the peak of the debutante’s public visibility. An article in the magazine The Lady from 1930 satirized the spectatorial dynamics of this peculiar ritual:

photographers

Few women mind being looked at, photographed, and discussed for hours on end; and many of [the debutantes] try to make themselves even more noticeable by little hobbies such as reading, writing, playing cards, drinking champagne, and listening to wireless . . . Hour after hour they sit there, examined with meticulous care by large crowds, who gaze into each car in turn. 64

practicing

The article suggests that the motorcade encouraged debutantes to perform a role, themselves as visual entertainment. A photograph included in a May 1930 edition of the Daily Express captur ed a moment from this procession (Figure 4.4 ). The debutante seems much more awkward than The Lady article led its readers to believe, fixed between the camera on one side, and a gawking crowd on the other. The caption tells of how the debutante “endures a critical examination” at the hands of a fascinated public.65 What is more, the young woman shares her automobile with a press photographer, who was authorized to capture this image for circulation in the press. The image spectacularizes the debutante twice over: showing how she is an object of “critical examination” by gawkers on the street, and facilitating further scrutiny in the pages of the photographic press. Through such coverage, the debutante became closely associated with photographic representation, her very identity linked with her ability to produce herself for the Sitting for studio portraits was customary, even obligatory, for any young woman in the midst of the debutante season. A 1933 edition of the Bystander included a entitled “Myself, When Young” that included photographs of the recent debutantes Lady Bridget Poulett and Lady Pamela Smith. The caption proclaims that the two young ladies “both have ‘familiar faces’ to day . . . Two of these photographs testify to their claim to fame; the other two show that they were hardly less attractive in the years when they were less well known.” The feature underscores how photographs had made the young women into “familiar faces” as well as suggesting that the photograph, and the newspapers that reproduce them, allowed debutantes to reinvent themselves for public consumption.66 Poulett, in fact, was one of the most photographed debutantes of her day, and her celebrity followed her for years after her coming out. A page taken from a 1934 edition of the Tatler represents Poulett using a novel photographic technology called “polyphoto” (Figure 4.5 ). The page is a photographic sequence composed of images that capture the sitter’s slightest movements, documenting the subtlest shifts in Poulett’s facial as if reproducing a series of film frames. Her cupid’s bow lips and stylishly sleek

presenting

photographers

apparently cameras. feature

expression,

Figure 4.4 Daily Express, May 15, 1930. © The British Library Board

hairstyle are repeated with standardized regularity, reducing Poulett to a series of visual signs. The image offers a surprisingly self-aware commentary on the of celebrity in photographic newspapers such as the Tatler and its daily tabloid counterparts. In reproducing this photographic montage, the Tatler offered a self-reflexive meditation on the role of the photographic press in producing a recognizable image of aristocratic debutantes. Flattering or playful studio portraits were all well and good, but in a competitive where photographs were currency, media savvy debutantes demanded portraits inspired by the Hollywood “glamour shot.” The glamour shot relied upon high intensity lighting, tightly cropped headshots, and heavy retouching, removing any trace of physical imperfections, pores, or errant strands of hair.67 West End photographers such as Cecil Beaton, Dorothy Wilding, and Lenare Studios adopted some of this style in their of wealthy female clientele, reproducing images of Society women that were nearly indistinguishable from those emanating from Hollywood.68 One portrait photographer wrote into the British Journal of Photography asking, “How Do We Tackle This Glamour Business?” With a healthy dose of sarcasm, the photographer wrote,

reproducible reproducibility

environment,

cultivation

The Glamour Girl . . . comes to our studio for a sitting, and we operators cannot hope to escape; it is, of course, good for business, but how are we to go about it when she tells us she wants to look glamorous, for much of our business depends on this girl who must look so much better looking than she really is?69

modern

Figure 4.5 Tatler, February 5, 1934. © The British Library Board

Acidic barbs aside, this comment reveals how many portrait photographers had a financial investment in these “glamour girls.” Glamorous portraits of debutantes were highly sought-after by the press, which meant greater revenue for the photographer. The tabloids ensured that the glamour portraits produced by these photographers reached a broad public, which helped to popularize a conception of Society and Hollywood glamour as visual analogues. A page taken from the Tatler in 1938 reproduces two of portraits of the debutante Lorna Harmsworth, taken by the West End Harlip (Figure 4.6 ).70 The dominant photograph is a lush portrait, clearly informed by glamour shot aesthetics, with Harmsworth face illuminated dramatically from above and her back fully exposed. The portrait is an erotically charged visual production, less a document of the young woman’s physical appearance than a confection orchestrated through expert makeup, lighting, and retouching. The smaller photograph at the bottom right is much more modest, exhibiting Harmsworth as a prim young woman, dressed in a high-collared shirt, wearing scant makeup and illuminated with flat, evenly distributed lighting. The dramatic contrast between these two portraits gives visual form to the that the debutante experienced during the season: from buttoned-up little girl to glamorous photographic fantasy. A cartoon taken from Punch plays on tropes of Society femininity as photographic masquerade, and placed the debutante in its crosshairs (Figure 4.7 ). The caricature creates a “Book of Beauty,” thematizing the disjunction between the Victorian and those of the modern generation heavily informed by Hollywood glamour. The mid-Victorian girls of the first two images smile coyly, demure, even quaint, in their unassuming beauty. The next six frames display portraits of the flashy modern girl, coiffed, cut, dyed, and painted. The final caption remarks with bitter sarcasm, “the same young lady could pose for the lot.”71 The joke reveals both a conception of as performance and superficial masquerade, as well as illustrating how changing ideas about beauty have worked to level the social stage—one young “lady” (the term both semantically and culturally evacuated of its formerly exclusive status) from any other. The processes of self-fashioning through portraiture, clothes, and makeup allowed a new generation of women to maneuver around and through classbased stylistic codes. The message of the caricature is that Society is filled with (female) charlatans—transgressors of the social order.72 Press commentary helped construct the idea that securing a place in the peerage was a motivating factor behind the debutante’s embrace of photographic publicity and the aesthetics of glamour photography. If a debutante was not lucky enough to have a title of her own, many newspapers suggested, a sophisticated harnessing of the powers of “glamour” might help change that. An article taken from the Sunday Graphic in 1938 reveals the complicity of the tabloids in selling debutantes as aristocrats in the making. Titled “Glamour Girls and the Peerage,” the article discusses the upcoming debutante festivities. Under the heading “Peeresses-to-be?” the article asks who among the will meet the objective sought by so many—to become a bona fide aristocrat, or least marry one. 73 A photograph of Miki Hood, “one of the British glamour girls to be released onto the public this week,” shows her sultrily gazing at the viewer, donning eyecatching diamond earrings and dramatically arched eyebrows evocative of Hollywood

significant

photographer

transformation

portrait femininity

indistinguishable

debutantes

Figure 4.6 Portrait of Lorna Harmsworth by Harlip studio, reproduced in the Tatler, June 1, 1938. Mary Evans Picture Library

stars of the era (Figure 4.8 ). The article, bolstered by the particular stylistic qualities of Hood’s photograph, suggested that dressing like a film star was one of the best ways to make an aristocratic match.

Figure 4.7 Punch, January 1, 1937. Reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd., www.punch.co.uk

As this article suggests, the image of the debutante was bound up with her status as a marriageable object. Engagements and weddings were important to the popular culture of the debutante because the perceived “rewards” of marriage were to the symbolism of debutante culture. Photographic newspapers regularly featured

fundamental

Society weddings on the front page. The celebrity weeklies included supplements and rotogravure features entirely composed of news and images of weddings and The debutante ball, in other words, was the first in a series of social rituals that ended (if everything went according to plan) with the young woman’s wedding

engagements.

day. Because aristocratic titles could only be transferred through the male heir, the debutante media narrative was a Cinderella story, of sorts, that culminated with the debutante wrapped in her peeress’s robes. The ability to attract photographers—and produce themselves effectively for the camera—became a criterion of their and social status.

marriageability "The most photographed girl in the country"

The young woman who personified the debutante of the 1930s—and all it meant for the culture of Society—was Margaret Whigham (later Duchess of Argyll). Born in Scotland in 1912, the only child of a Scottish millionaire, she embodied the transformations occurring in aristocratic sociability. Though incredibly wealthy, her family was not aristocratic. She belonged to the class of wealthy plutocrats who had remade the aristocracy in the two generations. She represented a new kind of Society, one that utilized money and media visibility as a means of access to the aristocratic titles. Whigham attracted an enormous amount of publicity. At the height of her fame in the early 1930s, the News Chronicle quipped, “Miss Margaret Whigham goes everywhere, and photographs of her have appeared so often that they are as well known as those

preceding

Figure 4.8 Sunday Graphic, February 20, 1938. © The British Library Board

of any film star.” 74 Her crowning as “Deb of the Year” in 1930 launched her indelibly into London Society, and onto the front pages of the tabloids.75 She quickly became an inescapable media presence, her every activity documented in detailed reporting and forensic analyses of her latest fashions. She was frequently referred to as “the most photographed girl in the country.”76 Her ability to attract press attention made her a symbol of London Society in the 1930s. Cole Porter claimed to have written his song “You’re the Top” for her, and West End restaurants and nightclubs named cocktails in her honor. 77 Whigham was the ideal debutante of the 1930s in that she understood, and embraced, her role as a journalistic spectacle. She remarked, with more than a touch of self-flattery, “What [I had] was very nebulous. Very intangible. I suppose it was a star quality. And I have to talk about myself objectively, because that was what I had . . . I had a knack of projecting myself, producing myself. Almost like an actress. I was the one that lasted. The others faded after three years . . . I was my own little star in a very social world.”78 She also earned a reputation as a connoisseur of West End studio photographers. She freely admitted that she would take any and every “free sitting” offered to her, in full knowledge that these photographs might end up in print.79 She also encouraged press to follow her to various events, recognizing that the snapshot portrait was to a successful public life.80 In his gossipy history of the Café de Paris, Charles Graves wrote perceptively of Whigham, “It is hard to realize today what a sensational impact she had on the public as a debutante and ex-debutante . . . The newspaper adored her. Margaret was the first person to appreciate their importance if a girl was to make the front page indefinitely.”81 Whigham possessed the quality most coveted by the debutante: she was attractive to the scions of aristocratic homes. Whigham was engaged to a succession of aristocratic and royal suitors before she turned twenty. 82 Her engagement to the Earl of Warwick, in particular, helped cement her reputation in the public imagination as a kind of opportunist aristocrat-in-the-making, and had the effect of accentuating and augmenting her fame. She met the earl in 1932 while on vacation in Egypt, and as soon as the news had broken, Whigham was asked by the tabloids to tell her story. The front-page headline of the Daily Sketch announced, “Earl and Girl in a Romance,” and the newspaper featured an with Whigham chronicling the romantic aristocratic liaison in flowery fairy-tale (Figure 4.9 ).83 Never mind, of course, that the engagement lasted only two weeks. Her eventual wedding to the American millionaire Charles Sweeney in 1933 was among the most eagerly reported social events of the 1930s. The avid and crowds who showed up to witness Society weddings were a subject of much ridicule and satire by the mid-1930s, and the mobs of people who showed up to see Whigham’s wedding represented the height of hysteria.84 Curious onlookers and Whigham fanatics showed up in droves.85 The Daily Mirror splashed photographs and news of the chaotic wedding on its front page, referring to the guests as “hooligans” and expressing incredulity at the women who tore down the flowers and decorations to keep as mementos of the event (Figure 4.10).86 The Tatler was inspired to write, “The whole thing seemed just mildly shocking. Somehow just all those hundreds of fashionable and public gapers spoilt what should have been a lovely happening. It

photographers fundamental photographers

interview language rambunctious

seems odd that we actually live in an age when a celebrity has to be married in order to induce people inside a church.”87 Many of these women had studied Whigham’s photographs in the newspapers. Her influence as a media presence could be seen in

Figure 4.9 Daily Sketch, March 3, 1932. © The British Library Board

Figure 4.10 Daily Mirror, February 22, 1933. © The British Library Board

the dress and appearance of those who turned up to witness the event. The Sunday Graphic reported: I discovered in the crowd that fought to see her married scores of young women who had obviously modeled their appearance on hers. They had long earrings, full,

rich, cupid-bow lips, and tiny hats aslant, as “the Whigham” wears them. I watched them scan her avidly to get “confirmation,” for few had actually seen her except in photographs. I think this imitation is certainly the highest form of flattery, and usually reserved for film stars. When the bride returns I must ask her if she has fan mail! 88 The article acknowledged the importance of photographic media in rendering Whigham a recognizable, and therefore imitable, personality. She was, as the article suggested, to the Hollywood stars of the same moment, emulated and idolized as a result of her circulation as a photographic phenomenon.89 Whigham remained a prominent part of tabloid celebrity culture for years to come—a rare feat for a former debutante (the debutante’s celebrity typically ended at the altar). Her close friendships with gossip columnists, which she happily exploited, played a part in this enduring fame. 90 She took meticulous care in orchestrating her public appearances, even those that might have been an opportunity for unflattering exposure. 91 A photograph from the Daily Mirror in 1934 shows her on a stretcher, conveyed to her home from an ambulance after a six-month bout of pneumonia (Figure 4.11 ). Decked out in furs and full

similar

Figure 4.11 Daily Mirror, March 22, 1934. © The British Library Board

makeup, with no signs of ill health, Whigham (then Sweeny) knew that cameras would be present upon her arrival, and she dressed accordingly. In her unabashed embrace of the technologies of celebrity, Whigham illustrated how press publicity transformed aristocratic Society. She would, after all, eventually marry into one of the oldest and richest aristocratic titles in Britain, the Argylls. As a creation of the media, she achieved her renown through meritocratic, not aristocratic means. Her public life testified to the fact that inclusion in Society was more a matter of selfpresentation than birth or blood, which turned the entire aristocratic ideal on its head. Paradoxically, however, it was only through associations with aristocratic titles that this celebrity was possible—the debutante “marriage market” was predicated on the hope of securing an aristocratic union. In an odd combination, celebrity culture—meritocratic publicity—was used as pathway to marrying into the aristocracy. Debutantes such as Whigham attracted widespread public recognition and acclaim precisely because of the charisma attached to aristocratic titles, and the excitement built into the potential of obtaining them.

"The final and utter decay of a large section of the British aristocracy" To many cultural critics, Whigham, and the culture of debutantes for which she was a seemed to represent aristocracy stripped of any substantive meaning and all that was egotistical and superficial about the modern culture of celebrity. As popular newspapers adopted a more populist tone in the mid-1930s, the debutante felt the brunt of this attack. Stefan Lorant’s bold proclamation that his photojournalistic magazine Picture Post would focus on the lives of ordinary people instead of the usual cast of elite ended with the defiant statement, “This goes for dictators and debutantes equally.”92 The equation between the debutante and Hitler, though certainly said tongue-in-cheek, illustrates the extent to which the debutante had become an object of scorn and ridicule. A photograph included in the Daily Mirror’s “News about People” gossip column depicts Whigham looking emaciated, with deeply sunken eyes and bony arms limply draped at her side, with a gathering of empty wine glasses featuring prominently in the foreground (Figure 4.12 ). Above the photograph is the suggestive title “For the Waifs and Strays,” and beneath the image the caption reads, “No, she isn’t a waif or stray! It is Mrs. Charles Sweeny!” The suggestion is, of course, that one might confuse the waifish with the street urchins who are the presumed beneficiaries of the charity function.93 Whereas the Society charity ball used to benefit the poor and needy, the criticism ran, its colonization by former debutantes seemed to indicate that such balls only became another opportunity for frivolous entertainment and the cultivation of media attention. Many social commentators saw the publicity obsessed debutante as an import—a British version of the New York “celebutantes” of the same moment. The term “celebutante” was coined by the American gossip writer Walter Winchell and subsequently picked up by British columnists as a term of opprobrium.94 The American connotations were necessarily pejorative. The association between Americanization and the “decline”

symbol, incorporating

characters

socialite

Figure 4.12 Daily Mirror, December 13, 1935. © The British Library Board

of the aristocracy were well established by the 1930s.95 Whigham, in fact, seemed to be the focus of many of the criticisms of the Americanization of Society in the 1930s.96 Though born in Scotland, Whigham was raised in New York City until the age of 14. Her American upbringing mattered significantly, both in terms of how she understood herself, and how the British tabloid press constructed her as a social star.97 She represented the increasing dominance of a so-called American ethos of hedonism and publicity in West End Society. Author and gossip writer Gordon West was among the most critical commentators about what he called “The Debutante Racket.” He saved the thrust of his ire for women who unabashedly tried to buy their way into columns by sending gifts and buying dinners, with the clear motivation of having their names mentioned in a few paragraphs. He even wrote of young women prostituting themselves for such a purpose: “Then—your belief, if any, in the divinity of womanhood is not strengthened when a young woman, mistakenly seeking the stage via the primrose, or social, path (having failed to reach it by way of the

managerial office) delicately but unmistakably intimates her readiness for self-immolation at the altar of Eros in return for publicatorial favour.”98 Associating the debutante’s publicity seeking with loose morality was not unique to West. Other commentators pointed out that an overinvestment in publicity could connote wanton sexuality.99 One commentator suggested, “Wise mothers have noticed that the widely publicised girls of the last year or two have not found good marriages made any easier for them just because they were always being photographed and written about. On the contrary, it was the quiet girls who pulled off the best matches.”100 The misogyny of these criticisms—clearly an assault on uninhibited and exhibitionistic sexuality—is evident enough. Such statements identified the debutante as a cunning Becky Sharp—using her sexuality to climb her way into the aristocracy. In the 1930s, the tabloids were her ladder. The fate of Margaret Whigham was bound up with these types of accusations of sexual opportunism. Subtle digs at Whigham’s questionable reputation became altogether more sinister later in her life, when her high-profile divorce from her second husband, the Eleventh Duke of Argyll, caused a media sensation due to the lurid details of her alleged infidelities.101 The rhetoric condemning the loose, exhibitionist behavior of debutantes helped an idea that publicity carried distinctly vulgar connotations more closely identified with those pretending to be aristocrats than those who actually were aristocrats. Upon her engagement to the Duke of Westminster, the former debutante Leolia Ponsonby remarked that the duke “had a great dread of publicity. It was considered by him . . . to be very vulgar to get oneself mentioned by the newspapers and if one was gauche enough to allow this to happen, one must completely ignore the unpleasant fact.” 102 Lady Eleanor Smith, the gossip writer for the Sunday Dispatch, joked about the r ole of at Society functions, through a revealing anecdote: “I heard Lord Portarlington complaining at a cocktail party that he found Press photographers embarrassing. Surely Lord Portarlington is not so old-fashioned as all that.”103 But it was exactly this kind of “old-fashioned” disquiet about the press photographer that confirmed Portarlington’s aristocratic credentials. Press photographers might seek out aristocrats, but the more traditionalist among them actively refused their advances. As the tabloid press increased its invasive gaze in the 1920s and 1930s, many aristocrats withdrew from the glare of public life, which tended to focus the press’s attention on a Society composed of fewer and fewer traditional aristocratic elites. Beverley Nichols, speaking through a character in his satire of Society celebrity, Crazy Pavements, perhaps said it best: “I am watching the final and utter decay of a large section of the British aristocracy. Soon the only people left will be impoverished Scottish families, who live surrounded by dogs in Inverness and eventually become indistinguishable from their pets.”104 The gossip columnist Patrick Balfour, who started off this chapter, linked the debutante system to the decline of the aristocracy. He wrote,

consolidate

photography

respectable

Every social event is regarded as an excuse for a further torrent of self-advertisement . . . Photographers are courted in restaurants, and first-nights and at every private party . . . They are treated as public entertainments, welcoming the consequent Press notices and photographers . . . This is the racket which London Society has become, under the auspices of a Wealth + Youth combine.105

The debutante, in short, was Society at its worst. He continued, “ ‘Society’ and ‘Aristocracy’ used to be interchangeable terms. They are no longer so . . . snobbery, in the make-up of the Englishman, plays an integral part. He must have an objective for his snobbery; so if there is no Society he will invent one. That is what happened; only the Press has invented it for him.” 106 Balfour argued that Society was a press-created surrogate for aristocracy in an age of aristocratic political decline. To him, and many other observers, the popular celebrity of debutantes and other Society personalities was antagonistic to aristocratic culture. Critics of Society life suggested that while a bit of theater and pageantry in aristocratic life was to be expected, naked exhibitionism was quite another issue. As Society counted larger numbers of nonaristocratic families among its members, the more and more it resembled a vulgar culture of publicity, and the less it resembled traditional aristocratic life. In many ways, these critics were exactly right. The evolution of Society as a set of social practices encouraged the opening up of aristocratic life to the gaze of the public through the mediation of the photographer—both the studio portraitist and the press By forcing the camera and the gossip writer into a wider and wider sphere of aristocratic life, the tabloid press aided in making Society subject to the whims of modern celebrity culture. Mastery of the mechanisms of publicity became an essential component of a Society life, competing with blood and status as the barrier for entry. The media interest in Society events—made most explicit in the celebrity of debutantes—seemed only to accelerate the receding of blue-blooded aristocrats from the center of social life. In an age where anyone with any public clout had to learn to manipulate the mass media, an aristocracy afraid of public scrutiny, unable or unwilling to embrace their role as public entertainment, could not wield the power and authority that they once had, at least in terms of cultural influence. Attending to the importance of mass culture, and celebrity culture in particular, has revealed the complexity of aristocratic “decline” in early-twentieth-century Britain. This decline—if that is even the right way to phrase it—was in evidence not only in the crumbling estates of the great aristocratic but also in the flash of the photographer’s camera. In truth, it was not only blue-blooded aristocrats who expressed anxiety about the increasing ubiquity of press photographers in public life. Voices from all arenas of British society spoke out against photographic intrusion. As the next chapter shows, these debates would help shape the very concept of a legal right to privacy.

photographer.

families,

AND

5 "THE PLAGUE OF BRITAIN": THE TABLOID PHOTOGRAPHER THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY Before the present century had reached its teens, the Press photographer had become a new power—one might almost say a new peril. —J. D. SYMON1

Of his years working at the Daily Mirror in the early twentieth century, Hannen Swaffer remarked on the abject status of the press photographer: “Reporters would not speak to a press photographer . . . in those days the press photographer was regarded as an animal beneath contempt.”2 Swaffer’s remark illustrates a deep-seated distrust of, even revulsion for, tabloid photographers. Journalists as a breed were intimately familiar with this kind of bias, given the opprobrium often directed at the press and its tactics.3 Swaffer himself, notorious for his own brand of scathing reporting, was hardly immune to such criticisms. 4 The fact that such an extreme form of professional discrimination against photographers came from inside the journalistic community speaks measures about the public image of men with press cameras. At once a symbol of Fleet Street intrusiveness and an avatar of a new kind of public visibility, the press photographer took the brunt of anti-press hostility. Even his fellow it seems, could not stomach his presence. The social anxiety produced by photography and photographers is one of the defining aspects of the medium. The fear that the photograph has an almost mystical power to capture essence, to embalm time and reveal inner secrets, has created a broader culture of distrust of photographers’ motives. 5 The rise of instantaneous photography only these fears. As scholars such as Tom Gunning have shown, the photographic snapshot has long been thought to have a unique power to invade personal space by “stealing” moments in time. 6 This bias against press photographers had real social effects, primary among them being a rethinking of existing concepts of privacy protection. This chapter shows how the

visible journalists, exacerbated

PUBLIC IMAGES

inability of existing laws to protect against offensive photographic practices motivated the courts and Parliament to articulate a more distinct language of privacy rights. As Robert E. Mensel has shown, debates about snapshot photography at the end of the nineteenth century quickly became debates about privacy.7 These debates only grew more intense as the twentieth century progressed, and by the mid-1930s, they had hit something of a boiling point. A series of actions in the cultural, legal, and legislative spheres sought to delimit the actions of press photographers, for fear that they would pollute social through aggressive and intrusive practices. Privacy law emerged in part as a reaction to press photographers’ challenges to the existing legal framework for protecting individuals from intrusive behavior. Historian William Pratt has shown how the modern language of privacy in Britain derived from a synthesis of two established legal principles: copyright laws securing proprietary rights over personal information, and libel laws designed to protect an individual’s reputation.8 These laws were insufficient in defending against most forms of invasive photographic practice. Even laws of trespass (regulating access to property), or censorship “indecent” imagery) proved to be inadequate when it came to circumscribing the movements of press photographers. For their critics, press photographers needed to be controlled not just because they imposed on private property or produced obscene images, but because they threatened an erosion of the basic principle of a right to a private life.

discourse

(prohibiting

Copyright law, the photographic portrait, and the origins of privacy protection The right to privacy in Britain had its roots in copyright law. For most of modern history, claiming copyright was the most direct means of prohibiting unwanted use and of one’s image. 9 The Fine Arts Copyright Act of 1862 had essentially made portraits into a protected form of property. Copyright law allocated rights of reproduction to the patron of a work of art, which meant that, legally, the sitter had the exclusive copyright in the image. 10 Photographers needed to negotiate with their patrons in order to ensure that at least some of the negatives would be able to be sold for commercial reproduction. This legal protection provided, at least theoretically, a certain amount of control over the way that portraits might appear in a public venue. Hoping to sell their wares to the expanding illustrated press, major Victorian portrait studios—such as Russell & Sons, Bassano, and Elliot & Fry—took advantage of a loophole in the copyright law in an effort to make money from their celebrity portraits.11 According to the law, if a photographer offered to make a portrait free of charge—meaning that the photographer technically “commissioned” the portrait—then the copyright went to the photographer, not the sitter. By offering their services gratis, photographers skirted copyright law restrictions, and in effect were given free rein to sell as many photographs as possible for reproduction. Firms could then take advantage of a broad array of opportunities, selling portraits for a healthy profit to be used in newspapers and advertisements.

distribution

commercial

“THE PLAGUE OF BRITAIN”

By the late nineteenth century, this “free-sittings” practice sparked a legal debate about the unauthorized use of portraits. A series of legal cases—Pollard v. Photographic Co. (1888), Ellis v. Marshall (1895), and Melville v. Mirror of Life (1895)—confirmed the rights of photographers to profit commercially from portraits taken at their own expense.12 The plaintiffs in such cases wanted to prohibit the publication of a portrait without but the law did not recognize this right as absolute. Judges were evidently unwilling to interpret the law to protect individuals from unwanted use and appropriation of one’s likeness— identifying these as mere “sentimental grievances.”13 Such grievances, against which the law was so helpless, might be seen as the progenitors of complaints about violations of privacy. The publication of unauthorized photographs was one of the key issues discussed in the revision of the Copyright Act in 1911.14 Despite some words of caution and calls for change, the new law only strengthened photographers’ rights over images taken gratis. 15 The practice was a fundamental part of the portraitist’s profession, and nearly every photographer made use of it in one way or another.16 Attempts to regulate freesittings proved difficult, and exposed the limitations of the law to protect individuals from unwanted publicity.17 If the law was ineffectual in stopping newspapers from publishing studio portraits taken at the photographer’s expense, it was even more incapable of action when it came to the press photographer’s snapshot. Nearly every study of copyright law, if it ventured into a discussion of photography, reminded readers that snapshots fell under no legal with regard to property claims. Snapshots were the ultimate form of “free-sitting,” in that the right to reproduce virtually always resided with the photographer. One study, intended to help journalists navigate the law, put it succinctly, “The snapshots of press photographers are governed by no law as regards copyright.”18 Another legal scholar reminded his readers that “there seems to be no legal ground . . . upon which a person who has been ‘snap-shotted’ can object to publication of the ‘snapshot’; it must be one of the risks of the highway.”19 The snapshot portrait, then, created a new form of representation that complicated existing laws. At least as far as copyright was concerned, snapshots were a uniquely privileged form of representation because their legal status was unambiguous: reproduction rights for the producer of snapshots were nearly absolute. The exception to the press photographer’s legal impunity was if the subject could effectively claim copyright by illustrating that they had somehow “commissioned” the snapshot. What this transaction might have looked like is unclear because this legal defense was really only discussed hypothetically and appears not to have made it to the courts. The fact of this possible defense, however, inspired press photographers to find ways around it. One Fleet Street photographer offered a creative solution, suggesting,

consent,

framework

considered

There is nothing to stop a photographer taking pictures of anyone in a public place with or without their consent, but, if at any future date such a person claims the . . . it might be resolved into a problem . . . on the other hand, if a photographer obtained a picture of the same person without asking permission, and the very details

copyright

of the picture depicted the annoyance of the subject, there would be little doubt that it was taken against the wishes of the person, and the copyright would be identified as that of the photographer.20 In short, the photographer suggested that the unsolicited snapshot could be used as a defense against itself. As far as the press was concerned, there were basically no barriers to reproducing portraits acquired legally, as long as the photograph was not in the copyright of the The protections afforded by copyright law were too closely identified with matters of property to have any effect on claims that were not strictly proprietary. Attempts to against more general offenses against individual privacy had to seek other avenues of litigation.

sitter. protect Photographic libel

Libel laws allowed plaintiffs to sue for damages that were more intangible than the protections in copyright law. If the plaintiff did not possess the copyright in a portrait, then libel laws protected individuals from the insult of having the portrait displayed in any compromising way. Libel laws evolved to provide protection from statements proven to have a demonstrably negative impact on an individual’s reputation.21 Because of the strictness of libel laws in Britain, claims for libel became a vehicle for seeking legal from the pettiest claims against damages to reputation.22 Since libel cases had to prove a mendacious and hurtful motive, photographs a problem as evidence. The concept of photographic libel challenged ideas about the photograph as a truthful document. A libeling photograph, by itself, seemed a conceptual impossibility. Some indication of the vexed status of photographs in of libel is indicated by the fact that most studies of libel law at the time had very little to say about photography, and some even failed to mention its relevance at all.23 Paintings, sculptures, caricatures, and other forms of visual communication were more easily incorporated into libel law than photography because they were understood to involve some element of imaginative recreation that might be understood as malicious in its intent.24 The only clear way that a photograph could libel was if it was juxtaposed with libelous text, or if it was used in the service of advertising without the permission of the subject. 25 Very quickly after their emergence, photographic tabloids became the focus of about photographic libel. The formal and journalistic qualities unique to tabloids made them an attractive target for libel claims. Bold, sensational headlines and an interest in titillating human- interest stories meant that portraits often appeared in conjunction with suggestive (and even libelous) text. Inexpensive mass newspapers had even more to fear than other kinds of publications, because libel damages were often adjusted according to “the character and reputation of the newspaper,” which meant that less reputable were often saddled with higher penalties.26

property

protection presented discussions

discussions

newspapers

The case of Boothroy v. Hulton and Co. (1914) revealed how the tabloid press had created new forms of photographic libel. The case originated in a series of reproduced in the Daily Sketch in December 1913. 27 The photographs depicted two young actresses—May Boothroy and Lillie Allan—reveling at a nightclub, visibly intoxicated, dancing and sitting on men’s laps. The headline indicates that the documented the activities taking place at the early hours of the morning in a London nightclub. In fact, the photographs were taken on the set of the film Scenes from Café Life, in which the two women were starring. The headline and suggestive caption directed the viewer to read the photographs as evidence of loose behavior.28 The plaintiffs protested that they “were identified in these pictures by friends who did not know that these were not scenes from real life.”29 Boothroy stated that she had never been in a nightclub, and she argued that the very suggestion was a libelous imputation of a lack of chastity. Boothroy won her case, which revealed that, at least within limits, individuals could defend themselves from certain kinds of unwanted publicity.30 Even if some plaintiffs could successfully utilize libel law to protect themselves against the presence of press photographers, such cases only exposed the limits of the law to protect individuals from the press photographer’s camera.31 The law did very little to against the mere presence of photographers, or from unauthorized use of snapshots that did not constitute libel. By the end of the Edwardian years, discussion in professional photographic literature, as well as treatises on libel law, had already begun to highlight the gray area in the law of libel when it came to photographs appearing in the press. Many commentators complained about the inherent inefficacy of British law to protect from photographic intrusion. In a discussion of the troubles emanating from libelous portraiture, the British Journal of Photography claimed, “There are many acts which are but yet cannot be claimed as libellous, and it is for the sake of protecting themselves against these that many private people continue averse from the offers which are made to them to be photographed.”32 Such statements advocated for legal protections that exceeded those offered by the law of libel.33 The indiscriminate publication of portraits represented a uniquely invasive practice because it robbed individuals of the right to control the ways that they appeared before the public. Lawsuits gave voice to broader cultural fears of the mass photographic image that had been simmering for decades. In the area between laws of copyright and laws of libel, a range of offenses existed that had not been seen as punishable offenses by the courts. Legal precedent appeared to hamstring efforts to prevent intrusions by press photographers.

photographs photographs

photographic

protect

objectionable,

Parliament steps in The desire to create a right to privacy manifested itself with much more success in the House of Commons than it did in the courts. As legal scholars have shown, the most claims for a right to privacy in Britain were made in Parliament, and were dealt with as matters of legislation, rather than legal entitlements. 34 While some of these discussions focused on questions of identity privacy in the mail and the census, the photographic

outspoken

press would be an important vector for the parliamentary discussions of a right to As the number of press photographers grew rapidly, their presence at major social events became a legislative issue. The press photographer John Everard warned his colleagues, “Only recently the obnoxious behaviour of certain press photographers has resulted in the stewards of a well-known race-meeting prohibiting snapshotting within the members’ enclosure; and the time may come when photographing without permission where private individuals are concerned will be made an indictable offence.”36 Everard was not alone in expressing these concerns, and many photographers feared the of new laws directed against their profession. 37 In response to the large numbers of press photographers, a number of legal restrictions came into effect in the decade after the First World War. The rota (rotation) system in 1919 created a permit system whereby a limited number of press photographers were allowed into particularly crowded events, with the requirement that those would make their images available to every paper.38 Royal events in Westminster Abbey, political conferences, and other major public events typically saw Scotland Yard enforce this law quite strictly. Acknowledging his own culpability in these new restrictions, photographer Bernard Alfieri remarked, “The press photographers who were afforded unofficial facilities when present in small numbers, became a very different proposition when the numbers increased, until the very event might be handicapped by the active enthusiasm of the camera-men . . . thirty or forty photographers became a menace, and official permits were instituted.”39 Even with the rota system, however, photographers often managed to get their picture. The instances in which it was strictly enforced were few—typically it was only in use for major events where royalty was present—giving the press photographer free rein over most social spaces.40 The most definitive restriction on press photography was the statute that banned the use of photography in courts of law. The passing of Clause 39 of the Criminal Justice Act, Amendment Bill in 1925, made it illegal—punishable by a £50 fine—to publish of anyone in or near the law courts.41 The law put an end to one of the most distinctive elements of the visual culture of celebrity in the early tabloids: the snatched portrait taken in and around the courtroom. Although contempt of court laws made it technically illegal to take photographs in court without the permission of the judge, no law forbade the publishing of such photographs. Reporting on court cases was absolutely privileged under the law, and newspapers could report every minor detail, as long as they provided accurate accounts of the proceedings. 42 The camera promised to offer just that, and so the law provided no redress when stolen photographs made it to print. The Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch regularly featured such images, as did the Tatler, the Sketch, and the Bystander if the personalities involved happened to be stage or Society Tabloid newspapers highlighted the dramatic nature of these photographs, flaunting the fact that they were procured despite the prohibition on photographing in court. Because photographers went to great lengths to avoid detection, the snapshots in courtrooms were, quite literally, evidence of stolen moments in time. Though signage reminded the public of the proscription on cameras in court, such warnings little weight for press photographers.43 In the words of the Daily Mirror Bernard Grant, “What—in the old days—made the warning rather feeble was the

privacy. 35

implementation

introduced photographers

photographs

celebrities.

produced carried photographer

information on the same notice that offenders would merely be ejected. The obvious result was a battle of wits between Court officials and photographers.” 44 This “battle” was fought on a number of fronts. In order to get beyond the guards at the entrance to the courtroom, photographers carried extremely small cameras, with glass plates little larger than postage stamps. These would be inserted into hats, shoes, books, or a variety of other personal objects, which could disguise the camera apparatus.45 Photographers waited for the barristers to speak in loud tones, and, coughing to disguise the noise, snapped the photograph.46 With the booty of their raid secured on their miniature glass plates, they would promptly return to develop the prints, hoping that the image was of decent quality to sell to the press. Photographs of the interiors of courtrooms affirmed the tabloids’ commitment to photographic reporting. The visual rhetoric of these photographs was the pinnacle of candid photoreportage. Given the difficulty of their execution, many of the exposed plates taken in court produced unusable negatives. Those of sufficient clarity to print are still somewhat muddy, even when the retoucher has attempted to correct some of the blur, or draw attention to certain details by enlarging sections of the print (Figure 5.1 ). While somewhat banal in their overall appearance, these photographs are a testament to a new way of seeing, made possible by transformations in camera technology and the of halftones in the tabloid press. Photographs taken at the steps of the law courts, as witnesses entered and exited the building, also proliferated in the early tabloids, and caused further alarm for those already concerned about the activities inside the courtroom. Large groups of photographers became a fixture of many legal buildings, especially in the capital. Since no law prohibited this practice, these photographs were the legal corollary to the photographs taken inside the courtrooms, and were therefore even more attractive to press photographers, who could spare themselves the complicated tactics and subterfuge required to photograph people as they testified. Given that photographs of court proceedings were unethical at best, and patently illegal at worst, they were singled out as a target. Justices opined from the stand that this practice was “a growing public evil,” and cautioned that the courts “might have to consider the adequacy of punishment.”47 Concerned press photographers echoed this sentiment. John Everard warned, “There is at present an unhealthy tendency in the of the horrible, which, if persisted in, must eventually result in suppression. Too many photographs taken in . . . court appear in the illustrated papers.” 48 Parliamentarians also weighed in on the matter. 49 The coming of the First World War stymied these complaints, as more pressing concerns displaced the debate, but the issue emerged again in the years immediately following the war. The parliamentary debate about Clause 39 of the Criminal Justice Act of 1925 was the first legislative action to explicitly define the press photographer as a public nuisance. The clause was originally introduced into the Criminal Justice Act by the Labour government, but it would be the Conservative Home Secretary William Joynson-Hicks who took the lead in sponsoring the clause and arguing for its strict enforcement. 50 Technically designed to prevent the taking of photographs and the making of hand-drawn sketches, the clause ostensibly instituted a general ban on all forms of visual representation. As many of those

candid

proliferation

direction

Figure 5.1 Daily Mirror, February 2, 1911. © The British Library Board

adjudicating this matter noted, however, the clause was aimed almost exclusively at the actions of press photographers. The law did nothing to prevent the publication of studio portrait photographs of the parties involved, or sketches done from memory. 51 The primary stated concern of the clause was with the efficient execution of justice. In a debate on the floor of the House of Commons, Joynson-Hicks proclaimed, “I fear that the taking of photographs of people in Court has become an added terror to the of justice . . . it is a monstrous abuse of the rights of the Press.” 52 The thrust of the argument made by Joynson-Hicks and the MPs who supported the clause was that the fear of being photographed and exposed in the press frightened witnesses from in court. What was more, the argument ran, tabloid newspapers pilloried the accused criminals, making it difficult to find an unbiased jury. The clause was designed, on one level, to regulate sensational journalism. Photographing the witnesses and criminals at law courts was condemned as a of a macabre and troubling tendency in modern journalism. One MP declared, “It is only the shoddy and shady papers of the country which exploited this business . . . there is nothing more revolting than to pick up a newspaper and find in it a lot of morbid photographs of all sorts of poor and popular persons.” 53 Another MP complained that the clause was only “a step in the right direction, though a halting one. No Government—and I make no discrimination between them—has had the courage to tackle the real evil, namely, the growing manner in which rich men got richer by retailing filth every Sunday.”54 For these men, banning such photographs was only one step on the path of punishing the excesses of the press.55 On another, more systemic level, the debate over the clause’s inclusion in the bill revealed an attempt to protect against damage to the “feelings” and “nerves” of those photographed. The debate about press photographers in court was not only an administrative issue or a question of morality, but was also about the disturbing effects of press photography. The mobs of press photographers gathered at the entrance of law courts were characterized as physically and psychologically intimidating. In the words of one advocate for the passage of the clause, “The army of photographers assemble and when the party to be photographed appears at the door of a taxi they are at once assailed, snapshotted from above, below, from the front and behind in every direction.”56 Beyond the fact that such pushiness expressed a lack of courtesy and etiquette, press photographers were seen to frighten their subjects. One MP admonished his colleagues, “People who are going to court are disturbed by the thought that there will be a heap of photographers dodging in front of them. It must be very to them, and it will be some time before they can recover their mental equanimity.”57 Much of the debate about press photography in law courts hinged on questions about what constituted celebrity, and at what point someone could be considered a viable target for intense public scrutiny. Supporters spoke of the need to recognize the distinction between figures with a recognizably public role, and those who were entirely private citizens. Joynson-Hicks asserted that the clause was designed to protect those who did not seek media notoriety but had it thrust upon them against their will. Taking a jab at media-hungry socialites, he suggested, “I do not think that the Society woman going through the divorce court really objects to it, but the poor person feels very strongly about it.”58 Those humble and unassuming people who desire the

administration

appearing

manifestation

disconcerting otherwise

benefits of a private life, in other words, should be granted protections against violations of that privacy. Conversely, detractors argued that no law protected individuals from unwanted and to advocate for such protections was an unnecessary curtailment of the powers of the press. One advocate for the elimination of the clause reminded his colleagues, “It must be recognised that there are certain penalties of publicity involved in the ordinary public administration of justice.” 59 One of these “penalties” was to endure the surveillance of the press photographer. Colonel Wedgwood, who initiated the move to delete the clause, made a claim from experience, arguing,

publicity,

We who are in politics are accustomed to have all sorts of private details about our lives published. We are accustomed to see as photographs the most villainous libels, and we have to put up with it. Why, then, should not these people who are defendants in Court, and in notorious cases, have to put up with what ordinary politicians have to put up with? 60 The argument in these claims was based upon the recognition that modern media had created a new reality that might not be comfortable for everyone, but was simply a fact of life. Despite vigorous debate, advocates for the clause prevailed, and it appeared in the Criminal Justice Act virtually unchanged from its original wording. The act declared that “no person shall take or attempt to take in any court any photograph, or with a view to publication make or attempt to make in any court any portrait or sketch, of any person, being a judge of the court or a juror or a witness in or a party to any proceedings before the court, whether civil or criminal.” Photographs taken outside or “in the precincts” of the law courts were likewise rendered illegal. In order to prevent newspapers from benefiting from photographers who risked the fines, it was also illegal to publish any photograph taken in that context.61 The clause was a clear victory for those who viewed the rising influence of press photography in public life as a threat. The success of this legislative campaign reveals how the actions of press had forced the creation of new protections that had not, up until then, received full legal recognition. In order to make these restrictions possible, parliamentarians needed to define a new kind of legal offense. Nothing in libel law or copyright law protected against this kind of behavior. The argument that individuals deserved protection from the disturbance caused by press photographers far exceeded the existing legal for preventing the publication of photographs. While its backers never concisely articulated a “right to privacy,” the language used in the debate indicates that such a concept motivated its passage. As an attempt to interfere with the practices of the press photographer in order to protect the “feelings,” “dignity,” and “equanimity” of the persons photographed, the clause was an affirmation of an individual’s rights to be free from the crippling and disturbing effects of the camera. The sheer number of press photographers, snapping photographs from all angles and miniature cameras into the courtroom, necessitated a remedy, according to sponsors of the clause, and their invasive practices required tighter control under the law.62

photographers

emotional framework

sneaking

Photographers responded to the news of the passing of the Criminal Justice Act with general disapproval, recognizing in its language an insidious fear of the camera that promised to result in further legislation. Trade periodicals such as the British Journal of Photography followed the developments in this story for months prior to its passage. Urging caution, professional voices warned their fellow photographers of the actions in Parliament that could be seen as a threat to their livelihood.63 Despite continued protest, however, the law endured for decades, and it was not until the 1960s that its final were removed. 64

trappings "The Plague of Britain"

The Criminal Justice Act provided something of a relief valve for some of the hostility directed at press photographers, but the broader debate did not die with the passing of that act. Many of the fears about intrusive and aggressive press behavior continued to influence public debate in the subsequent decades. The journalistic profession as a whole fell prey to criticisms about intrusive practices, but the photographer felt the full brunt of popular fears about the invasion of privacy. The continually increasing numbers of press photographers flooding into Fleet Street in the late 1920s and 1930s only intensified existing public rancor. The problem of “oversupply” was a constant theme of the journalistic trade literature of the period. The journal Photography put it sarcastically, suggesting that “the national dailies . . . seem to be doing their best to encourage every snapshotter who may have any news sense, developed or hidden.”65 The competition among professionals, freelancers, and amateurs to get a good photograph made for a rather frightening spectacle, particularly when celebrities were present. The press photographer Bernard Grant wrote, with a note of apology, “To attend a Society function and see forty or fifty camera men squirming about in a small space near the centre of interest is to see Press photographers at their worst.”66 The rhetoric of the pathological “camera fiend” dating back to the late nineteenth century was still very strong, and some of those most affected by his presence characterized the pushy press photographer as psychologically disturbed.67 Writing of his experiences attempting to photograph King Ferdinand of Bulgaria in the 1920s, one photographer told of how the king threatened to hit him with his cane, declaring, “Photography is not a profession, it’s a damned disease.”68 In part, the press itself was to blame for the negative attention directed at press Photographic features in newspapers drew attention to the photographic frenzy at significant social events, such as Society weddings. One such photograph reproduced in the Daily Graphic depicted Sir Arthur Whitten Brown, famous for his service in the First World War, at his wedding service (Figure 5.2). A mob of photographers surrounds the couple, dwarfing them with their trench coats and heavy box cameras. The photograph is really about the press photographers, and not about the married couple at all—a fact revealed in the caption: “The Penalty of Popularity: Unmasked Battery at Airman’s Wedding.” 69 The British Journal of Photography commented on the photograph: “A recent reproduction in the ‘Daily Graphic’—showing about ten camera men ‘taking’ a bride and bridegroom—raises

photographers.

accompanying

Figure 5.2 Daily Graphic, July 30, 1919. © The British Library Board

a nice point as to whether it is quite dignified for the operators to be jostling one another amongst the tombstones.” 70 The photographers’ conduct was controversial to say the least, and the overwhelming numbers of them took on an almost ghoulish quality. The frenzied atmosphere produced by the great numbers of press photographers was often equated with the presence of pesky insects.71 A caricature entitled “Plagues of Britain: Publicity,” taken from a 1929 edition of the Looker-On, pokes fun at this culture of busy-bodied, insect-like press photographers, jostling for position ( Figure 5.3 ). It places the reader in the shoes of a celebrity, forced to stare down an ominous mob of press photographers. All uniformly dressed in trench coats and fedoras, with press bags at their sides, the photographers squint through their viewfinders, pinning their “victim” in the crosshairs. Like a modern-day plague of locusts, the buzzing insects of publicity threaten to sweep down and devour their prey.

constantly

Figure 5.3 Looker-On, April 6, 1929. © The British Library Board; © H.M. Bateman Designs

The advent of 35mm “miniature” cameras only increased the level of anxiety about the role of press photographers in public life. Smaller camera technologies with greater portability were perceived by many commentators to pose a potent threat to an right to privacy. The journal Photography proclaimed, “A most important in this concerted invasion of the national privacy has been the miniature camera . . . Every public gathering place, every private retreat, every scene of unpleasantness, becomes the rendezvous of camera gawkers and camera-snoopers.” 72 The same published an article with the telling title, “Candid Photography is Making Us Human Goldfish,” that similarly linked the miniature camera with the erosion of privacy. The author warned of the “increasing tendency of the goldfish mode of life to be thrust upon us all . . . The candid camera is no respecter of anonymity or obscurity . . . Candid cameras are devilish little contraptions that are mostly all lenses—that is, eyes . . . it is a nefarious contrivance, its chief aim in life being to grow smaller each year.” Expressing an almost paranoid fear of press photographers lurking around every corner, he went on, “Not only is it impossible to know who is carrying a camera, but [we have] no idea whatever just when and where [our] likeness will be recorded for posterity or the Gossip’s Weekly.” 73 In the eyes of this man, and many others like him, technology appeared to be abetting a morbid tendency to photograph without consent in the of scurrilous reporting. The one component of the press photographer’s arsenal that raised particular concern was the flash. The public fear of camera flashes dated back to the use of explosive, flash powder in the first years of the century.74 Flashbulbs reduced many of the risks associated with flash powder, but did not reduce the irritation felt by people forced to stare down its blinding incandescence. Admonishing press photographers to use with this technology, the PPA Record reported, “Flashlight photography has got a bad name with the public, and deservedly.”75 Flashbulbs, particularly in the early years of production, posed their own physical threats. The first bulbs were notoriously unstable, susceptible to easy breakage if oxygen was allowed to enter the glass bulb. Brodrick Haldane, for one, was forced to supplicate after attempting to photograph the Aga Khan, only to have the flashbulb shatter and spray fine glass into the Khan’s face. 76 Because of such obvious dangers, as well as the more mundane irritation they caused, many defiantly announced their disinclination to be photographed with flash.77 Flashbulbs were also a noted public nuisance. The discarding of bulbs raised the ire of many, as the entrances and exits of celebrity-studded events typically grew cluttered with cast-offs that became piles of shattered glass. Some reports complained of press photographers their bulbs from moving cars, and one instance saw a mob of press photographers around the Duchess of Gloucester tossing used bulbs onto the floor of an infants’ nursery school to which she had paid a visit.78 The dangerous shards of the press photographer’s flashbulbs were a powerful metaphor for his toxic effect on public life. The tactics and ethos of some of the more adventurous press photographers seemed to corroborate the popular conception of the press photographer as a callous fiend, thirsty for photographs at any cost. Stories of press photographers resorting to excessive means to secure photographs proliferated in the journalistic discourse of the day. Some of these stories were embellished or fabricated altogether, but many of them were thoroughly

individual’s instrument

journal

service

thunderous

caution

celebrities

hurling

corroborated, testifying to the willingness of some photographers to risk life and limb (their own as well as others’) in their hunt for candid images of celebrities.79 Whether these complaints were true or not was not really the point. Much of the anti-press photography rhetoric was not based upon actual evidence, but rather relied upon a discursive of the press photographer as a social menace. Even when press photographers went about their work respectfully, as the majority of them did, broader stereotypes had worked to construct press photographers as a threat that needed to be contained. The law, continued to prove itself flaccid in the face of this perceived threat.

construction however, Photographic "intrusion"

Despite the increasingly shrill calls for action, no laws protected individuals from the press photographer’s snapshot, beyond the proscription on photographing law courts. In the column of the British Journal of Photography, one reader wrote in to ask if he would have recourse in the event that he did not want his photograph taken by a press The matter-of-fact response illustrated some of the impunity of snapshot under the law: “it may be said correctly that no one in this country has the right to object to being snapped, or the right for the photographs so made to be published in any way provided that they are not libellous . . . in other words, there is not in the country a ‘right of privacy,’ that is the right of a person to go about his business without such attention.” 80 In other words, press photographers enjoyed almost unrestricted access to their subjects. It was precisely because the press photographer was immune from legal intervention that he became the focus of discussions of the right to privacy. The journalist and social commentator St. John Ervine, in his article “The Invasion of Privacy,” published in the Spectator in 1927, contended, “Newspapers claim that they have a right to publish photograph even if the original of the photograph objects to its publication.”81 The situation, he asserted, was such that

correspondence photographer. photography whatever,

anyone’s

a man is obliged to submit to some invasion of his privacy lest he should suffer worse wrong. People permit themselves to be photographed for picture papers because, if they decline to pose, the camera-man will “snap” them when they are unaware of his presence, and he will not be too careful about “snapping” them in a becoming attitude. There is, it seems, no remedy. A man has no rights in his own face. 82 Ervine’s arguments reveal the way that conversations about the impertinence of quickly became a lesson in the need for a generalized right to privacy. Invasive press photographers, Ervine and others claimed, were in violation of laws that did not yet, but should, exist. Concerns about the press photographer’s invasion of privacy focused most intensely on the photographing of people during moments of “private grief.” In particular, the mass of press photographers at the funerals of notable people became a symbol of an aggressive and unethical press. 83 What started as a trickle of criticisms aimed at the in the first years of the twentieth century became a torrent in the years after 1930.84

photographers

growing practice

Continuing the tirade against invasive journalism that he began in the Spectator, Ervine authored a piece for the Times with the colorful title, “Privacy and the Press: The Baying of the News- Hounds.” He expressed sympathy with the “many people who feel dismay at the tendency, steadily increasing, of certain newspapers to invade private life, especially in times of personal grief and distress.”85 A more personal note was struck when Lady Ellerman, widow of the shipping magnate Lord Ellerman, wrote to the Times to second Ervine’s sentiments, and draw attention to the activities of press photographers during her husband’s funeral. After the news of his death had been made public, she revealed, “I was confronted with groups of press cameramen, who responded to a request that they should go away with laughter. They were there to take pictures of my husband’s coffin and of myself in whatever aspect of grief they could surprise me.” The badgering continued, she claimed: “On arrival at the cemetery for the internment men with cameras ran beside us, leaping over graves and vying with one another to be the first on the scene. As the coffin was lowered the silence was broken by the clicking of cameras.” She hoped that her story would effect definitive action to prevent this kind of behavior, and encouraged the official organs of the press to prohibit such “outrages upon private and personal emotions.” 86 An archival news photograph taken outside of an exhumation in 1937 speaks to the fraught position of the press photographer during moments of private grief ( Figure 5.4 ). The image depicts six photographers perched atop a double-decker bus, all with cameras

Figure 5.4 ‘Press photographers at the Exhumation of Miss Ellen Ruddle’, 1937. National Science and Media Museum/Science and Society Picture Library

drawn. One man’s grinning face appears from behind his camera. His jocular smile that he has a very flip relationship to the task at hand, despite the gravity of the occasion. The other photographers’ faces are hidden almost entirely behind the camera apparatus. The group is ominous, each figure resembling a looming Cyclops with a protruding lens for an eye. The fact that the photographers are the subject of this photograph—and not the funeral itself—reveals the extent to which their presence at such events was newsworthy in and of itself. The image seems only to corroborate some of the popular anxieties about the press photographer’s inhumanity when on the hunt for news. The transformations in the modes and methods of tabloid reporting in the mid-1930s motivated many observers to question the appropriateness of some aspects of the trade.87 Some observers blamed the influence of American tabloids, which by the mid-1930s had served as an inspiration for the editors of Britain’s popular newspapers.88 A number of films and plays representing American reporting and its influence on British journalism helped construct the idea of an insidious presence from the across the Atlantic. 89 Concerns about intrusions into private grief eventually reached the House of Commons. Discussions in Parliament had been ongoing, and had surfaced throughout the early 1930s.90 An exchange on the floor in the late weeks of 1936, however, sparked a sustained debate about news coverage of deaths and other personal tragedies.91 Goaded by various MPs, the Home Secretary Sir John Simon called on the three main journalistic bodies—the Newspaper Society, the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association, and Reuters—to agree to regulate intrusive behavior.92 Throughout January and February 1937, MPs of all stripes sounded off about the tactics of journalists and photographers.93 Much of the discussion focused on the “indecency” of such coverage, attempting to articulate at what point invasive reporting crossed the line from being merely tasteless to become something potentially illegal. One MP, in a letter to the Times, indicated the relevance of the debate to legal of privacy: “Some people may enjoy seeing published the photograph of a relative who has been the victim of a ‘tragedy,’ . . . But these are free to offer their sensations and pictures to the Press . . . I venture to ask lawyers to consider whether a right to could not be given by statute, and infringement without reasonable excuse made actionable.”94 The blustery rhetoric of MPs affirmed that “a certain section of the press,” which invariably meant the tabloid press, had become too large a problem for existing laws to contain. The liberty of the press was all well and good, but attacks on privacy had to be regulated. The news agencies responded to the parliamentary request with long-winded and contrite letters, assuring Parliament that such activities were not only rare, but also despised by the vast majority of journalists, editors, proprietors, and photographers. The Newspaper Society’s “strong disapproval of news-gathering methods that violate the canons of decency and good taste” was a perfunctory and largely empty emollient, as were the grand statements of the Newspaper Proprietors and Reuters.95 The of these organizations said nothing of official sanction, regulation, or punishment of misbehaving journalists. There is no doubt that the majority of proprietors and editors did

indicates

single

photographer’s photographic

intermittently

invasive

questions privacy

resolutions

indeed abhor invasive practices, but they clearly lacked the will to institute formal on the publication of news and pictures that might offend. In order to prevent direct legal restrictions on press activity, the leading journalist organizations— the Institute of Journalists, the Empire Press Union, and the National Union of Journalists (NUJ)—attempted to institute methods of eliminating the practices that had attracted so much negative attention. 96 With the eruption of debate in Parliament, the NUJ quickly consolidated ranks in an effort to make it clear that the organization condemned press intrusion into private grief.97 The Rules of the National Union of Journalists, in 1938 in response to this ongoing discussion, codified the position of the NUJ in rather autocratic terms: “The National Executive Committee shall have power to fine, or expel any member of the Union for any conduct detrimental to the Union proved against him to the satisfaction of the National Executive Council.”98 “Offensive” intrusions into private grief were among such punishable acts. As with the parliamentary however, these statements bore little fruit, and the problem of “intrusion” to plague the Union for decades.99 Because no law existed to give shape to what might constitute “invasion”—because the right to privacy was not seen to exist in any real sense— disciplinary action always ran the risk of being arbitrary and overly subjective. Though these restrictions clearly condemned all forms of journalistic intrusion—not just photographic—officials stated that photographers were more disturbing than their reporter counterparts. In its discussion of the issue, the NUJ suggested, “There was a strong feeling . . . that very often the taking of photographs caused more annoyance to the mourners than having their names taken . . . which could be dealt with discreetly.” 100 In an argument that echoed the debate over the Criminal Justice Act, photography was seen as having an insidious and troubling effect on the psyche. It was, among invasive journalistic practices, arguably the most invasive. Press photographers recognized that they were in the cross hairs of those who sought to end practices that invaded personal privacy. Most who spoke about this issue defended the majority of the fellow members of their profession, and typically made sure to distinguish themselves from the more unscrupulous among them. A. V. Swaebe, one of the most notable photographers on Fleet Street in the 1930s, wrote, “I have always respected privacy. Perhaps if I had been more intrusive in my photography, I would have made a lot more money for myself. But private grief to me is just that—something that is a matter only for the parties concerned. Old-fashioned, I know.”101 It was the rare who admitted to engaging in the tactics that were singled out by Parliament, the press, and the professional organizations as the source of trouble. By and large, placed blame on editors and proprietors—and the public at large—for creating a demand for such photographs.102 Others took a more pragmatic stance, recognizing that snapshotting the grief-stricken might indeed be distasteful, but invasive practices were an inevitable feature of Fleet Street life.103 Some even sought sympathy. Stanley Devon admitted that he and his fellow press photographers acted objectionably as a result of the cultural bias direct against them:

restrictions

published suspend,

discussions, continued

photographer photographers

The more difficult it became to work, the more we resembled wild beasts. The more we resembled them, the more we were treated like them. There seemed to be no

way out. For the more gentlemanly you behaved, the less likely you were to get a picture. Your only chance seemed to be to become more cunning and unscrupulous than the rest. 104 Such acknowledgments of the problems associated with their trade reveal a desire on the part of press photographers to counteract, or at least make sense of, some of the negative stereotypes of the profession, and to discourage the creation of new, restrictive laws. The vociferousness of the debate about press intrusion made its way to the Privy Council, Britain’s supreme legal arbitrating body. In January 1938 the Council debated the issue of privacy, determining whether or not such a concept was feasible or practicable within English Common Law. 105 After deliberation, the Council decided that no such right existed, and claims could not be made from that basis. The decision elicited a response from the journal the Spectator, which commented, From the point of view of the general public, the interest of this appeal lies in the fact that, had the principle contended for being accepted, a beginning would have been made in the establishment of rule of protected privacy. Such a rule has as yet obtained no recognition in the English Courts either in respect of land, or which is of greater concern to most of us, in respect of private lives. Unless English judges on some future occasion take a different view . . . legislation will be needed if ever a law of privacy is to be established. An Englishman’s house is still his castle— if his walls are high enough. He may exclude the public but not, it seems, the public gaze.106 The article faulted the Council for its shortsightedness, and inferred that the Council was reluctant to establish a far-reaching precedent based on novel technologies. The Spectator suggested that the modern media landscape required a rethinking of existing law. The courts, for their part, seemed less sure. The debate about press intrusion was a sustained attempt to define and articulate a legal definition of a right to privacy. As with the passing of the Criminal Justice Act in 1925, invasive and “tasteless” practices called for a new means of conceptualizing a right to be left alone. In both instances, the uniquely invasive qualities of the camera sparked a debate about the inefficacy of existing laws and restrictions. Without a definitive and legal framework, there was no way to prevent photographers from engaging in practices that intruded into private grief. Directives from high-powered officials, without the backing of Parliamentary legislation, proved to be useless.107 Despite decades of vigorous protest, legal rulings, and Parliamentary debate, the issue of the press intrusive behavior remained unresolved. As the Privy Council’s inaction indicates, the “invasion of privacy” would not find definitive legal form by the end of the 1930s. The difficulty of defending a right to privacy is explicable in that it speaks to an and perhaps even irreconcilable, tension in ostensibly free societies. The practices of invasive press photographers may offend almost every standard of taste, but creating laws designed to restrict the free movements of the press are anathema to a society in which a free press is foundational to civic life. Without a tradition of statutory rights or

comprehensive photographer’s inherent,

legal precedents ensuring the right to privacy, the courts and Parliament could make only incremental steps—or stern admonitions—to protect citizens from intrusive behaviors. Social derogation, however, could only go so far, and, as this chapter has shown, various constituencies worked to regulate and control the movements and behaviors of press photographers. The attempt to give form to this new law—even if unsuccessful—speaks measures about the broader discourse about photography and intrusion. The press photographer’s camera was a site of regulation because it was seen to have a uniquely intimidating and insidious effect on the subjects of its gaze. The mere fact of being a figure of public seemed to require the surrender of any pretenses to a private life, protected from the photographer’s lens. The offenses of the tabloid press photographer were often as offenses against privacy. The right to privacy is fundamentally an idea about conceptualizing an intimate space uncontaminated by the intrusions and interventions of the outside world. Privacy is not only a matter of physical space—predicated on an idea of a private space away from the public world—but also psychological space. Privacy presumes an element of control over the self and a protection from the objectifying gaze of the outside world. The strangely annihilating self-consciousness that the camera induces, especially when that camera is the appendage of the mass press, seems to put that psychological sense of self-control at risk. The articulation of a legal “right” to privacy developed in response to the press photographer and his impact on the experience of life in the public eye. In the years to come, these debates would be put to the test in the court of law.

interest understood

6 UNGENTLEMANLY BEHAVIOR: CLASS, PRIVACY, AND THE TABLOID PHOTOGRAPHER In the early months of 1947, the tabloids went on trial in London. It started with an unsolicited photograph, a blinding flash, a shattered camera, and an accusation of “ungentlemanly” behavior. At the center of the trial was Thomas Lea, a photographer who worked for the Daily Mirror. A plainspoken man with somewhat rough manners and a penchant for self-incrimination, he proved a convenient scapegoat for those who sought to punish the tabloids for their photographic intrusions into private life. What began as a simple case involving restitution of damages became one of the first trials in British history to articulate the right to privacy as a viable legal defense. In response to the case, legal scholar H. Montgomery Hyde published a transcription of the trials, along with a vitriolic introduction, under the title Privacy and the Press. He used the opportunity to warn his readers that the “inquisitorial methods adopted by the less reputable and more persistent types of journalist” needed to be contained by laws designed to protect individual privacy.1 Key to his analysis was his derision of the tabloids, which he identified as the primary culprits of intrusive photographic reporting. For Hyde, Lea’s case was proof positive that the tabloids had blood on their hands. The right to he asserted, had to be defended against the invasions of the tabloid photographer’s camera. Lea’s trial crystallized the concerns about the intrusions of the press photographer that had emerged over the preceding decades.2 The Parliamentary debates about press intrusion into private grief that raged during the interwar years were a spectral presence in the trial, informing the arguments and helping to determine the final verdict. This was a case rooted in the unresolved conflicts of the 1930s. A minor legal dispute between a tabloid photographer and a respected aristocratic war veteran provided a convenient good-versus-evil scenario that pitted the grubby tactics of the tabloids against an and redoubtably blue-blooded, victim. It provided something of a denouement to the decades of arguments, accusations, and legislative decisions that had been by the cataclysm of the Second World War.

privacy,

unsuspecting, interrupted

PUBLIC IMAGES

The legal arguments against Lea hinged on the press photographer’s “ungentlemanliness,” which embedded the debate in a language of social hierarchy, and reveals the fundamental class bias inherent in concepts of privacy. The debates heard in the trial are a clear articulation of the ways that notions of privacy were implicated in standards of decorum and deference. 3 The tabloids became a flashpoint for discussions about privacy in large part because they exposed those at the top of the social hierarchy to the close scrutiny of their social inferiors, who produced and consumed these populist The tabloid photographer challenged conventional notions of who had the right to look, and under what circumstances. With some justification, tabloid photographers were faulted and vilified for intrusive behavior, photographing without permission, and laying waste to social protocol, manners, and etiquette. Whereas the upper classes had long photographed the poor and working class without asking permission, the situation became untenable when the camera was turned in the other direction.4 The legal claim of privacy, as Lea’s case illustrates, has long been entangled in class-bound notions of behavior and respect.

newspapers.

Lea v. Justice of the Peace, Ltd. Lea’s legal battle began with a request that he had received countless times: to a Society wedding. He had been asked by his picture editor at the Daily Mirror, where he had been employed for ten years, to photograph the wedding of a notable aristocratic couple: Captain Robert Cecil and Marjorie Ellen Wyndham-Quin. As the son of Lord Cranborne, Cecil’s wedding was the kind of bombastic aristocratic affair that had been a staple of the tabloids since their origin. Held at Westminster Abbey, the was a public event, and Lea dutifully joined his photographer colleagues to take the standard photographs of the bride and bridegroom, bridal party, and celebrity guests. Snapping three photographs on his miniature Leica, he sent the film by taxi to the Daily Mirror’s Fleet Street office, and set off for the wedding reception. Held at the residence of Lord Salisbury on Arlington Street, tucked behind the Ritz Hotel, the reception was invite-only and closed to the public. In order to blend better with the elegant guests, Lea purchased a carnation from a flower shop and placed it in his buttonhole. With his camera slung around his shoulder and tucked beneath his coat, he cavalierly entered the grand estate without attracting any negative attention, placed his gloves and hat with the attendant, and joined the guests. On his way in, he noticed two photographers already on their way out, both from the Daily Sketch. He spent nearly an hour mingling with guests and photographing notable attendees, and trying, to no avail, to arrange a photograph of the couple. Finally, the photographer noticed the couple about to descend the staircase. Rushing to the foot of the stairs, Lea courteously asked if he could take a photograph. A huffy Captain Cecil brusquely denied the request (Cecil had suffered paralysis in his right arm during the war, and was a bit self-conscious). Lea obeyed the command, but did not end his pursuit of the couple: they were, after all, the reason he had come. As they began their ceremonial departure, Lea quickly approached and snapped a flash photograph, approximately fifteen feet from the couple.

photograph

wedding

UNGENTLEMANLY BEHAVIOR

Cecil’s response was violent and impulsive. Shouting “I told you NO!,” he struck Lea several times in the face, damaging the photographer’s jaw and shattering his spectacles. Cecil then wrenched the camera from the startled man’s hands and proceeded to crush it in several pieces, jumping on it repeatedly. Members of the confused and disorganized crowd lifted Lea off the ground, shoved the broken pieces of his camera and his into his hands, and escorted him out of the house. A dutiful valet emerged moments later with the photographer’s gloves and hat. 5 This incident sparked the first of two trials. Lea brought a case against Cecil on January 11, 1946, in Bow Street Court. At first pleading “not guilty” to a charge of assault and damage to property, after hearing Lea’s testimony, Cecil ultimately retracted that plea and admitted guilt. The defense had tried to claim that Lea had violated rights of trespass, which therefore excused Cecil’s erratic and violent behavior. The verdict, however, fell in Lea’s favor. It was determined that Lea was not aware that the party was private. The in that case stated that Cecil had acted in a “cowardly and ungentlemanly” manner when he assaulted the photographer, and Lea was justified in his claim for damages. The case ended abruptly, with no one but Lea providing testimony. Cecil was slapped with a £10 fine, £135 as payment for Lea’s camera, and £50 in legal costs.6 This ruling might have ended the dispute between Lea and Cecil if it were not for the fact that the incident attracted the attention of the press. The Daily Mirror had to take some responsibility for this notoriety. Though they had initially refrained from publishing the photograph, once the case had made it to court, the editors were compelled to print it (Figure 6.1 ). The image itself betrays some of the unexpectedness of Lea’s flash. Lea only managed to capture the overexposed face of the bride, and the menacing face of the groom, who, a few seconds later, would be physically assaulting the photographer. The Daily Mirror reproduced the photograph on the front page with the (somewhat gloating) headline, “Guards officer’s cowardly blows cost him £195.” The caption on the photograph twisted the knife, drawing attention to the photograph itself, “The mark in the left- hand corner is damage done to the negative when the camera was jumped on by the bridegroom.”7 The accompanying article emphasized the fact that the judgment was an indictment of Cecil’s unwarranted behavior. The second and more significant trial derived from an article published in the journal Justice of the Peace and Local Government Review on January 26, 1946, just days after Lea’s judicial victory. It began with one word in bold letters: “Ungentlemanly.” The article condemned the ruling in the case, and the precedent that it set. The author did not condone Cecil’s violence, but did suggest that the epithets attributed to him— ungentlemanly and cowardly—were more appropriately applied to Lea and other press photographer “intruders” like him. The article recapitulated the details of the incident, making sure to emphasize that Lea had entered a private house uninvited to take photographs against the wishes of those present. The article lashed out against such as the Daily Mirror that had made a business out of such practices: “It may be supposed that his employers, the proprietors of the Daily Mirror, find it hard to believe that many decent English people abhor the type of publicity which fills and other weekly papers with more or less well-known persons photographed at dinner in a west-end restaurant.” 8 Those who did not wish to have their photographs

spectacles

justice

photographic

newspapers illustrated

Figure 6.1 Daily Mirror, January 12, 1946. © The British Library Board

appear in such papers seemed to have no recourse, something only confirmed by the judge’s ruling in the case. The article proclaimed, “The intrusion (of the baser type of paper in particular) into the private life is an unmixed evil,” and ended by warning its readers, “The rot will inevitably spread . . . unless public opinion makes it plain that healthy English sympathies are against the sort of thing attempted by the Daily Mirror in this case.” The basic claim of the article was that Lea was an intruder working as a willing pawn of the “gutter press.” Especially because he worked for the Daily Mirror, the article claimed, Lea represented a threat to privacy. Cecil was justified in his actions, according to this logic, not only because Lea had willingly trespassed into a private party, but also because he did so on behalf of a newspaper that was particularly unwelcome. The objection was directed at press photographers, for certain, but also at the entire journalistic philosophy of the tabloids. In this way, the article revealed how the debate about the right to privacy was also a debate about propriety. The term “gentleman” had a particularly potent in British culture, and its significance was bound up with standards of behavior seen to be ideal social characteristics.9 The charge of ungentlemanliness was way of implying that Lea and the Daily Mirror — and the tabloids more broadly— lacked basic manners and respect for privacy.

meaning

After reading the Justice of the Peace article, Lea met with his employers at the Daily Mirror and decided to sue the journal for libel. The trial finally came before Justice Hilbery on March 14, 1947, well over a year after the initial incident. The Daily Mirror paid for the prosecuting attorney Colin Duncan. The case for the plaintiff hinged on two passages in the article: one that seemed to infer that Lea had perjured himself in the first trial, and another based upon the use of the words “ungentlemanly” and “cowardly” to describe Lea’s photographic practice. The first issue was, for the most part, dismissed out of hand by the justice, so the bulk of the debate centered on whether the journal was justified in using those words—and the innuendo that may be attributed to them— to describe Lea’s tactics. The case, in other words, was about evaluating the professional behavior of the press photographer in general, and Lea’s professional behavior in particular. Had Lea acted in an invasive manner in pursuing his photographs, and if so, could that invasion be seen as ungentlemanly? Duncan acknowledged the difficulty of his task, given the popular image of the press photographer. In his opening remarks, he suggested, “This occupation may not be very popular. I can understand that persons in public life may not like a camera to be put in their faces . . . but I do suggest that the calling of taking photographs for the Press can be or should be carried out in a perfectly proper way without objection to anybody.” 10 The libel resided in the fact that the epithets “ungentlemanly” and “cowardly” damaged Lea’s professional position by marking him as the worst kind of press who should be feared and cast out.11 Duncan attempted to illustrate how the term “gentleman” was code for proper behavior and a respect for others: “If it is said in an article that he acted in an ungentlemanly way, that does not carry the impression that he acted in a way in which so- called higher walks of society act; it means he acted like a cad.”12 In order to make their case, the prosecution needed to prove that Lea had acted, as he always had, as a gentleman, obeying all laws and customs in a courteous way. Although ostensibly contrived to disprove the libel claim, the defense used the trial as an opportunity to articulate a right to privacy in legal terms. The question of provided a point of entry into a larger debate about the press and its invasion of privacy in pursuit of celebrities. In order to prove that the Justice of the Peace was in their use of the term “ungentlemanly,” the defense attorney Sir Valentine Holmes painted Lea as lacking basic courtesy and respect for privacy. He evoked the language of the “camera fiend” that reached back to the late nineteenth century and to the debates that had erupted in Parliament over photographic “intrusion” during the interwar years. The case was an attempt to give an official legal voice to those claims. The first comment from Justice Hilbery, interjected into Duncan’s opening remarks, framed the entire legal proceedings as a question of privacy: “Did you say that it was a private wedding?” Making a crucial distinction, Duncan’s claim on behalf of his client was that “it was a ‘society wedding.’ My case will be that, so far from its being a private wedding (I do not know what that could be) it was one of the kind that attracted the public notice.”13 The prosecution sought to prove that Lea, as a representative of the press, had the right to enter the house at Arlington Street because the event taking place there was of interest to the public. Duncan recognized that such news coverage may indeed be “idle,” but it was news nonetheless: “It is common knowledge that people take

photographer,

gentlemanliness justified

widest

an interest in these things . . . So long as nothing is done which ought not to be, in my submission it is not fair to look at Mr. Lea’s conduct as pandering to something which is vulgar taste.”14 The fact of the couple’s celebrity, in essence, justified his entrance into the home. In his own testimony, Lea defended his actions by stating, “They were all They must have been photographed [before].”15 Lea’s case rested on the assumption that he had not been impertinent entering a private home because that home was the venue for an event of public interest. The case revivified decades-old debates about the lack of protections in English law to defend individuals from being photographed. During Duncan’s opening remarks, Justice Hilbery attempted to clarify the legal status of privacy by asking, “We have no law which protects us from having cameras pushed into our faces and photographs taken?” Duncan replied, “If it is not an assault we have none, but it is sometimes described as an invasion of privacy.”16Duncan’s response indicated that though colloquially the concept of “invasion of privacy” may have existed, it did not exist firmly in law. He was the Justice—fearful because he recognized that this was exactly where the trial was headed—that Lea had violated no law in his attempt to take a photograph in a space the photographer had understood to be a public venue. No law, in other words, prevented photographers from taking pictures in public. This line of argumentation proved rather difficult to sustain because the bride and bridegroom had gone to great lengths to inform the press the reception would be strictly private, with no press allowed.17 The Daily Mirror, Lea and his attorney maintained, had never received that notification. Again and again throughout the trial, however, witnesses testified to the barriers placed in the path of journalists looking to enter Lord Salisbury’s home. In his examination of Cecil, Holmes emphasized this fact, asking, “For your own reasons you and the family had decided that you were particularly anxious to avoid for this wedding?” to which Cecil haughtily responded, “We never look for publicity.” 18 The defense did their best to prove that Lord Salisbury’s home—despite the celebrity of its hosts—was a private one. Holmes, as defense attorney, used the issue of the couple’s desire to avoid publicity as a wedge to open up a debate about Lea’s lack of respect for privacy. In his crossexamination of Lea, Holmes asked, “Do you, as a press photographer, feel that you are at liberty to walk into any private house without asking permission?” Lea admitted that he did not have an invitation, but attempted to justify his entrance into the house by claiming that this was the usual procedure when assigned, as he was, to “cover a wedding.”19 Lea’s responses seemed to reveal a fissure in his logic—what he would not tolerate from private individuals, he saw as inevitable and acceptable from representatives of the press. 20 In his quick and piercing cross-examination, Holmes finally caught Lea “As a newspaper representative, I had the right to get it [the photograph].”21 When Holmes accusatorily asked, “Are you saying that a thing which admittedly, according to you, would be ungentlemanly and caddish if done by a private person is quite when done by a press photographer?” Lea replied, “I think it is quite in order for a press photographer to see people.”22 For Lea, the press photographer acted as the public’s eyes, which necessitated a level of access that was not necessarily granted to everybody else.

celebrities.

reminding

publicity

admitting, justifiable

By the end of his testimony, it was quite evident that Lea had a conception of the of press photographers that was not entirely in sync with the rule of law. When pushed by Justice Hilbery to articulate the difference between his invasions of privacy and those of average citizens, Lea asserted, “I suppose the rights of the Press.” 23 This line of reasoning did Lea very few favors and only perplexed the justice. In his closing remarks, Duncan backtracked: “If it is thought that I am suggesting that members of the Press can find their way into private houses belonging to other people when they know that they are not wanted, that is not the position.”24 But it was clear that Lea thought differently, despite Duncan’s attempt to gloss over his client’s earlier claim. It was entirely reasonable for Lea to think that he had special rights as a press He was in no way alone among those in his profession in thinking this. Literature on press photography that proliferated in the confirmed that press photographers were legally allowed to take photographs at such events, as long as they did not gain entrance through felonious means.25 ven the Institute of British Photographers (IBP), which was very much concerned with maintaining ethical standards of conduct, this fact. In its rulebook, the IBP claimed,

entitlements

photographer. confirmed

If a person lawfully obtains access to the locus in quo, the act of taking a photograph is not a trespass and no penalty could be enforced. To prevent an object on private property from being photographed the owner would have to require every one who was given access to sign an undertaking not to use a camera while on the site.26 Technically, then, Lea had acted according to the laws governing his profession. The question was whether perfectly legal practices could be considered “ungentlemanly” in their invasion of privacy. The defense argued that Lea had, indeed, acted in an ungentlemanly way because his photographs were not consensual. The couple did not object to photography out of hand—they had hired (as was customary) a “well-known photographer” from London’s West End to photograph the bridal party—but they did object to the press photographer and the candid images that he produced.27 Lea was in the legally disadvantageous position of having taken the photograph against the express wishes of the couple. The two photographers whom Lea had seen exiting the reception had, it turned out, asked the couple for permission to photograph, and, being denied, decided that they should leave.28 Lea, on the other hand, asked permission, was denied, and took a photograph anyway. Much of the testimony for and by the plaintiff attempted to complicate the issue of consent, in order to prove that Lea’s disavowal of the couple’s wishes was not caddish or impertinent. Lea had, as he and others attested, attempted to secure consent by finding and asking Lord Cranborne and Lady Salisbury if he could photograph the bridal couple. 29 Having failed in that, he finally, when given the opportunity, asked the bridal pair if they would allow themselves to be photographed. This exchange on the staircase was crucial to the prosecution’s argument about consent. Had Cecil only specified that a photograph could not be taken “on the stairs,” or had he meant that a photograph could not be taken anywhere in the house?30 It emerged, over the trial, that although Lea had argued (and won) the previous legal case by insisting that Cecil only meant for photographs not to be

taken “on the stairs,” Lea must have, or at least should have, known that no photographs of any kind were allowed. Lea’s defense of his actions only seemed to confirm the accusation that he had taken the final photograph in defiance of Cecil’s wishes. The truly great candid portrait, Lea seemed to suggest, relied upon a certain amount of spontaneity. When asked by Holmes, “Why did not you ask him again when you got into that room for permission to take his photograph?” Lea (ill-advisedly) admitted, “Because of the incident I was trying to get.”31 This admission opened up a series of questions that hit at the heart of his job as a press photographer. “I suppose,” Holmes asserted, “it does make a difference to you whether you are a successful press photographer when you cover a wedding and a reception, that is to say successful from the point of view of your newspaper by bringing back pictures for them.”32 Holmes began by implying, then directly asserting, that Lea would ignore any expressions of discontent on the part of his subjects in the attempt to get his picture. The case was beginning to expose Lea’s desire to acquire candid photographs at any cost. Much of the testimony for the defendants hinged on whether or not Lea had acted with any intent to deceive the guests in order to get his picture. Questions arose about the size of his camera, the position of the camera on his body, and the camera’s visibility to the other guests, as well as the sartorial choices that Lea had made.33 Working against Lea in this regard was the fact that he used a very small Leica camera that could fit easily in a coat pocket. Lea was asked to compare his small camera to the comparatively hulking cameras of the Daily Sketch photographers. The two Daily Sketch photographers carried cameras that were remarkably large for the time, roughly 6 x 8 x 5 inches, with flash apparatus, all tucked into a bag that was over 2 feet in length.34 Lea’s small Leica, on the other hand, was certainly small enough to avoid detection. Lea insisted that his camera was visible at all times, but his testimony in this regard was equivocal. He simultaneously suggested that he had worn it tucked inside of his coat, but that it was never obscured from view. 35 Suspicions were raised that although he checked his hat and gloves, Lea did not check his coat for the specific reason that he wanted to hide his camera until he had the opportunity to take a photograph. 36 Lea and his attorney did little to disprove this claim, and witnesses for the defense only confirmed the accusation. One witness claimed, “He appeared to be carrying something under his coat . . . I could not see the camera . . . He was coming down the room towards me . . . appearing to hold his coat over something.”37 In the defense’s estimation, Lea had hidden his camera from detection precisely because he knew that, as a press photographer, his presence was unwelcome. In pursuing this line of argumentation, Holmes was tapping into deeply ingrained of the press photographer as sneaky intruder. Lea, according to Holmes, was an insidious pest, scurrying past the entrance in order to make his parasitic living. The camera, the crucial component of the press photographer’s trade, would reveal him as an uninvited intruder. The fact that Lea had purchased a red carnation to put in his on the way to the wedding was only further evidence, for the defense, that Lea had intended to conceal his true identity.38 Lea’s attempt to blend into the crowd was merely a ploy to steal a photograph from unsuspecting subjects.

additional

stereotypes

buttonhole

A crucial element of the defense’s position was that Lea’s surprise photograph an assault due to the jarring effect of the camera’s flash. Much of the testimony for the defense dwelled on the issue of the flash and its disturbing effect on those who witnessed the incident. An attempt was made to link the sudden flash of the camera’s bulb to an act of violence. In his examination of one witness, Holmes asked, “What effect did the flash have on you?” to which the woman replied, “It unnerved me so that I thought somebody was trying to shoot Captain Cecil on his wedding day.”39 Other witnesses characterized the flash as “blinding,” and spoke of being “startled” by the sudden eruption of light.40 The suddenness of the flash—appearing to come out of nowhere—confirmed the fact that Lea had acted in a way that surprised and disquieted Cecil and his bride. The intention of this line of argumentation was to show not only that Lea had violated a private home, but that he had done so in a way that was aggressive, frightening, and ungentlemanly. One component of the trial that figured prominently in both the prosecution and the defense was the fact that Lea worked for the most popular tabloid newspaper in Britain, the Daily Mirror. Though the debate tended to gravitate toward general questions about the role of the press, it always remained rooted in the fact that Lea was a representative for a newspaper with a very particular reputation. By the late 1930s the Daily Mirror had become a brash, bold, sensationalist newspaper modeled on the New York City scandal tabloids. The fact that the Justice of the Peace referred to Lea’s employer as “the gutter press” was key to the prosecution’s case. Duncan attempted to establish motive for the alleged libel by focusing on this phrase, arguing that the journal used the term to suggest that Lea “is said to be employed in the gutter press and it is said that he is in fact using his position to make himself as objectionable as he can, because he does not care.” 41 The implication of the term, in other words, was that because he worked for the Daily Mirror he was even worse than the average press photographer and lacked all sense of decorum or ethical feeling. Duncan used a letter sent from the author of the article in question, in which he stated that the Daily Mirror made his “blood boil”42 In short, Lea had been libeled indirectly as a product of the contributor’s malicious feelings for the Daily Mirror and its journalistic practice.43 It certainly did not help the plaintiff’s position that Lea, when asked which paper he worked for by a guest at the reception, had replied with the misleading answer, “The paper of the times.” This statement, admitted by Lea himself, provided fodder for the defense’s claims that Lea wanted to deceive the guests and hosts of the party. Holmes probed Lea on this issue, asserting that Lea intended the statement to lead people to think that he worked not for a grubby tabloid, but for the archly conservative Times 44 He put that claim directly to Lea, who protested, “I thought it was unpalatable if—” and stopped himself. Forced to complete the sentence, he was asked, “What did you think was unpalatable to him?” to which he responded succinctly, “The Daily Mirror .” 45 Characteristically incriminating in the witness box, Lea admitted too much. He that his own newspaper was particularly unwanted at the reception. Not only did he attend anyway, he hid the identity of his employer in order to get what he had come for. Lea—and Duncan later—attempted to clarify what he had meant with this statement,

represented

professional

newspaper. recognized

suggesting merely that he did not want to alarm the guests unnecessarily, and would have, if pressed, given the name of his employer.46 The case was, in short, an indictment of the photojournalistic culture of the tabloids. Several times throughout the trial Holmes painted Lea as a product of the tabloid (e.g., “Is that your training on the Daily Mirror, that you are to walk into any house where you think they would not object to having the Daily Mirror man in the house?”). 47 Lea continued to undermine his case. When questioned if he got paid more for photographs that were a “scoop,” he denied that to be the case, with the (very illadvised) caveat, “Unless, say, it is Hitler or Goering, let us say, some exclusive picture of him dead or committing suicide.” 48 The comment perplexed and concerned the Justice, and only seemed to corroborate Lea’s rather heartless relationship to his subjects. The fact that the Daily Mirror paid Lea’s legal costs only seemed to underscore the fact that he was an avatar for the tabloid press, defending the right to photograph wherever and whenever he desired. 49 Lea’s libel trial was ultimately one vignette in a longer story that dated back several decades to the founding of the tabloid press. At several points throughout the trial, was made to the debates about photographic “intrusions into private grief” of the previous decade. Trying to situate Duncan’s defense of Lea in a broader context, Justice Hilbery asked, with reference to the debate that occurred in Parliament in the late 1930s, “There have been occasions when press photographers have even clambered over the graves in the churchyard in order to photograph the unfortunate widow at the have there not?”50 Holmes also seized on this precedent as a way to link Lea to a broader and much more deeply rooted discussion about tabloid photographers and their objectionable practices.51The difficulty for Duncan was to force the judge and jury to see beyond this ingrained prejudice and recognize that his client had acted honorably. Justice Hilbery’s ruling was a firm and direct condemnation of Lea’s violation of Cecil’s right to privacy. His ruling in favor of the defendants could not have taken anybody by surprise. Throughout the case, he had repeatedly expressed confusion at the claims, and revealed his disapproval of the tactics of press photographers, those of Lea in particular.52 In his final judgment he expressed doubt that the Daily Mirror was unaware of the prohibition on press at the reception.53 He underscored the fact that he thought Lea had intentionally lied about his employers because “if he had said the Daily Mirror he would have been ushered straight out of the door.” 54 He rooted his judgment in the belief that Lea, “holds the view apparently that he has some high mission as a press photographer to portray to the vulgar, the idly curious and, on some occasions, morbidly minded people the private lives of other people.”55 The judge’s opinion was unequivocal, and deeply classist: not only was Lea crass and prurient, the readers of his newspaper were as well. Hilbery made forceful claims about rights to privacy, which had no technical basis in English law. What started as ethical condemnation—“He does not recognise such a thing as privacy or that people’s lives can be sacred even from the illustrated press”—quickly became an assertion of a legal right to privacy from the intrusions of the press 56 Near the end of his judgment, he opined, “I do not think it can be too strongly emphasized that in this country the Press has no right to go upon private property or into

newsroom private

reference

grave-side,

prosecution’s

photographer.

private places and to intrude upon private people and into private rights.”57 With that, he asserted something that was unprecedented in English law. Lea’s offense was against Cecil’s “rights” to privacy. What began as a libel case brought by a press photographer ended up placing press photography on trial for violations of the right to privacy. In order to prove that Lea had been “cowardly” and “ungentlemanly,” the defense chose to argue that he had violated a common ethical principle, one that had not, until this case, been a clearly articulated legal concept. Entering a home uninvited and photographing people (even if they were notable people) who have refused permission to do so constituted, at the very least, an “ungentlemanly” act. At most, it was a legal violation of privacy. Although Justice Hilbery had no particular power to create those rights ex nihilo, he was articulating a conception of privacy rights that had, until then, defied the English courts. The case wedded together the debates about journalistic “taste,” the limits of intrusion, the unique threat of the and concerns about tabloid reporting. Justice Hilbery’s judgment, in other words, represented the culmination of a generation-long feud over the social, ethical, and legal status of the tabloid press photographer. Hyde’s choice to publish a transcription of the trial was an attempt to make a claim for the importance of this case in establishing precedent for a legal right to privacy. His book is an invaluable primary source, not only for its rich trial record, but also for his strongly worded editorial introduction. The book was a rallying call for the codification of legal protections against the invasions of the press photographer. Hyde recognized the value of the trial to draw attention to the problem of the lack of privacy protections in English law. Hyde almost seemed grateful to Lea, because by bringing the case, Lea had “succeeded in bringing the true facts to the notice of a far wider circle of readers than the Justice of the Peace and Local Government Review could ever hope to reach.”58 Hyde suggested that, like Oscar Wilde who had also entered into an ill-advised libel trial, Lea would make the public aware of a dangerous form of criminality. Hyde directly asserted that the case was fundamentally about privacy. “The upshot of this proceeding,” Hyde contended, “has been once more to focus public attention upon the controversial question of privacy and the press.” 59 He used the case as an opportunity to criticize invasive photographic journalism. He wrote,

camera,

potential

The movements of celebrities generally, especially at weddings and other society are particularly desirable fare for the purveyors of this kind of news. In the form in which it is presented this news is designed to satisfy the curious and sometimes morbid appetites of a class of reader which can have no personal connection with the incident portrayed.60

gatherings, whatsoever

He referenced the debates about journalistic intrusion that had emerged in the late 1930s, and cited the 1938 Report on the British Press, in which professionals promised to regulate themselves lest the law stepped in to regulate instead.61 He expressed at how little progress had been made in the ensuing decade. The form of invasive photojournalism practiced by Lea could not, he hoped, continue to exist with impunity. The case proved to him—through Justice Hilbery’s strong words—that the courts would

frustration

accept the task of protecting privacy. “In so far as the individual members of the public are concerned,” he averred, “there remains one indefatigable safeguard. The courts will continue to protect the rights of the individual to his or her domestic privacy, and where these rights are infringed by eager and unscrupulous news-getters and news-vendors, appropriate penalties will follow.”62 Hyde had seen in the trial a clear statement affirming individual privacy against the intrusions of the press photographer. The British people could rest easy that the courts would continue to protect them from unwanted publicity. But for all of Justice Hilbery’s bold legal rhetoric, Hyde’s broadcasting of a new era of privacy protections from the press, and the generations-long debate about suppressing rowdy press photographic activity, not a single new law or legal precedent was put in place to prevent violations of privacy by press photographers. The concept continued to defy codification, and the case of Lea v. Justice of the Peace would vanish into obscurity. Complaints about the press photographer’s invasions of privacy continued to emerge, despite the very clear language in Justice Hilbery’s ruling that seemed to speak of a real legal “right” to privacy. The passing of the Defamation Act of 1952 allowed for the of a kind of distaste for and fear of the press photographer that was over half a century old at that point. Once again linking issues of libel and privacy, the Spectator included an article on the passing of that act, fearfully asserting that there was

outpouring

a striking anomaly in the English law, which has not been removed by The Defamation Act 1952 . . . The Englishman at the present time has no right whatever to privacy as such. He cannot, in other words, prevent unauthorised interference with the seclusion of himself, his family, or his property by members of the public unless such interference amounts to some recognised civil wrong. It may for example constitute a trespass or libel or infringement of copyright. The mere fact, however, that a man’s privacy has been infringed so as to cause him considerable annoyance will not give him any cause of action.63 Harking back to debates about press intrusion into private grief, the article (predictably) pointed out the inefficacy of libel law when it came to offenses of a kind that did not directly injure one’s reputation or defame one’s name. No one had the ability to restrain the publication of photographs, so long as those photographs were taken without felonious breaking and entering. The article paid no mention to the important precedent of the Lea case, which suggests that the impact of that case was slight, if not nonexistent. 64 It was not until the Kenneth Younger Report on the Committee on Privacy in 1972 that real action seemed to be put in place, but in truth, it would not be until the 1998 Human Rights Act that anything resembling a right to privacy existed in English law.65 The “failure” of the ruling in Lea’s case to establish significant precedent, or to codify privacy rights in any substantial way, is less important than what the case signified about the social causes that lay at the root of privacy claims. The case bound together privacy and class in an explicit way, asserting that it was Lea’s “ungentlemanliness” that propelled his egregious intrusions into the married couple’s right to privacy. Never mind that no such rights existed in law. The judge’s unprecedented legal defense of privacy had more to do with revulsion at the crass and vulgar (read lower- class) nature of the Daily Mirror and its

effective

photographic agents than it had to do with legal offenses. That might also explain why no legal proceedings were brought against Lea in the wake of his failed case. There simply would not have been reasonable legal justification for any such case. If nothing else, Lea’s trial proved that class and taste are intimately intertwined in discussions of privacy. The case hinged on who deserves the right to privacy, as well as who had the right to look, and under what circumstances. The Daily Mirror, as an avatar of a dangerous workingclass desire to meddle in the private affairs of the social elite, was a nuisance that needed to be contained. Lea’s behavior not only represented an assault on the private affairs of aristocratic newlyweds, it also, and more dangerously, signified the erosion of the privilege afforded the social elite to fortify their social world.

CONCLUSION The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on August 31, 1997, was a media event witnessed around the world. Almost immediately after her Mercedes smashed into the divider in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, images of the wreckage appeared on television, on the burgeoning Internet news services, and within hours, had made it to print. Diana’s tragic death is still recent enough to be part of the broader collective memory. But one aspect of Diana’s death is perhaps more unforgettable than any other: her car crashed in an attempt to flee from paparazzi speeding after her. After her burial, Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, famously remarked, “I always believed the press would kill her in the end,” blame for her death in the hands of the tabloids, particularly those of his native Seven photographers who had been following Diana were held in French custody for questioning, and speculation abounded that the photographers had continued to the mangled bodies, slowly dying in the demolished automobile.1 In truth, the paparazzi almost certainly did not take photographs of Diana as she lay dead, but the fact that this became a popular myth illustrates the endurance of ideas of the menacing “camera fiend” that had their roots in the cultural responses to the first snapshot cameras at the end of the nineteenth century. The death of Diana provided dramatic evidence of the power of the press photographer in reconfiguring what it meant to be a public figure. The fact that she was a princess, only recently divorced from the heir to the British throne, seemed not to confer upon her traditional standards of decorum and deference, but quite the obverse. She was chased down, so it seemed, like an animal. This book ends in very familiar territory. The story of Princess Diana and her relationship with the press is only the most salient and disconcerting example of the contemporary obsession with celebrity. The tabloids have continued to produce new and sometimesdisturbing forms of mass voyeurism. In no country is this more evident than in Britain, where the tabloids—and the culture of celebrity that they produce and disseminate—are etched into the fabric of everyday life. Commentators of all stripes have recognized what seems to be a strangely perverse fascination with media celebrity in British popular culture. Certainly this is not unique to Britain, but the proliferation of reality television, free tabloid newspapers littering the London tube, and the odd (if admittedly fascinating) presence of media such as Katie Price (aka Jordan) illustrate the special purchase that a particular brand of celebrity has in British life. The tabloid phone hacking scandal of 2011, which resulted in the dissolution of one of Britain’s longest running populist newspapers and an extensive Parliament inquiry into ethical and legal violations by the press, has only underscored the idea that the British tabloids are the world’s leaders in digging up dirt at any cost. The aggressive and heartless nature of British paparazzi has become axiomatic in and journalistic discourse around the world. As photo-editor Peter Howe has argued,

placing country. photograph

sensations

popular

PUBLIC IMAGES

the postwar period witnessed the rise of a notably hostile contingent of photographers in most European countries, seen most saliently in the Italian paparazzi of the mid-century, but also evident elsewhere, including Britain. He claims that the French, British, and Italian photographs have always been known for a much more aggressive approach to their work, with a “shoot first and damn the rights to privacy” attitude that includes deception, bribery, trespass, and any other violations necessary to get the picture. Even today, many of the most successful photographers in Los Angeles are of French or British nationality.2 Although Howe associates this phenomenon with the changes in the social structure unique to the postwar world, the roots of British paparazzi culture reach much further back. Analyzing the photographic news reporting pioneered over one hundred years ago helps to make sense of the celebrity voyeurism of today’s paparazzi photographers. As this book has shown, photography has been a crucial component of tabloid since its origins. The creators of the first tabloid newspapers helped forge a powerfully populist news media form, making use of photographs to appeal to broad audiences, and working to consolidate new ideas about what news is, what it does, and what it should be allowed to do. The visionary editors and innovative technicians at the Daily Mirror and the newspapers that it inspired were pioneers in applying photographs to newsprint, and cultivated the first professional corps of press photographers in the world. In this way, the tabloids, long excluded from histories of photojournalism, are in truth at the center of that history. By unearthing the origins of the tabloid press, this book has explored a dramatic in the nature of publicity and public visibility in twentieth-century life. Press pioneered new ways of photographic witnessing that had profound effects on the nature of celebrity culture. Press photographs were rapidly produced, often taken without consent, and usually taken before the subject had time to compose herself. The tabloid photographer became an arbiter of life in the public eye, and helped reframe ideas about the nature of public and private. Based in class- bound notions of the private sphere, privacy had deep roots in British society, but remained a moral and ethical not a legal defense, much later in Britain than in other industrialized nations. The invasions of the press photographer—both perceived and real—helped give some shape to the legal “right” to privacy. His assault on the sanctity of private space inspired calls for effective controls on the movements of the press. To illustrate the long history of intrusive tabloid photography is not to suggest that the contemporary period is without its unique media practices of celebrity voyeurism. New forms of Internet fame have accelerated the production of celebrity, and intensified concerns about invasions of privacy. Gossip websites, online newspapers, and celebrity news networks often seem to operate as if they have no agreed-upon ethical standards. Digital photography has made the acquisition and spread of photographic images easier and faster than ever before. The combination of accelerated technological change and an ever-wider sphere of distribution and consumption has led to an almost hysterical fear of

reporting

transformation photographers

principle,

CONCLUSION

the inability of media outlets to regulate themselves. This fear was most troublingly seen in the United States with the unprecedented judgment in favor of Terry Gene Bollea (aka Hulk Hogan) that resulted in the closure of the website Gawker. One argument forwarded in this book is that these anxieties are not unique to the present moment, and are by concerns with roots in nineteenth-century concepts of deference and respect. We need more in-depth historical studies of popular forms that many perceive as vulgar or vile so that we can learn from, and maybe even work to avoid, uninformed condemnation of news practices that serve an important public function. Even the briefest perusal of the websites for the Daily Mail or the Daily Mirror reveals how the tabloids have adapted to new technological circumstances while practicing a kind of celebrity reporting pioneered well over a century ago. While there is novel about paparazzi photographs showing, for example, Prince William during a pause between polo matches, it is not so far from the photographs of his great-granduncle, floating shirtless in the Adriatic, which circulated eighty years prior. Acknowledging parallels and continuity through time is not to dismiss the uniqueness of the contemporary moment, but it does start a conversation about why it is that Western society has such a long tradition of this kind of voyeurism. The tension between public access and personal privacy is one that is fundamental to societies that place a value on a free press, free speech, and the ability to challenge and question elites. It is also a tension that is, in many ways, insoluble. The press, even the tabloid press, is one tool in an arsenal that can be used to chip away at the enduring inequities that keep ordinary people at a remove from the rich and powerful. The fact that the royal family has an Instagram feed is only a small indication of how new media have continued to reshape public culture, and have inspired attempts to harness those media. The continued importance of the monarchy in contemporary British tabloids is potent evidence of an enduring contradiction within British society between archaic forms of social power and the democratizing tendencies inherent in mass culture. The frenzied press attention directed at royal weddings, including most recently the extravagant of Prince William and Kate Middleton, is only the most visible example of a investment in the intimate lives of the royal family. Fascination with royal life is, on one level, motivated by a sentimental attachment to traditional forms of prestige and social authority. The antagonistic character of much of this coverage indicates, however, that it is also animated by a populist desire to dissolve antiquated social boundaries and to drag the social elite into a democratized public sphere. Returning to the origins of tabloid photojournalism has also helped illuminate the gender dynamics inherent in celebrity culture. The mobs of paparazzi surrounding Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse, or the Kardashians (and, of course, Princess Diana) are only recent manifestations of a longer history of intruding into the private lives of women in ways that is much less common among male celebrities. The tabloids also seem to specialize in creating and promoting transient, exhibitionistic female celebrities. The Page Three girls in the Sun, displayed topless for daily consumption, represent a mode of media visibility unique to the tabloids. As Chapter 4 has shown, the debutantes of the 1920s and 1930s—and their treatment by photographers and tabloid columnists—helped structure

animated

something urinating

nuptials widespread

peculiar

a way of representing young women as tabloid celebrities, simultaneously expanding and delimiting the possibilities for the representation of women in mass media. Photography can be both iconographic and iconoclastic, and it is this paradox that animates the tabloid coverage of celebrities. If, as scholars have suggested, celebrity began in the nineteenth-century portrait studio, then it was embedded in processes of iconography. The studio portrait inherited the idealizations and romantic gestures of the “grand manner” oil painting, which helped construct a perfected vision of the celebrity “self.” The press photographer’s snapshot, however, was based upon the documentary power of photography, its truth claims amplified by the fact that it was taken rapidly and without the pretense of the photographic pose. The press photographer enacted—even if that was not always his intention—an iconoclasm on the staged portrait. He allowed the public to see famous people not as they wanted to be seen, but as they “really” were, or at least as the camera said they were. At the same time, the tabloid photograph, with all of its hurried immediacy and candor, has itself become iconic of celebrity culture. Images such as the Daily Mirror cover photograph of Kate Moss snorting cocaine, taken with an unseen camera by someone pretending to be Moss’s friend, is emblematic of a contemporary culture of photographic visibility and the perils of fame (Figure C.1). Thick with the grain of a low-res camera, the photograph conveys just enough information to indict its testifying to illicit activity. The image is the antithesis of the fashion photographs that made Moss’s face one of the most recognizable (and highly valued) in the world. Pop artist Jonathan Horowitz’s sculptural work Daily Mirror relies upon the idea that the newspaper’s cover is an instantly recognizable representation (Figure C.2 ). The artist has removed the photograph of Moss, and left only a mirrored reflection. The piece offers a commentary on the nature of drug use and vanity, but also suggests that the image has become an instant icon, a testament to a contemporary fascination with this form of fame and recognition. The invasive photographic image crystallizes the popular interest in sabotaging idealized representation. Horowitz holds a mirror, as it were, to his historical moment. Understanding the origins of the tabloids helps illustrate that this fascination is not unique to the twenty-first century. This book has argued that if celebrity has “democratized fame,” it is largely because of photojournalism. Photographic reporting increased the numbers of people who could be considered famous, and it has also democratized access to these celebrities, subjecting them to the watchful eye of the mass media. Although celebrity culture is often with the Hollywood film industry and the spread of cinema as a global entertainment medium, movies and the iconographic portraiture that accompanies them are rooted in a form of idealization, admiration, and even cultish reverence. Photojournalism, especially when practiced in the tabloid press, promises something quite different. It is, and long has been, about documenting those aspects of a person that are often obscured by idealized representation. It offers a view of people “as they are.”3 Through their unique brand of photojournalism, the tabloids pull celebrities down to earth, showing them not as godlike emblems, but as flawed and complex people. In this way, plays an inseparable role in making celebrities, but it also works to drag them into a court of public opinion; it is at once a condition of celebrity and a consequence of it.

unflattering notorious subject,

identified

however,

photojournalism

Figure C.1 Daily Mirror, September 16, 2005. © Mirrorpix

Figure C.2 Jonathan Horowitz, Daily Mirror, 2005. Sreenprint on Mirror. Courtesy Xavier Hufkens, © Jonathan Horowitz

NOTES

INTRODUCTION 1

Gisele Freund, Photography and

2

Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), 3.

3

David Ockham, Stentor:

or

Society (Boston:

David R. Godine Publishers, 1980), 103.

the Press of To-day and To-morrow (London: Kegan Paul, Trench,

Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1927), 16-17. 4

The term "world's first tabloid" is used in Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn, The Tabloid Culture Reader (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2007), 38. See also Chris Horrie, Tabloid Nation: From the Birth of the Mirror to the Death of the Tabloid Newspaper (London: Andre

Deutsch, 2003); Simon Bessie, Jazz Journalism: The Story of the Tabloid Newspapers (New York: E.R Dutton &Co., 1938). 5

For statistics on British consumption of newspapers, see Frank Atkinson, The English Newspaper since 1900 (London: Library Association, 1960), 5; Clive Bloom, Bestsellers: Popular Fiction since 1900 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 37-8; Stephen E. Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 30; Mass Observation, The Press and Its Readers (London: Art & Technics Ltd., 1949), introduction.

6

Sofia Johansson, Reading Tabloids: Tabloid Newspapers and Their Readers (Hudding, Sweden: Sodertomhogskola, 2007), 7.

7

Martin Conboy, Tabloid Britain: Constructing (London: Routledge, 2005).

8

The 2011, the phone-and-computer-hacking scandal involving the News of the World inspired a thoroughgoing analysis of the British press, published as Brian Henry Leveson,

a

Community through Language

An Inquiry into the Culture, Practices and Ethics of the Press: Executive Summary and Recommendations [Leveson Report] (House of Commons Papers), November 29, 2012. 9

10

See Chris Horrie, Tabloid Nation: From the Birth of the Mirror to the Death of the Tabloid Newspaper (London: Andre Deutsch, 2003); Laurel Brake, ed., The News of the World and the British Press, 1843-2011: Journalism for the Rich, Journalism for the Poor (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). For a study of the contemporary British tabloids, see Conboy, Tabloid Britain] Colin Sparks and John Tulloch, eds, Tabloid Tales (Lanharn, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Pub Inc, 2000). The only thorough histories of the tabloid press date from the interwar period. See Bessie, Jazz Journalism-, Arthur Sarell Rudd, "The Development of Illustrated Tabloid Journalism in the United States," Columbia University, 1925. See Alan Betrock, ed., Sleazy Business: A Pictorial History of Exploitation Tabloids (Brooklyn, NY: Shake Books, 1996); Biressi and Nunn, Tabloid Culture Reader, Kevin Glynn, Tabloid

Culture: Trash Taste, Popular Power, and the Transformation of American Television (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000). 11

See Maurice Edeiman, The Mirror: A Political History (London: Hamish & Hamilton, 1966); S. J. Taylor, The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail

(London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, Ltd., 1996); James Thomas, Popular Newspapers, the Labour Party and British Politics: From Beaverbrook to Blair (London: Frank Cass, 2005). For more on the press and politics, see Laura Beers, Your Britain: Media and the Making of the Labour Party (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Mark Hampton, Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850-1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004); Aled Jones, Powers of the Press: Newspapers, Power and the Public in Nineteenth-Century England (Aldershot, UK: Scolar Press, 1996); Koss, Rise and Fall; Alan J. Lee, The Origins of the Popular Press in England, 1855-1914 (London: Rowman & Littlefjeld Pub Inc, 1976); Michelle Elizabeth Tusan, Women Making News: Gender and Journalism in Modern Britain (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005); Joel H. Wiener, ed., Papers for the Millions: The New Journalism in Britain, 1850s to 1914 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988). 12

Most of these are written by former journalists, and are not academic studies per se. See Matthew Engel, Tickle the Public: One Flundred Years of the Popular Press (London: Victor

Gollancz, 1996). 13

See Adrian Bingham, Gender, Modernity and the Popular Press in Inter-war Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Adrian Bingham, Family Newspapers?: Sex, Private

Life, and the British Popular Press, 1918-1978 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); D. L. LeMahieu, A Culture for Democracy: Mass Communication and the Cultivated Mind in Britain between the Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 14

15

Sparks and Tulloch, Tabloid Tales, 10. For an interesting analysis of how the term "tabloid" operates in both popular and scholarly discourse, see Biressi and Nunn, Tabloid Culture Reader, 23-8. For

more on

the meanings attributed to the word,

see

John Tulloch, "The Eternal Recurrence

of New Journalism," in Sparks and Tulloch, Tabloid Tales, 146. 16

See Michael Carlebach, The Origins of Photojournalism in America (Washington, DC; Smithsonian, 1992); Freund, Photography and Society, Michel Frizot, Pierre Albert, and Colin

Harding, eds, A New Flistory of Photography (Cologne: Konemann, 1998); Cordula Lebeck, Kiosk: A Flistory of Photojournalism (Gottingen, Germany: Steidl, 2002); Marianne Fulton and Estelle Jussim, eds, Eyes of Time: Photojournalism in America (New York: New York

Graphic Society, 1989); Tim N. Gidal, Modern Photojournalism: Origins and Evolution, 1910-1933 (New York: Macmillan Publishing, Co., 1973); Reuel Golden, Photojournalism, 1855 to the Present (New York: Abbeville Press, 2006); Harare Hardt, "Pictures for the Masses; Photography and the Rise of Popular Magazines in Weimar Germany," Journal of Communication Inquiry 13 (1989), 7-29; William Hicks, Words and Pictures: An Introduction to Photojournalism (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952). Michel Frizot and Cedric de Veigy, Vu: The Story of a Magazine (London: Thames & Hudson, 2009). 17

While there is currently no synthetic history of British photojournalism, a number of focused studies of particular aspects of photographic reporting in Britain do exist. See Gerry

Beegan, The Mass Image: A Social Flistory of Photomechanical Reproduction in Victorian London (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Roger Hargreaves and Bill Deedes, Daily Encounters: Photographs from Fleet Street (London: National Portrait Gallery Publications,

2007); Nicholas Hiley, "The Candid Camera of the Edwardian Tabloids," Flistory Today 43 (August 1993): 16; Peter Twaites, "Circles of Confusion and Sharp Vision: British Press Photography, 1919-1939," in Peter Caterall et al., eds, Northcliffe's Legacy: Aspects of the British Popular Press, 1896-1996 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000); Jeffrey Wright, "The Origins and Development of British Press Photography, 1884-1914," MS thesis, University

College Swansea, 1982;

Judith Walkowitz, "The Indian Woman, The Flower Girl, and the

Jew: Photojournalism in Edwardian London," Victorian Studies 42.1 (October 1998): 3-46. 18

Newspapers in general typically take a back seat to magazines in studies of photojournalism. Mary Panzer and Christian Cajoulle admitted as much in the introduction to their excellent study of photojournalism, which focused exclusively on magazines. See Christian Caujoulle and Mary Panzer, Things as They Are: Photojournalism in Context since 1955 (New York: Aperture, 2007). For a collection of essays that explore the many forms of photographic reporting, see Jason E. Hill and Vanessa R. Schwartz, eds, Getting the Picture: The Visual Culture of the News (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).

19

Karin Becker, "Photojournalism and the Tabloid Press," in Peter Dahlgren and Colin Sparks, eds, Journalism and Popular Culture (London: Sage Publications, 1992).

20

See, in particular, Anthony W. Lee and Richard Meyer, Weegee and the Naked City (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008). Jason E, Hill also discusses the work of Weegee in his research on the tabloid newspaper P.M.; see "Artist as Reporter: The PM News Picture," Doctoral dissertation, Art History, University of Southern California, 2011. See

also, V. Penelope Pelizzon and Nancy M. West, Tabloid, Inc.: Crimes, Newspapers, Narratives (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2010); Will Straw, "Formal Strategies in the True Crime Photograph," Étudesphotographiques 26 (November 2010): 107-19. 21

This distinction

22

Quoted in Caujoulle and Panzer, Things as They Are, 13.

23

For an important analysis of the relationship between word and image in photographic reporting, see Roland Barthes, "The Photographic Message," in Stephen Heath, ed. and trans., Image, Music, Text (New York: Hill, 1977), 15-31. See W. J. T Mitchell, "The Photographic Essay: Four Case Studies," in Picture Theory (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 281-322.

24

was articulated quite succinctly by the photojournalist Felix H. Man: "The Major step forward which occurred during 1928-29 was the growth of photojournalism, in which the photographs were not used to illustrate the story but actually told the story, a reversal of the roles so that the pictures now dominated the text instead of vice versa." Felix H. Man, 60 Years of Photography (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983), 3. See also Daniel Magilow, "The Illustrated Press and the Photo Essay," in The Photography of Crisis (University Park: Penn State, 2012), 34-62.

See Thierry Gervais, "The 'Greatest of War Photographers': Jimmy Hare, A Photojournalist at the Turn of the Twentieth-Century," Etudes photographiques 26 (November 2010): 35-50. See also William Hannigan, Picture Machine: The Rise of American Newspictures

(New York: Abrams, 2004); Eileen Michal, "Picture-Loving: Photomechanical Reproduction and Celebrity in America's Gilded Age," Doctoral dissertation in Art History, The University of Chicago, 2010; Bonnie Yochelson and David Czitrom, Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn of the

Century New

York (New York: New Press, 2007).

25

Gidal, Modern Photojournalism, 23.

26

on the socio-historical circumstances that gave rise to photographic reporting, Clayton Phillips, "Halftone Technology, Mass Photography and the Social Transformation of American Print Culture, 1880-1920," Doctoral dissertation, Philosophy, Yale University, 1996, 58-60; Beegan, The Mass Image, 15.

For theories

See David

27

For key texts on the subject of photographic ontology and truth, see John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1990); Alan Sekula, Photography/Politics Two

(London: Photography Workshop/Comedia, 1986); Joel Snyder, "Documentary without Ontology," Studies in Visual Communication 10.1, 86 (Winter 1984); John Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); Andre Bazin, "The Ontology of the Photographic Image," in

Priinah Peruck, ed., The Camera Viewed: Writings on Twentieth-Century Photography (New York: E,P. Dutton, 1979); Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill & Wang, 1981); Sontag, On Photography, John Szarkowski, The Photographer's Eye (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2007). For a synthesis of the literature on photographic ontology, see Geoffrey Batchen, Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999). 28

See Dan Schiller, Objectivity and the News: The Public and the Rise of Commercial Journalism (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1981), 93. See also Dona Schwartz, "Objective Representation: Photographs as Facts," in Bonnie Brennan and Hanno

Hardt, eds, Picturing the Past: Media, History, Photography (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pp. 158-81; Jason E. Hill, "On the Efficacy of Artifice: PM, Radiophoto, and the Discourse of Journalistic Objectivity," Études photographiques 26 (November 2010): 71-85. 29

The only historical studies of individual British press photographers of this era are Derek Smith, James Jarché:Press Picture Pioneer (London: Popperfoto, 1980); Ruth Boyd, A Focus

on

Fleet Street: Stanley Devon, Press Photographer (London: Derek Harrison, 1995);

Souna Nicole Kavountzis, "The Life and Photography of Christina Livingston Broom: British Press Photographer and Postcard Publisher," Master's thesis, University of Texas, Austin,

1990; Annie Rudd, '"The Unobserved Observer': Humphrey Spender's Hidden Camera and the Politics of Visibility in Interwar Britain," in Leah Lievrouw, ed., Challenging Communication Research (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), 193-207. 30

Gervais, "The 'Greatest of War Photographers.'"

31

See Leo

Charney and

Vanessa R. Schwartz, Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life

(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995); Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1990); Erika Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure: Women and the Making of London's West End (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 32

R. D. Blumenfeld, The Press in My Time (London: Rich & Cowan Ltd.,

33

While much historical work has been dedicated to Victorian illustrated journalism, very little has been written about the newspaper that emerged directly in their wake. See Peter W.

1933),

148.

Sinnema, Dynamics of the Pictured Page: Representing the Nation in the Illustrated London News (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 1998); Beegan, The Mass Image. 34

For more on this, see Lucy Brown, Victorian News and Newspapers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); Koss, Rise and Fall, Hampton, Visions of the Press.

35

This is discussed at length in Beegan, The Mass Image.

36

See Bloom, Bestsellers, 33; Hampton, Visions of the Press; Aled Jones, Powers of the Press; Koss, Rise and Fall; Wiener, Papers for the Millions.

37

Karin Becker has argued, "Whenever the distinction is drawn between information and entertainment, or the serious substance of a journalism appealing to an intellectual reading public is defended against the light, trivial appeal of the popular, photography falls within the popular, excluded from the realm of the serious press. Nowhere are the consequences of this position more evident than in the pages of and in the discussions about the tabloid press." Becker, "Photojournalism and the Tabloid Press," 130. For a similar take on the degraded status of photography, see Brennen and Hardt, Picturing the Past, 36-7.

38

See Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Hannah Arendt, ed., Illuminations: Walter Benjamin Essays and Reflections (New York: Harcourt, 1968). Benjamin's work has reverberated far and wide in a number of disciplines. See, in particular, Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1991); Vanessa Schwartz, "Walter Benjamin for

Historians," American Historical Review 106 (2002): 1721-43; Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, USA, 2001). 39

He wrote, "Technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations, which would be out of reach for the original itself." Benjamin, Illuminations, 220.

40

See LeMahieu, Culture for Democracy. For social histories of the era, see Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England 1918-1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); John Benson, Affluence and Authority: A Social History of Twentieth-Century Britain (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005).

41

See Bloom, Bestsellers.

42

For an analysis of the role of women consumers in late-nineteenth-century news and print culture, see Margaret Beetham, A Magazine of Her Own?: The Woman's Magazine 1800-1914 (London: Routledge, 1996).

43

Jennifer G. Tucker, Nature Exposed: Photography as Eyewitness in Victorian Science (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); Jennifer Green-Lewis, Framing the Victorians: Photography and the Culture of Realism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996). The most important primary source in this regard is Alexander Bain, The Senses and the Intellect (London: Longman, 1868).

44

See Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1989).

a

45

Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992), 26.

46

Jean Chalaby, The Invention of Journalism (London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1998), 76.

47

Theodor Adorno, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception," in Edmund Jephcott, ed., The Dialectic of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).

48

See Twaites, "Circles of Confusion and Sharp Vision," 107.

49

A similar point is made in Conboy, Tabloid Britain: Johansson, Reading Tabloids; Biressi and Nunn, Tabloid Culture Reader, 28.

50

See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections

on

the Origins and Spread of

Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006). For more on the role of the media and the concept of the imagined community, see John B. Thompson, The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996): Patrick Joyce, Democratic Subjects: The Self and the Social in Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Peter Dahlgren and Colin Sparks, eds, Communication and Citizenship: Journalism and the Public Sphere in the Media Age (London: Routledge, 1991). 51

See John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989); Vanessa R. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siecle France (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998); Patrick Joyce, Democratic Subjects: The Self and the Social in Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). See also Beegan, The Mass Image, 1; Dean De la Motte and Jeannene

Przyblyski, eds. Making the News: Modernity & the Mass Press in Nineteenth-Century France (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999). 52

For analyses of the concept of the "popular" and its relationship to the press, see Dahlgren and Sparks, Journalism and Popular Culture, 19; John Hartley, Popular Reality: Journalism, Modernity, Popular Culture (London: Hodder Arnold, 1996).

53

Brennen and Hardt, Picturing the Past, 4.

54

See, in particular, Eva Giloi and Edward Berenson, eds, Constructing Charisma: Celebrity, Fame, and Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010); Fred

Inglis, A Short History of Celebrity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Rhonda Garelick, Rising Star: Dandyism, Gender and Performance at the Fin de Siecle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); Michal, "Picture-Loving." For a curious study that attempts to move the origins of celebrity back to the ancient worid, see Robert Garland, Celebrity in Antiquity: From Media Tarts to the Tabloid Queens (London: Gerald Duckworth & Company, 2006). 55

56

See Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). See also Joseph Roach, It (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007). For

an

excellent study of the etymology of celebrity, see David Marshall, Celebrity and

Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 13. 57

See Daniel J. Boorslin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1961).

58

Charles L. Ponce de Leon, Self-Exposure: Human-Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890-1940 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,

2002), 29. Ponce de Leon's use of the concept of the "mask" derives from Warren Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon, 1984). 59

Roger Hargreaves and Peter Hamilton, The Beautiful and the Damned: The Creation of Identity in Nineteenth Century Photography (London: Lund Humphries, 2001), 1.

60

See Elizabeth Anne Macaulay, A.A.E. Disderi and the Carte de Visite Portrait Photograph (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); Barbara McCandless, "The Portrait Studio and the Celebrity: Promoting the Art," in Martha A. Sandweiss, ed., Photography in Nineteenth Century America (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991); Bevis Hillier, Victorian Studio Photographs: Biographical Portraits of Eminent Victorians (Boston: David R. Godine, 1976); David Prochaska and Jordana Mendelson, Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010).

61

For histories of British traditions of portraiture, see Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Asa Briggs and Archie Miles, A Victorian Portrait: Victorian Life and Values as Seen through Studio Photographers (London: Cassell, 1989); Elizabeth Heyert, The GlassHouse Years: Victorian Portrait Photography, 1839-1870 (London: Allanheld & Schram,

1979); David Piper, The English Face (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1992); Andrew Wilton, The Swagger Portrait: Grand Manner Portraiture in Britain from Van Dyke to Augustus John (London: Tate Gallery, 1992). 62

See Gordon Baldwin, ed., All the Mighty World: The Photographs of Roger Fenton, 18521860 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004); Yochelson and Czitrom, Rediscovering Jacob Riis; Joel Meyerowitz and Colin Westerbeck, Bystander: A History of Street

Photography (London: Bulfinch, 1994). 63

See Peter Howe, Paparazzi and Our Obsession with Celebrity (New York: Artisan, 2005); Allan Sekula, "Paparazzi Notes," in Photography against the Grain: Essays and Photo-works, 1923-1983 (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1984); Karen

Pinkus, The Montesi Scandal: The Death of Wilma Montesi and the Birth of the Paparazzi in Fellini's Rome (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Pres, 2003); Vanessa Schwartz, "Wide Angle at the Beach: The Origins of the Paparazzi and the Cannes Film Festival," Etudes photographiques 26 (November 2010): 161; Carol Squiers, "Class Struggle: The Invention of Paparazzi Photography and the Death of Diana, Princess of Wales" in Squiers,

ed., Overexposed: Essays on Contemporary Photography (New York: The New Press, 1999); Clement Cheroux, ed., Paparazzi!: Photographers, Stars, Artists (Paris: Flammarion, 2013).

64

See Tom Gunning, "Embarrassing Evidence: The Detective Camera and the Documentary Impulse," in Jane M. Gaines and Michael Renov, eds, Collecting Visible Evidence

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Bill Jay, "Photographer as Aggressor," in David Featherstone, ed., Observations: Essays on Documentary Photography (Carmel, CA: Friends of Photography, 1984); Sontag, On Photography. 65

See Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952). For more on this, see Jean-Pierre Montier, Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art

(Boston: Little, Brown &Co., 1996). 66

Lisa Henderson establishes a schema for understanding the "access continuum" in the photographing of individuals. See Henderson, "Access and Consent in Public Photography," in Larry Gross et al., eds, Image Ethics: The Moral Rights of Subjects in Photographs, Film, and Television (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 97. For a study of the way that early photojournalism could be harnessed to create celebrity status, see Walkowitz, "The Indian Woman."

67

For

68

Howe, Paparazzi, 32.

69

See, in particular, Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown.

70

Studies of celebrity that focus on the importance of American "personality" have followed the work of Warren Susman. See Culture as History.

71

See Christine Gledhill, Stardom: Industry of Desire (London: Routledge, 1991); Samantha Barbas, Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars and the Cult of Celebrity (London: Palgrave MacMillan,

more on

the emergence of the photo-op, see l-liley, "The Candid Camera."

2002); Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (London: BFI, 1986); Richard Decordova, Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001). 72

73

David Giles, Illusions of Immortality: /I Psychology of Fame and Celebrity (London: Palgrave, 2000), 23. For

more on

the celebrity culture surrounding the British royals, see David Cannadine,

"The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the 'Invention of Tradition,' c. 1820-1977," in Eric Hobsbawm, ed., The Invention of Tradition

(Cambridge University Press, 1983); Laura Nym Mayhall, "The Prince of Wales

versus

Clark Gable: Anglophone Celebrity and Citizenship between the Wars," Cultural and Social History 4 (December 2007): 529-43; John Plunkett, Queen Victoria: First Media Monarch

(Oxford: as

74

Oxford University Press, 2003); Thomas Laqueur, "The Queen Caroline Affair: Politics

Art in the Reign of George IV," Journal of Modem History 54 (1982): 417-66.

David Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy: Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (London: Penguin Books, 2005 [orig. pub. 1990]); Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England 1918-1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998);

George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (New York: Perigree, 1980); Martin Pugh, We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain Between the Wars (New York: Vintage Books, 2009). 75

Gertrude Himmelfarb, Victorian Minds (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1975). See also Martin Daunton and Bernhard Rieger, eds, Meanings of Modernity: Britain from the Late-Victorian Era to World War II (London: Berg Publishers, 2001); Martin Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Peter

Mandler, The English National Character: The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Ross McKibbin, Ideologies of Class (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); Catherine Hall, Keith McClelland, and Jane Rendall,

Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the British Reform Act of 1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Melman, The Culture of History. 76

Cornell, "Personalities and the Popular Media," in Dahlgren and Sparks, Journalism and Popular Culture, 78.

77

See Marshall, Celebrity and Power; Richard Schickel, Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity in America (New York: Doubleday, 1985),

78

The volume Image Ethics, now almost thirty years old, remains the clearest articulation of the legal questions posed by the rise of mass photography, Larry Gross, John Stuart Katz, and Jay Ruby, eds, Image Ethics: The Moral Rights of Subjects in Photographs, Film, and Television (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). See also Sontag, On Photography, Bill Jay, "Photographer as Aggressor," in David Featherstone, ed., Observations: Essays on Documentary Photography (Carmel, CA: Friends Photography, 1984).

79

See, in particular, Howe, Paparazzi; Sandra S. Philips, ed., Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera (London: Tate Publishing, 2010); Cheroux, Paparazzi!

80

For the definitive study of the concept of the "private sphere,"

see

Leonore Davidoff and

Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (London: Routledge, 2003 [orig. pub. 1987]). See also Deborah Cohen, Household Gods: The British and their Possessions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). 81

Robert E. Mensel,

"

'Kodakers Lying in Wait': Amateur Photography and the Right of Privacy

in New York, 1885-1915 "American Quarterly X Llll (March 1991): 24-45. See also Samuel H. Hofstadter and George Horowitz, eds, The Development of the Right of Privacy in New York

(New York: The Grosby Press, 1954); See also "Privacy, Photography, and the Press," Harvard Law Review 111.4 (February 1998): 1086-103; Michael Tugendhat and lain Christie, The Law of Privacy and the Media (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 61-5; John David

Viera, "Images 82

as

Property," in Gross, Katz, and Ruby, Image Ethics, 135.

This is discussed, although not with reference to the press, in Tom Gunning, "Embarrassing Evidence: The Detective Camera and the Documentary Impulse," in Jane M. Gaines and Michael Renov, eds, Collecting Visible Evidence (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press, 1999). 83

Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Screen 16 (1975).

84

Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, "The Right to Privacy," Harvard Law Review (December 1890): 193-220.

85

See Lynda Nead, The Haunted Gallery: Painting, Photography and Film around 1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 111-14.

86

William F. Pratt, Privacy in Britain (London: Associated University Press, 1979), 17-27. With the exception of very recent legislation, no law has ever protected civilians from having their privacy camera. See also Joshua Rozenberg, Privacy and the Press (London: Oxford University Press, 2005), v; Huw Beverley-Smith, The Commercial Appropriation of Personality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). For a study of the American context, see Samantha Barbas, Laws of Image: Privacy and Publicity in America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). For comparisons between the British and American history of privacy law, see Ernst L. Morris and Alan U. Schwartz, Privacy: The Right to be Left Alone (New York: MacMillan, 1962), 23; Don R. Pember, Privacy and the Press: The Law, the Mass Media, and the First Amendment (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972).

violated by the

87

For

a

synthetic analysis of this,

see

Dennis Griffiths, Fleet Street: Five Hundred Years of the

Press (London: British Library, 2006). 88

See Mandler, English National Character.

89

See Donald Thomas, Freedom's Frontier: Censorship in Modern Britain (London: John

90

See, in particular, Samuel Hynes, A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture (London: Pirnlico, 1992); Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (London, 1965).

91

The Daily Sketch, for example, was bombed in the Blitz, destroying nearly all of the records and correspondences, This is discussed in Boyd, A Focus on Fleet Street. Adrian Bingham

Murray, 2007).

the difficulty of studying the popular press for exactly these reasons. See Family Newspapers, 10. has remarked

92

on

One of the most influential works of social art history is T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers (New York: Knopf, 1985).

93

For an important and instructive analysis of this, Culture," in Weegee and Naked City.

94

Becker, "Photojournalism," 139.

95

Billie Melman, Women and the Popular Imagination in the Twenties (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), 9. For another terrific analysis of the importance of noncanonical historical materials, see Richard Meyer, "At Home in Marginal Domains," Documents 18 (Summer 2000): 19-32.

96

Brennan and Hardt, Picturing the Past, 12.

97

British journalistic trade periodicals such

as

see Richard

Meyer, "Learning from Low

the British Journal of Photography, World's

Press News, the Newspaper World, and the Amateur Photographer had an incredibly cosmopolitan scope, regularly featuring stories and information about European, American, and Dominion press photographic practice. Both Aled Jones and Stephen Koss have argued that the Britain was a particular crucial global news center. See Jones, Powers of the Press, 37; Koss, Rise and Fall, 2. 98

See Victoria DeGrazia, Irresistible Empire: America's Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006); Vanessa Schwartz, It's So French!: Hollywood,

Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 99

100

The international dynamics of photography at mid-century is explored in Blake Stimson, The Pivot of the World: Photography and Its Nation (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006).

See, in particular, Joel H. Wiener and Mark Hampton, eds, Anglo-American Media Interactions (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

101

For histories that view the tabloids

as

uniquely American,

see James E.

Murphy, "Tabloids

Urban Response," in Catherine L. Covert and John D. Stevens, eds, Mass Media between the Wars: Perceptions of Cultural Tension, 1918-1941 (Syracuse: Syracuse as an

University Press, 1984), 55-69; Michael Emery, Edwin Emery, and Nancy L. Roberts, The Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2000), see chapter 13, "The Twenties: Radio, Movies, Jazz Journalism"; Roland Marchand,

Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986); John D. Stevens, Sensationalism and the New York Press (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); Pelizzon and West, Tabloid, Inc. 102

For the origins of the concept in political terms,

see

lestyn Adams, Brothers

across

the

Ocean: British Foreign Policy and the Origins of Anglo-American Special Relationship, 1900-1905 (London: Tauris, 2005). For an analysis of the role of popular culture, see Mayhall, "The Prince of Wales versus Clark Gable."

Chapter 1

1

Felix H. Man, Man with Camera: Photographs from Seven Decades (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1983), n.p.

Many give 2Astonishing Story sources

the Daily Mirror this title. See Hugh Cudlipp, Publish and be Damned!: The

of the Daily Mirror (London: Andrew Dakers Ltd., 1953); Helmut Gernsheim and Alison Gernsheim, The History of Photography: From the Camera Obscura to the

3

Beginning of the Modern Era (London: Thames & Hudson, 1969). Jeffrey Wright attempts a more cautious understanding of the Daily Mirror's pioneering status in photographic reporting. See Jeffrey Wright, "The Origins and Development of British Press Photography, 1884-1914" Thesis, University College Swansea, 1982,110. Beaumont Newhall argues that the Illustrated American was the first newspaper to use photographs exclusively, though this was very shortlived and the journal would quickly return to reproducing engraved images. See Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present (London: Bullfinch, 1982 [orig. pub. 1937]), 67. It was not until much later that the term was applied to the tabloids, and that remains exceptional. See Karin Becker, "Photojournalism and the Tabloid Press," in Peter Dahlgren, ed., Journalism and Popular Culture (London: Sage Publications, 1992).

4 The most insightful study of the subject places "popular press photography"

in contrast to

photojournalistic magazines. See Peter Twaites, "Circles of Confusion and Sharp Vision: British Press Photography, 1919-1939," in Peter Caterall et a!., eds, Northcliffe's Legacy: Aspects of the British Popular Press, 1896-1996 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 115.

5

For the most comprehensive look at the diversity of turn-of-the-twentieth-century popular

6 7

entertainment forms, see Leo Charney and Vanessa R. Shwartz, eds, Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995). Both journals are the subject of thorough historical treatment. See, in particular, Chris Horrie, Tabloid Nation: From the Birth of the Mirror to the Death of the Tabloid Newspaper (London: Andre Deutsch, 2003); Tom Hopkinson, Picture Post, 1938-1950 (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1970). See Joel H. Wiener, Papers for the Millions: The New Journalism in Britain, 1850s to 1914 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988); Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful

Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Emery, 8Interpretive History See Michael

Edwin Emery, and Nancy L. Roberts, The Press and America: An

of the Mass Media (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2000); Joel H. Wiener, "The Americanization of the British Press," in Michael Harris and Tom O'Malley, Studies in

Newspaper and Periodical History (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 61-73; John D. Stevens, Sensationalism and the New York Press (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). For contemporaneous French examples and their cultural influence, see Vanessa R. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siecle France (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998).

9

The links between New Journalism and the feminization of the press are discussed In Margaret Beetham, A Magazine of Her Own? The Woman's Magazine 180CH1914

(London: Routledge, 1996), 126. The rapid increase in literacy rates after the passing of the 1870 Education Act meant that Britain had a near 99 percent basic literacy rate by 1900. See Clive Bloom, Bestsellers: Popular Fiction since 1900 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 32.

10

For more

on

the transformations in leisure patterns that enabled more people to

consume

newspapers, see Peter Bailey, Leisure and Classin Victorian England: Rational Recreation

and the Contest for Control 1830-1885 (London: Methuen, 1978); Brad Beaven, Leisure, Citizenship and Working-Class Men in Britain, 185(^1945 (Manchester: Manchester

University Press, 2005). 11

Quoted in Wiener, Papers for the Millions, 423; see also "The Modern Newspaper," Master Printer and Newspaper Owner (February 4, 1905): 8.

12

For a discussion of the influence of the Daily Mail, see Philip Gibbs, Adventures in Journalism (London: William Heinemann, 1923), 9; S. J. Taylor, The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1996); Catterall et al., Northcliffe's Legacy, 1; John Tulloch, "The Eternal Recurrence of New Journalism," in Colin Sparks and John Tulloch, eds, Tabloid Tales (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Pub, Inc., 2000), 142.

13

was registered by the pharmaceutical company Burroughs, Wellcome & Co. in 1884. It eventually became a way of referring to a concentrated version of anything. The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that it was used with regard to journalism as early as

"Tabloid"

1901. A search of the Times Digital Archive illustrates that "tabloid" is used most frequently to describe short theatrical productions, not newspapers, until the 1940s. 14

For more on this episode, see Silas Bent, Ballyhoo: The Voice of the Press (New York: Horace Liveright, 1927), 185; Arthur Sarell Rudd, "The Development of Illustrated Tabloid Journalism in the United States," Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1925, 45; Simon Michael Bessie, Jazz Journalism: The Story of the Tabloid Newspapers (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1938), 76; Hamilton Fyfe, Northcliffe: An Intimate Biography (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1930), 156.

15

Maurice Low, "Tabloid Journalism: Its Causes and Effects," Forum 31 (1901): 57.

16

Ibid., 56.

17

See, in particular, Joshua Brown, Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life and the (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002); Peter W. Sinnema, Dynamics of the Pictured Page: Representing the Nation in the Illustrated London News (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 1998); Dean De la Motte and Jeannene M. Przyblyski, Making the News: Modernity & the Mass Press in Nineteenth-Century France (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 238.

Crisis of Gilded Age America

18

The halftone process allowed for the reproduction of a photographic image by transferring visual information through a single-line screen, diffusing the image into small dots that produced

optical illusion of smooth gradations in light and shadow. As many as three-dozen different halftone technologies were used by the 1870s. The process popularized in Britain and the United States was patented by the Americans Frederic and Levy Ives in 1881, and the German

an

George Meisenbach procured the

British patent in 1882. See Wright, "The Origins and

Development of British Press Photography"; Gerry Beegan, The Mass Image: ,4 Social History of Photomechanical Reproduction in Victorian London (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 77; Eileen Michal, "Picture-Loving: Photomechanical Reproduction and Celebrity in America's Gilded Age," Doctoral dissertation in Art History, The University of Chicago, 2010, 34-51. 19

By the turn of the century, portrait studios such as Simmons & Co., Lombardi & Co., W. and D. Downey, Russell and Sons, and Lafayette supplied the new illustrated newspapers with celebrity photographs. The London Photographic Supply Company, founded in 1894 and the first of its kind in the world, promised to deliver halftones of any subject within twentyfour hours. See Christian Caujolle and Mary Panzer, Things as They Are: Photojournalism in Context since 1955 (New York: Aperture, 2007), 12.

20

For

an

analysis of the importance of the Daily Graphic in popular illustrated journalism,

see

H. Simonis, The Street of Ink: An Intimate History of Journalism (London: Cassell and Company, Ltd, 1917), 247; also J. D. Symon, The Press and Its Story (London: Seeley, Service & Co., Ltd., 1914).

21

See Clement Shorter, C.K.S.: An Autobiography: A Fragment by Himself (London: Constable and Co., 1927), 77-80,

22

See Beegan, The Mass Image, 99. See also Wright, "The Origins and Development of British Press Photography," 59.

23

Shorter, C.K.S., 70.

24

The Illustrated American

was

the first newspaper to try, and eventually fail, to use only

halftone images, in the mid-1890s. 25

Shorter, C.K.S., 70-1.

26

See Beegan, The Mass Image, 15; Shorter, C.K.S., 71.

27

Shorter, C.K.S., 74.

28

See Adrian Bingham, Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press in Inter-war Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Helen Damon-Moore, Magazines for the Millions: Gender and Commerce in the Ladies' Home Journal and the

Saturday Evening Post

(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). 29

The first systematic studies of this were undertaken after the First World War, and confirmed this popular prejudice. One such study is cited in Rudd, "The Development of Illustrated Tabloid Journalism," 9. See also Henry Wickham Steed, The Press (London: Penguin,

1938), 28; Mass Observation, The Press and Its Readers (London: Art & Technics Ltd., 1949), 67. 30

Shorter, C.K.S., 77.

31

Sketch (February 1,

32

Shorter, C.K.S., 73.

33

Though their niche appeal and format might suggest they were magazines, both the Tatler and the Bystander were identified as "weekly newspapers," even though there was a "magazines and periodicals" section in the annual compendium of British newspapers: Henry Sell, Sell's Dictionary of the World's Press and Advertisers' Reference Book (1909). They also carried "registered as a newspaper" on their masthead throughout this entire period. Jeffrey Wright referred to these newspapers as "tabloid weeklies." Wright, "The Origins and Development of British Press Photography," 69.

34

Shorter, C.K.S., 103.

35

An article appearing in 1898 presciently suggested, "The insatiable demand for details, however minute, of those in authority, in affluence, or in peril cannot possibly be met by the meagre

1893):

1.

space which daily journalism alone can afford it. Society papers must therefore create the supply for this inordinate demand, and with all the resources of science at their command it is no longer a difficult matter to garner and distribute minutiae from all parts of the globe." Laura Smith, "Society Journalism: Its Rise and Development," Newspaper Press Directory (1898): 801. For a discussion of the celebrity culture of the aristocracy in the tabloids, see Chapter 4.

36

Tatler {July 3 1901): 2.

37

This advertisement appeared in Sell's Dictionary of the World's Press and Advertisers' Reference Book (1909).

38

Shorter, C.K.S., 104.

39

For more on this influence, see Wright, "The Origins and Development of British Press Photography," 69. See also Symon, The Press and Its Story, 12.

40

He worked

on

the Graphic, the Gentlewoman, Car Illustrated, and Lord Northcliffe'S

unsuccessful attempt at highbrow journalism, the London Magazine. See Comyns Beaumont, A Rebel in Fleet Street (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1943), 29.

41

Bystander (December 9, 1903): 1.

42

Beaumont, /4 Rebel in Fleet Street, 29-30.

43

The Bystander (December 9, 1903); 3; emphasis in the original.

44

Beaumont, A Rebel in Fleet Street, 110.

45

Jeffrey Wright has argued, "In its

use

of pictures the Daily Mirror clearly took its inspiration Origins and Development of British Press

from the sixpenny weeklies." Wright, "The Photography," 131. 46

Fyfe, Northcliffe, 93.

47

For more on the early years of the Daily Mirror, Northcliffe, 92-6.

48

Catterall et al., Northcliffe's Legacy, 2.

49

James Jarché, who worked as a press photographer on both the Daily Sketch and Daily Graphic, remarked of Swaffer, "He did more for press photograph than any man living." James Jarche, People I Have Shot (London: Metheun & Co., 1934), 48. For more on Swaffer's tenure at the Mirror, see Tom Driberg, Swaff: The Life and Times of Hannen Swaffer (London: MacDonald, 1974), 19-31. See also Horrie, Tabloid Nation.

50

See Fyfe, Northcliffe, 100-103. For more on Sapt's role, see Wright, "The Origins and Development of British Press Photography," 124.

see

Horrie, Tabloid Nation; Fyfe,

51

Robert Allen, Daily Mirror (Cambridge: P. Stephens, 1981), 6.

52

Fyfe, Northcliffe, 103.

53

Daily Illustrated Mirror (January 26, 1904); Daily Mirror (September 1, 1904). It also read, "All the News by Telegraph, Photograph, and Paragraph."

54

Daily Illustrated Mirror (January 28, 1904): 1.

55

Fyfe, Northcliffe, 99-100.

56

The British Library Manuscripts Collection, Lord Northcliffe Papers, Add. 62234, Letter dated April 26, 1909.

57

Lord Northcliffe Papers, Add. 62234, Letter dated August 11,1909; August 10, 1909; January 13, 1911.

58

"Daily Mirror's Rapid Move," Master Printer and Newspaper Owner (January 28, 1905): 14.

59

He said he did it because "it looked well

on

the newsstands." Lord Northcliffe Papers, Add.

62234, Letter dated August 8,1908. 60

Lord Northcliffe Papers, Add. 62234, Letter January 24, 1912.

61

Lord Northcliffe Papers, Add. 62234, Letter dated January 24, 1912.

62

Lord Northcliffe Papers, Add. 62234, July 4, 1912.

63

Driberg, Swaff, 33.

64

Ibid., 46.

65

The device

was

used

as

the main source of telegraphic transmission for British journalism

until after the Second World War. 66

Lord Northcliffe Papers, Add. 62234, Letter from Kenealy dated November 1, 1907.

67

Early issues announced calls for "eye witnesses" to supply the newspaper with the necessary photographs, "from home or abroad" and encouraged these amateur photographers to use the speediest methods possible to deliver the photographs to Heet Street. Daily Mirror (April 5,1904): 6.

68

The journalist G. Binney Dibblee remarked in 1912, "The rise of [the Daily Mirror] is intimately connected with the popular success of the cinematograph theatres and points to ...

a

It is due to the intense modem desire to see things and judge trait in the public of to-day them, each for oneself." G. Binney Dibblee, The Newspaper (London: Williams and Norgate, 1912), 86. ...

69

Tom Gunning, "The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectators, and the Avant-Garde," in Robert Stam and Toby Miller, eds, Film and Theory: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2000), 229-35.

70

Lord Northcliffe Papers, Add. 62234, "The Ten Commandments," 1907-14.

71

Jeffrey Wright has shown that only 4 percent of the photographs in the 1904 issues of the Daily Mirror were "hard news" pictures, and that portraits provided the single largest category of photographs appearing in the paper. Wright, "The Origins and Development of British Press Photography," 131.

72

For more

on

the popularity of the Daily Mirror, see Matthew Engel, Tickle the Public: One

Hundred Years of the Popular Press (London: Victor Gollancz, 1996); Dibblee, Newspaper, 186. The newspaper was so popular—in Britain and throughout the Dominions—that a

village in Alberta, Canada, changed its name to Mirror in honor of the newspaper. A letter city and provided a map that included a Northcliffe Boulevard, a Kenealy Avenue, and a Fleet Street. Lord Northcliffe Papers, Add. 62234, August 4,1911.

to Northcliffe described the

73

Symon, The Press and Its Story, 237.

74

Driberg, Swaff, 45.

75

Northcliffe reminded Kenealy on the eve of the arrival of his competitor, "I hope that you are girding up your loins for the forthcoming fight... I may tell you that the enemy is under the impression that when they can fight you under what they call 'fair terms,' they will be able to you in 1909-10.

consume c.

one or

two

gulps." Lord Northcliffe Papers, Add. 62234, Letter

to

Kenealy,

76

Lord Northcliffe Papers, Add. 62234, Letter to Kenealy, February 19, 1909; Lord Northcliffe Papers, Add. 62234, Letters dated March 11, 1911; December 12, 1912; July 16, 1913; August 26, 1913; February 9, 1911; March 11, 1911; August 19, 1912; April 17, 1913.

77

Swaffer admitted

78

This was announced

79

"Future of the Illustrated Papers: Will the Daily oust the Weekly?" Sell's Dictionary of the Press (1914): 41-4.

80

Ibid.

as much, which is discussed in Driberg, Swaff. See also Lord Northcliffe Papers, Add. 62234, Letter to Kenealy dated July 31,1913. on

its masthead. See Daily Sketch (July 1, 1911).

81

Ibid.

82

"Future of the Illustrated Papers," 44.

83

For more on the photographic press and the First World War, see Aviel Roshwald, European Culture and the First World War: The Arts, Entertainment, and Propaganda, 1914-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). See also Charles Dawbarn, "The Public and the Press," The English Review 21 (1915), 490-6.

84

The British government strictly regulated cameras on the frontlines, and threatened to court martial soldiers in possession of one. Official military photographers were hired to document the events, and the images were severely censored before they reached the public. For more on DORA and the press, see Michael Buckovich, "The Defense of the Realm Regulations and Criticism of the Government in Britain during the First World War," Master's thesis, Queen's College, 1979. See also Mark Connelly, War and the Media: Reportage and Propaganda, 1900-2003 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005).

85

Martin Marcus, Wireless Transmission of Photographs (London: Wireless Press, 1916), 2, 35.

86

Daily Mirror (May 26, 1916): 1.

87

88

This is discussed in Dennis Griffiths, ed., The Encyclopedia of the British Press, 1422-1992 (London: Macmillan, 1992), 544, For

a

brief discussion of the British influence

on

L'Excelsior and Le Miroir, see Michel Frizot,

Pierre Albert, and Colin Harding, eds, A New History of Photography (Cologne: Konemann, 1998), 362, 368-9. 89 90

The Newspaper World (August 30, 1919): 8. The Newspaper World (September 13, 1919): 7. Some indication of the French interest across the Channel is evident in the founding of the journal Revue

in the activities

hebdomadaire de la presse anglaise in 1921. See also

contemporaine 91

et ses

FrançoisNovion, La

Presse anglaise

grands quotidiens (Paris, 1925).

For analysis of the difference between British and American tabloids, see Samuel T. Moore, "Those Terrible Tabloids!," The Independent 116 (March 1926): 264-6; Stephen Leacock, "The British and American Press," Harper's Magazine 145 (June 1922): 1. See also James E. Murphy, "Tabloids as an Urban Response," in Catherine L. Covert and John D. Stevens, eds, Mass Media between the Wars: Perceptions of Cultural Tension, 1918-1941 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1984), 55-69.

92

See Bessie, Jazz Journalism] Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,

1986), chapters 3 and 4. 93

This had at least something to do with the fact that the New York tabloids were more self-conscious about their use of the term "tabloid"—as in the "News in Tabloid" section in the Daily News.

94

Arthur Sarell Rudd, "The Development of Illustrated Tabloid Journalism in the United States," Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1925, 1, 47. See also Bessie, Jazz Journalism,

78; John Arthur Chapman, Tell It to Sweeney: The Informal History of the New York Daily News (Garden City, NY: Doubleday &Co., Inc., 1961), 16. 95

Rudd, "The Development of Illustrated Tabloid Journalism

96

The newspapers that shared the most with the American tabloids were the mass broadsheet weeklies, such as the World's Pictorial News, the News of the World, and the People.

97

Quoted in Newspaper Press Directory

98

Michael Joseph, Journalism for Profit (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1924), 57, 72, 142.

99

(1923):

in the United

States," 51.

17.

"Why Tabloids Are Successful," World's Press News (May 7, 1931): 14. For

an

earlier

discussion of this, see Philip A. Payne, "What Is the Lure of the Tabloid Press," Editor and Publisher (July 26, 1924): 63. 100

The "circulation wars" of the years between the mid-1920s and the early 1930s saw newspapers incentivizing readership through offers of free life insurance, the guarantee of

a

generous stipend in perpetuity, or lavish vacations. See Robert Allen, Voice of Britain: The Inside Story of the Daily Express (Cambridge: Patrick Stephens, 1983), 57. 101

See Michael Hampton, Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850-1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 39. See also Engel, Tickle the Public, Stephen Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981).

102

See Joseph, Journalism for Profit, 115, 142; Robert Ensor, England 1870-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936), 535; Norman Angell, The Public Mind: Its

Disorders, Its Exploitation (London: Unwin Brothers Ltd., 1926), 140-1. 103

The Newspaper World (January 3, 1925): 2.

104

This phrase appears in an advertisement in World's Press News (April 26, 1934): 17. The Daily Herald was an extremely influential, and largely untouched, subject for historians of

photojournalism.

105

R. D. Blumenfeld relayed Times, in the early 1920s

story about speaking with Mr. Moberley Bell, manager of the the topic of photographs: "He hammered at his desk and cried, 'don't be a fool. The Times with pictures? The Times with display? The Times with supplements?'. [But] look at it now. Still the leading journal, with excellent pictures, first-rate display type and quite interesting supplement. They have all had to change." R. D. Blumenfeld, The Press in My Time (London: Rich & Cowan Ltd., 1933), 38. a

on

..

106

Of its Sunday edition, the Express proclaimed, "It's the most youthful of Sunday papers. It is barely fourteen years old. You could not find a more virile youngster. Its pages radiate enthusiasm. It bristles with

new

ideas." Daily Express (August 1,

1932):

2.

107

The Newspaper World (January 3, 1925): 4.

108

For an analysis of the Daily Express's reign as circulation leaders, see Engel, Tickle the Public, "Racy News of the World," Newsweek (November 25, 1926): 73.

109

P. P.A. Record (October 1922): 133.

110

David Ockham, Stentor, or the Press of To-day and To-Morrow (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner&Col, Ltd. 1927), 80.

111

Kurt

von

Stutterheim, The Press in England (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.,

1934), 149. 112

Ibid., 155.

113

Cohen-Portheim, England, the Unknown Isle (London: Duckworth, 1930), 202.

114

See Laura Vitray, John Mills, and Roscoe Brabazon Ellard, Pictorial Journalism (London: MacGraw-Hill Company, 1939), 354.

115

Blumenfeld, Press in My Time, 149.

116

See Cudlipp, Publish

117

The American influence

or

be Damned! was

further underscored by the fact that the transformation of

the newspaper was done in cooperation with the American advertising agency J. Walter Thompson. M. Edelman, The Mirror: A Political History (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966), 40-1. For a description of the push toward New York-style tabloid journalism, see Horrie, Tabloid Nation. 118

Hugh Cudlipp, Walking on Water (London: The Bodley Head, 1976), 68,

119

Ibid.

120

Cudlipp would later write that under Bartholomew's editorship, "the Mirror put its fingers its nose at tradition and protocol." Cudlipp, Publish and be Damned!, 65.

121

When giving testimony to a parliamentary commission on the press, Cudlipp was asked, "Have you any special aim at attracting the female sex?," to which he responded, "None

to

at all now; we used to have." Asked when that changed, he responded, "About 13 years ago [roughly 1935]." Parliament, Royal Commission on the Press (1947-1949), Questioning of editors of Daily Mirror/Sunday Pictorial, and News of the World, 2. Cudlipp spoke

contemptuously of the Daily Mirror of the late 1920s, suggesting that "it directed its appeal declining but still well-to-do middle class. It was the paper for the folk who annually holidayed for a month or so in Scotland or the South of France." Cudlipp, Publish or be Damned!, 53.

to the

122

Cited in Deborah Cohen, Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

123

See John Stevenson, Britain in the Depression: Society and Politics, 1929-1939 (London: Longman, 1994). The best treatment of the changing political orientation of the

Daily Mirror is Edelman, The Mirror.

124

See Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, The Readership of Newspapers and Periodicals in Great Britain, 1936.

125

Ibid. As late

as

1949, the tabloid Daily Graphic had

a

"predominance of readers within the

upper income group." Mass Observation, The Press and Its Readers, 18. 126

127

Daily Sketch (January 19, 1938): 1. For more on this, see The Newspaper World (January 22,1938): 8; World's Press News (January 19, 1938): 18. By the late 1930s, with the triumph of Bartholomew's

new

Daily Mirror, the stage

was

set

for the rise of tabloid newspapers such as the Sun, which took tabloid reporting to new and unprecedented extremes. See Johansson, Reading Tabloids: Tabloid Newspapers and their Readers (Hudding, Sweden: Sodertornhogskola, 2007). 128

Political and Economic Planning, Report Economic Planning Publications, 1938).

129

Man, Man with Camera, n.p.

130

See Michael Hallett, Stefan Lorant: Godfather of Photojournalism (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2006).

131

Scholars have almost entirely overlooked the Weekly Illustrated and its importance to the development of photojournalism. This oversight is especially remarkable because the

on

the British Press (London: Political and

American news proprietor Henry Luce used the Weekly Illustrated as the prototype for photojournalism for his epochal Life magazine. This is discussed in Man, Man with Camera. 132

World's Press News (July 5, 1934): 11.

133

Lilliput (July 1937): 1.

134

Hallett, Stefan Lorant.

135

Hopkinson, Picture Post, 10.

136

Quoted in Hallet, The Real Story of Picture Post, 8.

137

Felix H. Man and Kurt Hutton got their start under Lorant's auspices.

138

Stuart Hall et

139

leftwing

140

Quoted in ibid., 13-14. See also Hallett, The Real Story, 8.

141

Von Stutterheim, The Press in England, 155-6.

142

Picture Post (October 1, 1938): 58.

143

Institute of Incorporated Photographers. Photography in Commerce and Industry 1938, 5.

at, eds, Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies (London: Hutchinson, 1980): 7-11. Lorant and Tom Hopkinson, who edited the first issues of the magazine, took a strong approach to the journal, which ruffled the feathers of the conservative owner, Edward Hulton. See Hopkinson, Picture Post, 9.

Chapter 1

2

Wadenoyen, All About Portraits and Your Camera (London: Focal Press, 1940), prolific writer on photographic subjects, and his books would influence a subsequent generation of photojournalists, such as Roger Mayne. Hugo

van

11. He

was a

2

Hugo van Wadenoyen, Photographing People: Ways to New Portraiture (London: The Focal Press, 1939), 15.

3

He recommended using flash photography in the studio—hitherto almost exclusively used by press photographers. Ibid., 103.

4

For more

on

the snapshot and instantaneous photography,

see

Brian Coe and Paul Gates,

The Snapshot Photograph: The Rise of Popular Photography, 1888-1939 (London: Ash & Grant, 1977), 11; Ute Eskildsen, ed., Street and Studio: An Urban History of Photography

(London: Tate Publishing, 2007); Colin Ford and Karl Steinorth, You Press the Button and We Do the Rest: The Birth of Snapshot Photography

(London:

National Museum of

Photography, 1988). 5

The phrase "bearing witness" comes from Marianne Fulton and Estelle Jussim, eds, Eyes of Time: Photojournalism in America (New York: New York Graphic Society, 1989), 107.

6

Annie Rudd, "Posing, Candor, and the Realisms of Photographic Portraiture, 1839-1945," Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 2014. This is also the subject of her forthcoming

7

See Charles Ponce de Leon, Self-Exposure: Human-Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 189(^1940 (Chapel Hp The University of North Carolina

8

For

book, "The Posed and the Candid: Encountering the Camera, 1839-1945."

Press, 2002). more on

this tension,

see

David Marshall, Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary

Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). See also Peter Howe, Paparazzi and Our Obsession with Celebrity (New York: Artisan, 2005). 9

For a discussion of the development of press photography in the late nineteenth century, see Jeffrey Wright, "The Origins and Development of British Press Photography, 1884-1914," University College Swansea, 1982; Gerry Beegan, The Mass Image: A Social History of Photomechanical Reproduction in Victorian London (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

10

Many historians have shown how "photojournalism" got its start with the war photography of Roger Fenton, Eugene Appert, and Matthew Brady, and developed slowly over the course of the nineteenth century. See Gordon Baldwin, All the Mighty World: The Photographs of Roger Fenton, 1853-1860 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004); See alsoThierry Gervais, "The 'Greatest of War Photographers': Jimmy Hare, A Photojournalist at the Turn of the Twentieth-Century," Études photographiques 26 (November 2010): 35-50.

11

Photographic News (April 14,1899): 225.

12

See Tim N. Gidal, Modern Photojournalism Origin and Evolution, 1910-1933 (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1973). For the studies specifically focused on Britain, see Wright, "The Origins and Development of British Press Photography"; Peter Twaites, "Circles of Confusion and Sharp Vision: British Press Photography, 1919-1939," in Peter Caterall et al., eds, Northcliffe's Legacy: Aspects of the British Popular Press, 1896-1996 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000); Nicholas Hiley, "The Candid Camera of the Edwardian Tabloids," History Today 43 (August 1993): 16; Richard Hargreaves and Bill Deedes, Daily Encounters: Photographs from Fleet Street (London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2007); Judith Walkowitz, "The Indian Woman, The Flower Girl, and the Jew: Photojournalism ill Edwardian London," Victorian Studies 42.1 (October 1998): 3-46.

13

As late

as

1944,

one

publication

on

the subject would write, "Reliable statistics to show the

number of photographers in business in this country are not available." Kraszna A. Kraus, Photography as a Career (London: The Focal Press, 1944), 38. 14

An interesting series of correspondences between Lord Northcliffe and Alexander Kenealy, the editor of the Daily Mirror, gives a good sense of how the first "full-time" press photographers were remunerated. See Lord Northcliffe Papers, The British Library Manuscripts Collection, Add. 62234.

15

For more on freelance photography at the time, see Bernard Alfieri, Free-Lance Photography (London: Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1939); Ward Muir, A Camera for Company: Adventures and Observations of an Amateur Photographer (London: Selwyn & Blount, Ltd., 1923); Michael

Joseph, Journalism for Profit (London: Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., 1924). More fundamentally, the press photographer's identity as a "journalist" was a long time in the making, and a constant source of debate for most of the pre-Second World War period. For examples of this debate, see The Journalist (January 1924): 44. Some journalists simply took pictures themselves, though this was relatively rare and a source of some tension in professional circles. See The Journalist (December 1924): 254; World's Press News (January 5, 1933): 18. 16

Much more could be said about the influence of these picture agencies, and it should prove avenue for future research.

a

fruitful 17

I was only able to find very few biographies of the photographers of this era. See Derek Smith, James Jarché: Press Picture Pioneer (London: Popperfoto, 1980); Ruth Boyd, A Focus on Fleet Street: Stanley Devon, Press Photographer (London: Derek Harrison, 1995).

18

The National Media Museum is the only major repository for these photographs. Though the images held there are numerous, the vast majority are not catalogued by the name of the

photographer. 19

For examples of this, see Bell R. Bell, The Complete Press Photographer (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1927); Edward J. Dean, Lucky Dean: Reminiscences of a Press

Photographer (London: Robert Hale, Ltd., 1944); Stanley Devon, Glorious: The Life-Story of Stanley Devon, Twice "British News Photographer of the Year" (London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd., 1957); John Everard, Photographs for the Papers: How to Take and Place Them (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1914); Bert Hardy, Bert Hardy: My Life (London: G. Fraser, 1985); James Jarché,People I Have Shot (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1934); Bernard Grant, To the Four Corners: The Memoirs of a News Photographer (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1933); A. V Swaebe, Photographer Royal (London: Leslie Frewin, 1967); William R. Turner, Eyes of the Press (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1935); Lancelot Vining, My Way with the Miniature: Practical Experience and Frank Advice on 35 mm. Photography (London: The Focal Press, 1941). 20

Dean, Lucky Dean, introduction.

21

Many celebrity-hunting photographers were quite young, since editors typically thought they were best suited to push their way into circumstances in which grown men might have trouble, James Jarché'S first assignments as a young man involved photographing celebrities in Hyde Park, Bert Hardy got his first job by responding to an ad placed by the Central Photographic Service declaring "Boy Wanted!," and Stanley Devon began working at the age of 15 for Keystone. See Jarchée, People I Have Shot Hardy, My Life; Devon, Glorious, 13.

22

See Brodrick Haldane, Time Exposure (London: Arcadia, 1999); Brodrick Haldane, Time Exposure: A Retrospective Exhibition of Photographs by Brodrick Haldane

(Edinburgh: Scottish Arts Council, 1982), 3; Swaebe, Photographer Royal, 7. 23

woman mentioned in the literature from the period is Christina Broom, who turned photography to augment her income as a postcard photographer and vendor. See Souna Nicole Kavountzis, "The Life and Photography of Christina Livingston Broom: British Press Photographer and Postcard Publisher," Master's thesis, University of Texas, Austin, 1990. For a very early discussion of the "need" for women press photographers, see British Journal of Photography (March 1905).

The sole

to press

24

Jarché,People I Have Shot,

6.

25

Ibid.

26

See Bevis

27

Henry Snowden Ward, Photography for the Press (London: Dawbarn and Ward, 1901) 15.

Hillier, Victorian Studio Photographs (Boston: David R. Godine, 1976); Terence Pepper and Hugh Vickers, High Society: Photographs, 1897-1914 (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1998). ,

28

William Turner reminded his readers, "No other walk of life, save reporting, offers such opportunity for meeting the world's celebrities as press-photography." Turner, Eyes of the

Press, 154. For more examples of this, see Bert Garai, I Get My Picture (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1938); Dean, Lucky Dean; Hardy, My Life] Swaebe, Photographer Royal. 29

Jarché, People I Have Shot;

See also James

Jarché, "Royalty

I Have Shot!" The Passing

Show (September 22, 1934): 7. 30

Grant, To the Four Corners; Turner, Eyes of the Press; Felix H. Man, Man with Camera: Photographs from Seven Decades (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1983).

31

camera aided in the photographing of objects—people or otherwisemoving at high speeds without producing blur or hazy lines that would not translate well to the halftone plate. Many of these technologies were pioneered in the pursuit of sports photography. For a discussion of this, see Adolphe Abrahams, The Photography of Moving Objects: And Hand-Camera Work for Advanced Workers (London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1911).

32

An advertisement for the Goerz press camera in a 1910 edition of the British Journal of Photography proclaimed, "The most popular of all cameras used for press work is the special

The focal- plane

model for the Goerz-Anschutz, which is in the hands of all the leading agencies and workers." The different varieties of press camera are discussed in J. R. Hunt, Pictorial Journalism (London: Sir Isaac Pitman &Sons, Ltd., 1937). 33

Detective

cameras are

discussed in Tom Gunning, "Embarrassing Evidence: The Detective

Camera and the Documentary Impulse," in Jane M. Gaines and Michael Renov, eds, Collecting Visible Evidence (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). A feature in the British Journal of Photography discussed the merits and detective and pocket cameras, none of which were mentioned as appropriate for press work. See British Journal of

Photography (March 18,1910): 205-12. These cameras were, however, sometimes used for press photographs taken inside the courtroom. This is discussed in Chapter 5 of this book. 34

Quoted in Hiley, "The Candid Camera of the Edwardian Tabloids," 22.

35

This is discussed in Robert E. Mensel, "'Kodakers Lying in Wait': Amateur Photography and the Right of Privacy in New York, 1885-1915," American Quarterly XLIII (March 1991): 31.

36

This is discussed in Hiley, "The Candid Camera of the Edwardian Tabloids." The Penny Pictorial feature dates from 1899.

37

Everard, Photographs for the Papers, 60.

38

Walter Kilbey, Advanced Hand-Camera Work and Focal-Plane Photography (London: Dawbarn & Ward, 1904), 75-6.

39

Garai, I Get My Picture, 27.

40

Daily Mirror (December 15, 1905): 8.

41

Representations of Society life in the photographic press

42

Quoted in Simonis, The Street of Ink: An Intimate History of Journalism (London: Cassell and Company, Ltd, 1917), 256.

43

See Roger Hargreaves and Peter Hamilton, The Beautiful and the Damned: The Creation of Identity in Nineteenth Century Photography (London: Lund Humphries, 2001),

44

Punch (March

19,1913):

are discussed in

depth in Chapter 4.

221.

45

"Photographic Illustrations in the Press," British Journal of Photography (June 3, 1910): 414.

46

Sell's World's Press: The Handbook for the Fourth Estate (1914): 38-9.

47

Ibid.

48

See Hiley, "The Candid Camera of the Edwardian Tabloids."

49

The photographic culture of war photography—particular that of the First World War— has been discussed in a variety of different contexts, and in many ways is outside of the purview of this project. See John Taylor, War Photography: Realism in the British Press

(London: Routledge, 1991); Rainer Fabian, Images of War: 130 Years of War Photography (Sevenoaks: New English Library, 1985). 50

"Soldiers in Civilian Work Strong Protest by Press Photographers," British Journal of Photography (March 2, 1917): 109.

51

The acceptance within the mandate of the NUJ was not firmly settled until decades later. In his history of the NUJ, Clement J. Bundock told of how, in 1934, a provincial member

challenged this status, which exposed the fact that press photographers were not actually covered under existing agreements. It was only after arbitration that press photographers were accepted as full members. See Clement J. Bundock, The National Union of Journalists: A Jubilee History, 1907-1957 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), 127. 52

The mouthpiece of the organization, the PPA Record, enumerated its mission: "The Objects of the Association are briefly: 1. To promote the interests of its members in their

professional work. 2. To watch Parliamentary

or

public action affecting the interests

of photographers. 3. To deal with matters affecting professional custom and practice. 4. To protect the interests of persons engaged in the art or business of photography. 5. To prepare and establish schools or places of instruction upon subjects relating to 6. To provide for the members legal advice free of photographic art and production charge." PPA Record (August 1922): 52. ...

53

54

Swaebe referred to the World's Press News as the Fleet Street man's "bible." Photographer Royal, 189.

"Selecting the Pictures," Newspaper World (January 2, 1926): 1. The PPA Record suggested, "Action photographs tend to create a 'live' picture page... A picture editor has to see, if at all possible, that his pages are not flat, but bright and full of action." "Newspaper

Photography," PPA Record (November 1927): 141. 55

Clement Shorter, C.K.S. An Autobiography: A Fragment by Himself, ed. J. M. Bulloch (London: Constable and Co., 1927), 85.

56

Reprinted in British Journal of Photography (February 24, 1922): 119.

57

S. D. Jouhar, "Photographic Personalities: James Jarch£," The Amateur Photographer (December 17, 1952): 635.

58

A. V. Swaebe wrote, "During my long career I must have attended hundreds of Society weddings, [where I have] taken thousands of pictures." Swaebe, Photographer Royal, 108.

59

The Newspaper World complained in 1926 that "wedding photographs form a large The average camera-man proportion of the pictorial contents of many local papers What is wanted covering a wedding certainly does not display a great deal of imagination its more variety." The Newspaper World (February 13, 1926): 33. .

.

.

.

60

Jarché, People I Have Shot,

61

Daily Sketch (June 3, 1919): 1.

62

..

39-40.

I Have Shot, 144. Jarché dressed up as one of the bit payers in a play in order of on the actors photographs stage, in action. Bert Garai dressed up—along with his

Jarché,People to take

photographer—as a staff waiter to get beyond the security guards prohibiting the taking of photographs of Pope Benedict XV. Garai, I Get My Picture, 51. "Lucky" Dean convinced the Australian cricket team to allow him to wear a uniform and masquerade as a player in order to take a photograph of the king and queen. Dean, Lucky Dean, 83-4. 63

See also Jarche, "Royalty I Have Shot!," 7.

64

65

For an early discussion of miniature camera use, see "Small Cameras Companions," Newspaper World (January 3, 1924): 4.

Despite the emphasis placed

on

as

Constant

such cameras by historians of photojournalism, miniature

have been shown to have had very limited appeal to most press photographers well into the 1930s. This point is made in Gidal, Modern Photojournalism, 15. The primary factor

cameras

working against miniatures was the small size of the negative, which took time to enlarge and process. W. H. Taylor of the Keystone Press Agency wrote, "Miniature camera work, in my opinion, is all right for feature work, and special angles, but not practical for rush Press work, where a news picture is required with the greatest possible speed." Newspaper World (January 15, 1938): 13. 66

An advertisement for the British made "Foth-Derby" Camera proclaimed itself "the smallest camera in the world." Photography (June 1934): 23.

focal-plane shutter 67

Bernard Alfieri, Jr., "The Miniature Camera in Press Photography," British Journal of Photography (February 26, 1937): 133-4. For more on the place of the miniature camera in professional discussions, see British Journal of Photography (March 5, 1937): 154; Institute of British Photographers Yearbook, 1939, 91-3.

68

James Jarchée, "Press Photography with 1936): 584-5.

69

Ibid.

70

See Vining, My Way with a Miniature, 17. Felix H. Man claimed that he Vining only started working later. Man, Man with Camera.

a

Miniature," The Photographic Journal (December

was

the first, and

71

Vining, My Way with

72

M. Wiedling, "Versatility of the Modern Miniature Camera." Photography (June 1934): 4.

73

The British appeared conservative in this regard. Trade publications wrote extensively about the benefits of the "synchro-flash," suggesting that American photographers were quicker to

a

Miniature, 19; emphasis in the original.

make use of these technologies, to their benefit. See Photography (February 1938): 18. 74

The telephoto lens, pioneered by the Germans to spy on the English coast in the 1890s, became a tool used by press photographers as early as the 1910s. For a discussion of the

origins of the telephoto lens, see Gisele Freund, Photography and Society (Boston: David R. Godine Publishers, 1980), 181. The use of telephoto lenses for general photographic purposes is discussed as early as 1902 in Thomas Bolas, The Lens (London: Dawbarn & Ward, 1902). See also G. H. Deller, Telephoto Work (London: Dawbarn &Ward, 1904). The periodical Telephoto Quarterly began in 1905. For an early discussion of its use in press photography, see The Newspaper World (February 1. 1919): 14. 75

Jarcheé, "Press Photography

76

Bell, The Complete Press Photographer, 15. See also J. R. Hunt, Pictorial Journalism (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1937), 219; "Close-Up Pictures from a Distance," British Journal of Photography (January 2, 1931): 11.

77

J. C. Kinkaid, Press Photography (London: Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1936), 211.

78

"Press Photography, the Camera, and Its Subjects," Times (November 25, 1933): 13.

79

with

a

Miniature," 585.

The journal Photography quoted H, L. Smitn saying, "It

was

the London Graphic that coined

the term 'candid camera' when Dr. [Erich] Salomon's pictures first appeared in 1928." Photography (July 19, 1938): 22. 80

Photography (August 1934): 1.

81

See "Miniatures Only for German Pressmen," Photography (April 1938): 39.

82

Quoted in Michael Hallett, The Real Story of Picture Post (Birmingham, UK: The Article Press, 1994), 8.

83

For

a

discussion of the influence of Lorant's German photographers, see Hardy, My Life,

25. Man wrote of himself, "An innovation of [mine] published one week could be copied by other photographers within weeks or even days." Felix H. Man, 60 Years of Photography

(London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983), 3. See also Kurt Hutton, Speaking Likenesses (London: Focal Press, 1947). 84

Man, Man with Camera, 1.

85

Hutton, Speaking Likenesses, 9.

86

See Wadenoyen, Photographing People.

87

Ibid., 14, 12.

88

more on Hoppé see Terrence Pepper and Philip Prodger, Hoppé Portraits: Society, Studio, Street (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2011).

89

Hoppé'sfiles at

For

the National Portrait Gallery are immense, and include hundreds of images

reproduced in the press from the First World War until the mid-1920s. See also Hoppé, et al., eds, Photography (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1911), 149-69. "Portraiture," in Hoppé 90

E. O.

Hundred Thousand Exposures: Hoppé,

The Success of a Photographer (London: The

Focal Press, 1945), 160. 91

His first "miniature"

camera was a

specially made reflex

camera,

designed after the standard

press photographer's instrument. Ibid., 11. He also wrote, "The miniature is the nearest approach to 'ideal'" (69). 92 93

Ibid., 20. For

more on

transition to street photography, Hoppé's

see Mark Haworth

Booth, Hoppe's

London (London: Guiding Light, 2006). 94

Chapter ten of his autobiography is titled "Plunge into Journalism." Thousand Exposures, 225.

Hoppé,Hundred

95

Ibid., 28.

96

Annie Rudd, "The Unobserved Observer': Humphrey Spender's Hidden Camera and the Politics of Visibility in Interwar Britain," in Leah Lievrouw, ed., Challenging Communication

97

Victor Chamberlain, Ideas for Press Pictures (London: The Fountain Press, 1937), 24. Bernard Alfieri declared, "The miniature camera is invaluable for the production of unposed

Research (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), 193-207.

such pictures possess a feeling of life pictures and the so-called candid photography and action." Alfieri, Free-Lance Photography, 71. Vining put it quite plainly: "Many definitions have been given to the word, but I personally think that 'un-posed' is the most apt; a good candid portrait is infinitely preferable to inferior studio work, which always has the .

..

appearance of being over-lit and over-retouched." Vining, My Way with 98 99

a

Miniature, 101.

Photography (July 1938): 22. Photography (June 1938): 30.

100

There

was an awareness of the longer history of this even in the 1930s. See "Cameras in Waiting: The Unauthorized Snapshot, Sitters Willing and Unwilling," The Times (November 1937): 15.

101

Quoted in Tom Driberg, Swaff: The Life and Times of Hannen Swaffer (London: MacDonald,

1974), Epilogue. 102

Swaffer earned

a

reputation

as a

caustic commentator

on

theatrical celebrities. See Hannen

Swaffer, Really behind the Scenes (London: George Newnes, Ltd., 1929); Driberg, Swaff. 103

Of the 1930s, Swaebe wrote," 'Candid photography' was then all the rage, and editors everywhere were demanding unconventional poses and what we call off-beat pictures.

Naturally, the press photographers had Photographer Royal, 187. 104

Goerge Drymond,

to

get what their editors told them

to

get."

Late Night Final: A Guide to News-Story Writing (London: Sir Isaac

Pitman &Sons, Ltd., 1947), 13-14. 105

Quote from Pete Smith (the director of the film Candid Cameramaniacs), Photography (March 1938): 28.

106

Daily Mirror (December 20, 1935): 11.

107

Swaebe, Photographer Royal, 191.

108

Bystander (October 13, 1937): 48,

109

"Cameras in Waiting: The Unauthorized Snapshot, Sitters Willing and Unwilling," The Times (November 1937): 15.

110

British Journal of Photography (September 18,1936): 590. For more on popular skepticism of the photograph, see Michael Leja, Looking Askance: Skepticism and American Art from Eakins to Duchamp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).

111

"Candid Photography Is Making Us Human Goldfish," Photography (May 1938): 10.

112

The Tatter (May 7,

113

World's Press News (March 7, 1929): 4.

114

"T.E. Lawrence Terrific Sock' for

1930):

251.

a

Photographer," The Newspaper World (January 22,

1938): 70. 115

See also A. W. Lawrence, ed., T.E. Lawrence by His Friends (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1937), especially Lowell Thomas, "Publicity."

Chapter 1

3

See Laura E. Nym Mayhall, "Clark Gable versus the Prince of Wales: Anglophone Celebrity and Citizenship between the Wars." Cultural and Social History 4 (December 2007): 529-

43; See also Donald Spoto, Decline and Fall of the House of Windsor (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995); Billiq Melman, The Culture of History: English Uses of the Past 1800-1953 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 2

The cult of the monarchy in the tabloid newspaper was in some ways only a continuation of the British tradition of "royal watching" that dated back at least to the elaborate

spectacles of the Tudor monarchs, if

not before. See

Roy Strong, The Tudor and

Stuart Monarchy: Pageantry, Painting, Iconography (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell

Press, 1995). 3

See Kristin Flieger Samuelian, Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy in Print, 1780-1821 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). The Queen Caroline affair would be the first press scandal to plague the modern British monarchy, and its impact on royal life could be felt for decades after the death of George IV See Thomas Laqueur, "The Queen Caroline Affair: Politics as Art in the Reign of George IV." Journal of Modern History 54

(1982): 417-66. 4

See Peter Howe, Paparazzi and Our Obsession with Celebrity (New York: Artisan, 2005).

5

See Carol Squiers, "Class Struggle: The Invention of Paparazzi Photography and the Death of Diana, Princess of Wales," in Squiers, ed., Overexposed: Essays on Contemporary Photography (New York: The New Press, 1999).

6

For histories of the crisis, see Michael Bloch, The Secret File of the Duke of Windsor (New York: Harper & Row, 1988); Lord Beaverbrook, The Abdication of King Edward VIII (London: Hamish & Hamilton, 1965); Kingsley Martin, The Magic of Monarchy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1937); Kristy McLeod, Battle Royal: Edward VIII & George VI, Brother against Brother (London: Constable: 1999); Philip Zeigler, King Edward VIII (Stroud: Sutton, 2001); Charles Higham, The Duchess of Windsor: The Secret Life (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005); Donald Sinclair, The Two Georges: The Making of the Modern Monarchy (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1988). The photographic coverage of the king's affair is briefly discussed in Roger Hargreaves and Bill Deedes, Daily Encounters: Photographs from Fleet Street (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2007), 102-107.

7

Philip Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative Leadership and National Values (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 326-9.

8

For more

on

the symbolism of the late-nineteenth-century monarchy, see: David Cannadine,

"The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the 'Invention of Tradition,' c. 1820-1977," in Eric Hobsbawm, ed., The Invention of Tradition

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

For

a

concise discussion of the political

authority of the crown, see Donald Edgar, Britain's Royal Family in the Twentieth Century: King Edward II to the Queen Elizabeth II (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1978), 13; Wiliiam M. Kuhn, Democratic Royalism: The Transformation of the British Monarchy, 1861-1914

(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996). 9

See John Plunkett, Queen Victoria: First Media Monarch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Margaret Homans, Royal Representations: Queen Victoria and British Culture

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 10

The most notable among these were Roger Fenton and J. E. Mayall. See Frances Dimond, Crown & Camera: The Royal Family and Photography, 1842-1910 (New York: Viking, 1987); Anne M. Lyden, /4 Royal Passion: Queen Victoria and Photography (Los Angeles;

Getty

Publications, 2014). 11

See Cannadine, "The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual."

12

The historian Tom Hopkinson has suggested, "To the photographer of that era, the cliches The cameraman's were guide rules to success, and a knowledge of them [was] essential. ..

to ensure that his version of the

sharp and complete, the personage unobscured by detectives, umbrellas or common citizens." Tom Hopkinson, Happy and Glorious: 130 Years of Royal Photographs (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1977), 99.

concern was

For

simply

stereotype

came

cross

13

this, see Nicholas Hiley, "The Candid Camera of the Edwardian Tabloids," History Today 43 (August 1993): 16-21. For an analysis of Queen Alexandra's embrace of photography, see Frances Dimond, Developing the Picture: Queen Alexandra and the Art of Photography (London: Royal Collections Publications, 2004).

14

See Philippe Julian, Edward and the Edwardians (New York: The Viking Press, 1967), 212. His anxiety with press coverage likely had something to do with his many scandalous

more on

indiscretions. See John Pearson, Edward the Rake: An Unwholesome Biography of Edward VII (New York: Harcourt, 1975); George Plumptre, Edward VII (London: Pavilion Books

Limited, 1995). 15

This is mentioned in Joanna Pitman, "Photographs Transformed Global Culture," Times

(July 31, 2009): http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/related_features/young photographer/article4115808. ece. 16

_

Swaffer pressured the royal photographers, Downey, Ltd., to convince Queen Alexandra grant permission, which she eventually did (to the horror of the rest of the family);

to

Swatter's account in Tom Driberg, Swaff: The Life and Times ofHannen Swaffer (London: MacDonald, 1974), 46-7.

see

17

Daily Mirror (May 16, 1910): 1.

18

Copies sold on the streets of London for over a shilling, twelve times the price Of the original newspaper See H. Simonis, The Street of Ink: An Intimate History of Journalism (London: Cassell and Company, Ltd. 1917), 80.

19

Philip Gibbs, Adventures in Journalism (London: William Heinemann, 1923), 26.

20

See Sinclair, Two

Georges;

Kenneth Rose, King George V (New Brunswick, NJ: Alfred

A. Knopf, 1984). Queen Mary played a prominent role in preserving and perpetuating the royal image inherited from Victoria. See John Pearson, Ultimate Family: The Making of the Royal House of Windsor (London: Ulverscroft Large Print, 1986), 9. Similar patterns can be seen in other European monarchies before the

war

See, for example, Richard Wortman, Scenarios of

Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy from Peter the Great to the Abdication of Nicholas II (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). 21

This photograph is discussed in Ulrich Keller, "Photography, History, (Dis)belief," Visual Resources (June 2010): 95-112.

22

The role had been filled by the "court journalist" during the nineteenth century, but that position became increasingly obsolete and ineffective. For a discussion of the introduction of the press agent, see Spoto, Decline and Fall, 168-9.

23

Daily Mirror (July 9, 1914): 1.

24

Press restrictions

25

"Royalty and the Press," The Newspaper World (January 11, 1919): 4.

26

are

discussed in Spoto, Decline and Fall; Sinclair, Two

Security officials often cooperated

to allow

photographs

to be

Georges.

taken, despite orders

to

the contrary. For an example of this cooperation, see A. V Swaebe, Photographer Royal (London: Leslie Frewin, 1967), 17. 27

For biographies of Edward, see Zeigler, King Edward VIII; Patrick Balfour, The Windsor Years: The Life of Edward, as Prince of Wales, King and Duke of Windsor (New York: The

Viking Press, 1967). 28

See Mayhall, "Clark Gable

29

For

the issues around his dress and public appearance, see The Duke of Windsor, A King's Story: The Memoirs of the Duke of Windsor (New York: G.R Putnam's Sons, 1951), 138; McLeod, Battle Royal, 43; Edgar, Britain's Royal Family, 73-6.

30

Evelyn Graham, Edward P: /4 New and Intimate Life Story of the HRH The Prince of Wales (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1929), 221.

31

Windsor, A King's Story, 36.

32

Bernard Grant, To the Four Corners: The Memoirs of a News Photographer (London: Hutchinson &Co., Ltd., 1933), 229.

33

The most notable in this regard is James Jarche, "Royalty i Have Shot," The Passing Show (September 22, 1934): 7-9; see also Stanley Devon, Glorious: The Life-Story of Stanley

versus

the Prince of Wales."

more on

Devon, Twice "British Press Photographer of the Year" (London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1957), 35-9. 34

William R. Turner, Eyes of the Press (London: Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., 1935), 37; 36.

35

His photograph appeared on the cover the inaugural issue of the prototypical American tabloid, the New York Daily News, portending his tabloid celebrity status in the United States that was to follow him throughout his life. An American journalist remarked on the peculiar virulence with which Americans seized upon European royals: "When a Queen visits us, the

publicity is complicated by the swarm of press agents who feed on the event." Silas Bent, Ballyhoo: The Voice of the Press (New York: Horace Liveright, 1927), 125. 36

Windsor, A King's Story, 196.

37

Ibid., 203.

38

Documents describing the duties of the prince's police security include many references to managing press photographers. See The National Archives, Metropolitan Police Files, MEPO 2/2828: MEPO 38/151.

39

Letter dated October 15, 1932, signed "Inspector," MEPO 38/151. The demand for images of the prince pushed photographers to make use of new photographic technologies and novel means of transporting photographs at high speeds. For an example of the use of a telephoto lens to photograph the prince, see J. C. Kinkaid, Press Photography (London: Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1936), 221.

40

The rota system limited the number of photographers to four, and required those photographers to make their images available to every newspaper and photographic agency. For more on this, see Hargreaves and Deedes, Daily Encounters, 58. This is also discussed in

41

See Turner, Eyes of the Press, 38.

Chapter 5. 42

Swaebe, Photographer Royal, 18.

43

See Parliamentary Archives, Ralph David Blumenfeld Papers, BLU/1/20/TH.1-16.

44

The letter is dated February 11, 1931; BLU/1 /20/TH. 13.

45

One letter reprimanded the Express for reporting that the prince did not smoke British-made cigars. See letter dated October 3, 1933; BLU/1/20/TH.9.

46

See, for example, Grant, To the Four Corners, 161, 228.

47

Devon, Glorious, 36. For more on this, see also Ruth Boyd, A Focus Devon, Press Photographer (London: Derek Harrison, 1995), 15.

48

Quoted in McLeod, Battle Royal, 116.

49

For the most thorough recounting of the events leading up to and following the abdication, particularly with relation to the press, see Beaverbrook, Abdication. It must be stated that Beaverbrook admitted, in a letter to Theodore Goddard, that the book was written at the recommendation of the Duke of Windsor, and should be seen in light of its affiliation with the events as reported by the duke. See Parliamentary Archives, Beaverbrook Papers, BBK/G/6/5. For a more contemporary analysis of the crisis, see McLeod, Battle Royal.

50

This was despite the fact that the subject was already widely discussed. Cecil Beaton remarked in his diary, "Though nothing about Mrs. Simpson appears in the English papers,

on

Fleet Street:

Stanley

name seems never to be off people's lips. The sound of her name implies secrecy, As a topic she has become a mania." Cecil Beaton, royalty, and being-in-the-know' The Wandering Years: Diaries, 1922-39 (Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1961), 209. The Week and Cavalcade commented directly on the relationship before any other newspapers or periodicals in Britain, early in 1936. For a discussion of the impact of the Cavalcade coverage, see Michael Bloch, ed., Wallis and Edward: Letters 1931-1937 (New York: Summit Books, 1986), 248.

her

...

51

See Beaverbrook, Abdication, 30-70.

52

At Ipswich, mounted police stationed in front of the courthouse charged at a group of photographers waiting to catch Simpson as she exited, and one photographic agency set up a camera with a telephoto lens opposite the court entrance, which authorities. See World's Press News (December 10, 1936): 3.

was

discovered by

53

Beaverbrook, Abdication, 30. For more on the official fears of the American Press, see The National Archives, Prime Minister's Office Papers, "The Attitude of the British Press to the Constitutional Crisis," PREM 1/446.

54

New York Daily Mirror (October 26, 1936): 1. A letter dated October 28, 1936, sent from an American correspondent in London, wrote incredulously that nothing was being said in Britain or

55

in the colonies about the affair. See Parliamentary Archives, BBK/G/6/5.

Copies of the

news

magazine Time, for example,

were circulated with

portions cut out by

the distributers, eliminating any reference to the king and Simpson. World's Press News (December 10, 1936): 1. 56

New York Daily News (September 20, 1936): 10-11.

57

The article

was

included in

a

file in the Beaverbrook Papers. Parliamentary Archives,

BBK/G/6/6. 58 59

The French and German responses For more

on

Baldwin,

see

are

discussion in Parliamentary Archives, PREM 1/447.

Williamson, Stanley Baldwin, 326-9. Extensive correspondence

and discussion about the attitude of the prime minister and his administration to the news coverage of the affair is provided in Parliamentary Archives, PREM 1/446. 60

The Beaverbrook papers contain a series of correspondences related to this, In preparation and response to the publication of Beaverbrook's Abdication. See Parliamentary Archives, BBK/G/6/16.

61

Baldwin referred to Simpson as the king's "respectable whore" and in an exchange with of his advisors, the fear that she was a "goldigger" who might blackmail the king was

one

broached. See Williamson, Stanley Baldwin, 326; The Parliamentary Archives, J.C.C. Davidson, 1st Viscount Davidson Papers, DAV/226. 62

Many of his correspondences dealt with the "problem" of the press. See Philip Williamson and Edward Baldwin, eds, Baldwin Papers: A Conservative Statesman, 1908-1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 393-5; 399; 402. See also DAV/226. The disapproval of the king's marriage to Simpson was a pointed and contentious issue among the leaders of the Dominions. Metropolitan officials, and newspapermen, including Beaverbrook, recognized the protests of the Dominions as a serious obstacle to the marriage, For more, see letter sent to "Max" on September 11,1951, regarding the publication of Beaverbrook's Abdication, BBK/G/6/13. For letters from Commonwealth leaders, see HO 144/21070/1.

63

Williamson and Baldwin, Baldwin Papers, 388.

64

Editor of Morning Post, H, A. Gwynne wrote in a letter to Baldwin: "I have strongly urged on my friends the need for continued restraint and silence. In the first place, I have pointed out that, while the more responsible newspapers would undoubtedly treat the matter with dignity and caution, the fact of the subject being ventilated would inevitably open the floodgates which now hold back the sensational newspapers." Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Gwynne 15, H. A. Gwynne to Baldwin, November 12, 1936. Thank you to Amanda Behm for this reference. This anxiety about the "sensational" press—most clearly the Beaverbrook and Harmsworth papers—is evident in the correspondences in

65

The National Archives, Home Office Papers, HO 144/21070/1.

66

In their 1938 Report on the British Press, the Political and Economic Planning Committee suggested that the newspapers remained hushed "not because the Press was muzzled by any outside agency, but because the sense of responsibility of proprietors and editors, coupled with their fears of the consequences for the papers, were greater than their appetite for what could have been the greatest 'scoop' in history." See Political and Economic

PREM 1/446.

Planning, Report

on

the British Press, 32. A letter from J. B. Wilson in the Beaverbrook

papers eloquently summarizes this feeling: "The precedents of privacy went back to Victorian times, and the press in following the King's wishes had merely 'come down on the side of tradition'.... Responsible proprietors and editors, therefore, were united in considering that a suitable topic for newspaper comment

the King's friendship with Mrs. Simpson did not offer or gossip." BBK/G/6/22. 67 68

Windsor, A King's Story, 316. See Martin, Magic of Monarchy. For

a

similar analysis, see Jane Soames, The English

Press: Newspapers and News (London: Stanley Nott, 1936), 22-3. 69

These

70

Of the historians that have discussed the events surrounding Edward and Wallis, most of them adhere to a narrative that suggests that British photographers and reporters

were

reproduced in the World's Press News (December 10, 1936): 19.

stayed away from the couple, allowing American and European newspapers to document their cavorting. See McLeod, Battle Royal, 125, 141; Edgar, Britain's Royal Family, 88. 71

Reputedly, the first published press picture of the two together came from the resourceful Jarché, appearing in the July 20, 1935, edition of the Weekly Illustrated. This to be the "first" by Derek Smith; see James Jarche: Press Picture is claimed photograph Pioneer (London: Popperfoto, 1980). James

72

Information about the photographic coverage of the holiday

was

reported in World's Press

News (August 20, 1936): 1. 73

The official requests appeared in World's Press News (August 13,1936): 1. The official reaction to the coverage is discussed in Parliamentary Archives, PREM 1/446.

74

World's Press News (August 20, 1936): 1.

75

The Daily Express, for example, eliminated their coverage of the holiday. See World's Press News (August 20, 1936): 1. The Sunday Dispatch circulated a memo throughout Fleet Street, which read:

His Majesty King Edward VIII, like many of his subjects is on holiday. Photographs and stories of hisshoreexcursionsonthe Dalmatian coast are being sent to English newspapers in great numbers. Unlessthese contain matter of proper national interest—such asthewhereabouts of the King—the Sunday Dispatch will not publish them, believing that its readers realise and respect the King's natural desire for occasional respite from the public attention focussed upon his movement by responsibility and tradition. The Sunday Dispatch makes this announcement in fairness to other Sunday newspapers which may be contemplating a similar decision, but which might be deterred if there were not common agreement. This is included in BBK/9/6/38. 76

Devon, Glorious, 102.

77

Ibid. This is also discussed in Boyd, Stanley Devon. The Daily Sketch exhibited the photograph once the news had broken, proudly dedicating an entire half-page to the image. Daily Sketch (December 4, 1936): 20.

78

Devon, Glorious, 102.

79

Karin Becker, "Photojournalism and the Tabloid Press," in Peter Dahlgren, ed., Journalism and Popular Culture (London: Sage Publications, 1992), 143.

80

Edward J. Dean, Lucky Dean: Reminiscences of a Press Photographer (London: Robert Hale, Ltd., 1944), 98.

81

Windsor, A King's Story, 370.

82

World's Press News (December 10, 1936): 3.

83

Swaebe, Photographer Royal, 32-5.

84

Ibid., 34.

85

Devon, Glorious, 105.

86

Compton Mackenzie, The Windsor Tapestry: Being

a

Study of the Life, Heritage and

Abdication ofH.R.H. The Duke of Windsor (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1938), 489. 87

For

a

description of the media frenzy at her home,

see

Devon, Glorious, 105.

88

Daily Express (December 2, 1936): 5.

89

Duchess of Windsor, The Heart Has Its Reasons: The Memoirs of the Duchess of Windsor (New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1956); see also Balfour, The Windsor Years, 221.

90

Duchess of Windsor, The Heart Has Its Reasons, 259.

91

This is mentioned in

92

Devon, Glorious, 106.

93

Devon convinced French police and royal officials to allow one British and one French photographer to take a picture of her posing for the camera. In exchange for that, they would have what they wanted and move on. See ibid., 107. For further discussion of this, see Mackenzie, The Windsor Tapestry, 489.

94

The photograph was reproduced in the Daily Sketch, December 5, 1936. It was taken by a French actress who had opportunistically followed Simpson, knowing that images of the

a

correspondence in BBK/G/6/6.

king's love interest would be worth immense sums. Her photograph paid off: she was able to acquire 100 guineas from every newspaper that reproduced it, and was even able to garner some publicity for herself, as her photograph and story circulated during the crisis. See World's Press News (December 10, 1936): 1. 95

Journalists John Mills and Laura Vitray reminded press photographers that "the really clever editor. knows that the right amount of retouching is what is required to bring the picture up .

.

reproduction standards, whether this means none, or a very slight amount, or so much that it seems like painting a new picture over the old shell." Laura Vitray and John Mills, Pictorial Journalism (London: McGraw-Hill Company, 1939), 154. to

96

See

97

Beaverbrook, Abdication, 27.

98

It is widely recognized that it was the fear of press coverage that got the wheels in motion in favor of abdication. The crucial letter sent to the king by his press secretary Alec Hardinge warned of the imminent "outburst" of press coverage, and pleaded for the king to take action

Sunday Graphic

and Sunday News (December 6, 1936): 21.

to obviate the effects of

publicity. The letter, dated November 13, 1936, read:

Sir, With my humble duty: As Your Majesty's Private Secretary I feel it my duty to bring notice the following facts which have come to my knowledge, and which I know to be accurate. The silence of the British press on the subject of Your Majesty's friendship with Mrs. Simpson is not going to be maintained. It is probably only a matter of days before the outburst beings. Judging by the letters from British subjects living in foreign countries, where the press has been outspoken, the effect will be calamitous. to your

This is included in BBK/G/6/6. 99

BBK/G/6/6.

100

Hamilton Fyfe, "Pestering by the Press," Fortnightly Review 141 (April 1937): 309.

101

The photograph appeared in the New York Daily News (December 4, 1936): 38. It included the quotation: "And here's a picture that left no doubt concerning their regard for each other. Hand in hand, they tour an Adriatic port."

102

Daily Mirror (December 7, 1936): 12-13.

103

Windsor, A King's Story, 358.

104

Hargreaves and Deeded Daily Encounters, 60-1.

105

This is discussed in World's Press News (December 17, 1936): 1.

106

Duchess of Windsor, The Heart Has Its Reasons, 281.

107

Beaton, Wandering Years, 311,

108

See Bert Garai, I Get My Picture (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1938), 246. See also Beaton, Wandering Years.

109

News coverage of their vacations and social lives continues for the next few decades. For commentary on the subject, see Brodrick Haldane, Time Exposure (London: Arcadia,

a

1999), 74. 110

The public relations issues associated with this trip and McLeod, Battle Royal.

are

discussed in Bloch, The Secret File;

111

Martin, Magic of Monarchy, 112.

112

For

113

Daily Sketch (December 6, 1936).

114

See Edgar, Britain's Royal Family.

115

Daily Mirror (December 11,1936): 16-17.

116

Cecil Beaton's photographs of the new royal family have been understood as an attempt to obliterate the impact of Edward Vlll's legacy. For an interesting analysis of

more on

the transition, see McLeod, Battle Royal.

this, see David Mellor, Cecil Beaton: /A Retrospective (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1986), 39. 117

That photograph appeared in a newspaper under the heading "Royal Duke as Press Photographer." Reproduced in Dean, Lucky Dean, 52. The Duke of York was also a

participant in the Fourth Imperial Press Conference. See The Fourth Imperial Press Conference (Britain) (London: The Empire Press Union, 1931). 118

Many of those involved in photographing the royal family took note of the difference in the relationship of the new monarchs to members of the press; see, for example, Garai, I Get My Picture, 204-205.

119

Devon, Glorious, 110.

120

Dean, Lucky Dean, 105-107.

121

Cecil Beaton, Photobiography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1951), 187.

Chapter

4

1

Patrick Balfour, Society Racket: A Critical Survey of Modem Social Life (London: John Long, Ltd., 1933), 230.

2

Ibid., 24.

3

Aldous Huxley, The Olive Tree and Other Essays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1936), 117.

4

For more

on

the historical development of "Society,"

see

Leonore Davidoff, The Best

Circles: Society Etiquette and the Season (London: Croom Helm, 1973). Following Max Weber, Davidoff suggests, "In sociological terms Society is a self-defined status group based on communal lifestyles participation in the group is a reward and a badge of arrival .

.

.

into these positions, a public seal of acceptance into elite status" (37). See Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1978). 5

See David Cannadine, Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (London: Penguin Books, 2005): Andrew Adonis, Making Aristocracy Work: The Peerage and the Political System in Britain, 1884-1914 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); W. D. Rubinstein, Men of Property: The Very Wealthy in Britain since the Industrial Revolution (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1981); Martin Pugh, We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain between the Wars (New York: Vintage Books, 2009); George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (New York: Perigree, 1980).

6

This is discussed in Frank Mort, Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). The most important work dealing with the

preservation of the aristocratic power structure in the nineteenth century is Martin Weiner, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 7

Paul Cohen-Portheim could still write,

as

late as 1930, "In England,

Society

is

a

perfectly

definite concept and there is no doubt who belongs to it. The nobility forms the core of Society." Paul Cohen-Portheim, England, the Unknown Isle (London: Duckworth, 1930), 110. For an analysis of the makeup of Society at the outbreak of the Second World War, see .

.

Angela Lambert, 1939: The Last Season of Peace (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1989). 8

Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England 1918-1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 23.

9

See Carol Dyhouse, Glamour: Women, History, Feminism (London: Zed Book, 2010); John Kobal, The Art of the Great Hollywood Portrait Photographers 1925-1940 (New York: Albert A. Knopf, 1980); Liz Willis-Tropea, "Hollywood Glamour: Sex, Power and Photography, 1925-1939," Doctoral dissertation, University of Southern California, 2005.

10

John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1977), 148.

11

See Leo Braudy, Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). See also Charles L. Ponce de Leon, Self-Exposure: Human-Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890-1940 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002); David Marshall, Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). 12

Historian Peter Mandler has eloquently suggested, "If stripped of associations with political power and social tyranny, titles and fortunes could be employed as assets to compete for public attention with theatrical impresarios and film-stars." Peter Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (London: Yale University Press, 1997), 244. For more on the concept of "charisma" and its relationship to ideas of aristocracy and celebrity, see Eva Giloi and Edward

Berenson, eds, Constructing Charisma: Celebrity, Fame, and Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe (New York: Berghahm Books, 2010), 13. 13

Manor house tourism

was an

early form of mass voyeurism focused on the private lives of the a widespread practice by the mid-nineteenth century. See

aristocratic elite, and this became Mandler, Fall and Rise, 71. 14

See, for example, Mary Desjardins, Recycled Stars: Female Stardom in the Age of Television (Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); Su Holmes, ed., Framing Celebrity: New Directions in Celebrity Culture (London: Routledge, 2006).

and Video

15

16

The phrase comes from Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Vintage, 1992).

Falling rural land values (the core of the landed gentry's wealth) and high estate taxes and "death duties" assailed the financial basis of aristocratic power. The 1909 "People's Budget" introduced social welfare programs and the so-called super tax on the very wealthy, and the 1911 Parliamentary Act weakened the power of the House of Lords. See in particular, Cannadine, Decline and Fall.

17

Marshall, Celebrity and Power, 5.

18

The Spectator opined in 1888, "It is quite obvious that many men, and not a few women, are not half-satisfied unless they form the subjects of paragraphs in the papers The wish of .

.

.

thought about and written about... is a diseased wish which has a solely corrupting tendency." Spectator 61 (June 1888): 782. See also Davidoff, The Best Circles, 61-2. private persons

19

For

more on

to be talked about and

the importance of aristocratic portraiture in English society and culture, see

David Piper, The English Face (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1978). 20

Jeffrey Wright has shown that in 1914, 46 percent of the photographic portraits in the Daily Mirror were of royalty and Society figures. Jeffrey Wright, "The Origins and Development of British Press Photography, 1884-1914" (Thesis, University College Swansea, 1982), 172.

21

See Davidoff, The Best Circles, 32, 59-69.

22

See in particular, Diana Cooper, The Rainbow Comes and Goes (London: Penguin, 1958); Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll, Forget Not: The Autobiography of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll (London: W.H. Allen, 1975); Janet Kidd, Beaverbrook Girl: An Autobiography (London: Collins, 1987); Leolia, Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour: The Memoirs of Leolia, Duchess of Westminster (New York: Reynal and Co., 1961); Diana Mitford

Mosley, A Life of Contrasts: The Autobiography of Diana Mitford Mosley (New York: Times Books, 1977). For biographical analysis, see Simon Blow, Broken Blood: The Rise and Fall of the Tennanl Family (London: Faber & Faber, 1987); Hugo Vickers, Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1979). 23

Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour, 93.

24

See A. V Swaebe, Photographer Royal (Leslie Frewin, 1967), 119.

25

Bell R. Bell, The Complete Press Photographer (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1927), 146-9.

26

See Brian Masters, Great Hostesses (London: Constable, 1982); Diane Urquhart, The Ladies of Londonderry: Women and Political Patronage (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007); Susan Williams, Ladies of Influence: Women of the Elite in Interwar Britain (London: Viking, 2001).

27

See Clement Shorter, C.K.S. An Autobiography: A Fragment by Himself (London: Constable and Co., 1927), 104.

28

Arthur Ponsonby, The Decline of Aristocracy (London: T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd. 1912), 138-9.

29

See Blow, Broken Blood.

30

Brodrick Haldane, Time Exposure

31

For more on Asquith, see Daphne Bennet, Margot: A Life of the Countess of Oxford and Asquith (London: Gollancz, 1984).

32

See Margot Asquith, The Autobiography of Margot Asquith (London: Butterworth, 1920).

33

She was a central figure of "The Souls," a collection of bohemians from the theater, literature, and Society who delighted in performative play and ironical dress-up. See Philippe Julian, Edward and the Edwardians (New York: The Viking Press, 1967), 223. See also Daphne

(London: Arcadia, 1999),

53.

Bennett, Margot: A Life of Countess of Oxford and Asquith (London: Gallancz, 1984).

34

Quoted in Asquith, Autobiography, xxviii;

35

Harold Begbie, The Glass of Fashion: Some Social Reflections by A Gentleman with (London: Mills & Boon Ltd., 1921), 33 and 37.

a

Duster

36

Ibid., 37.

37

See Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy, Adonis, Making Aristocracy Work. For an analysis of the impact of the First World War, See Samuel Hynes, War Imagined: The First World War and

English Culture (London: Pimlico, 1992). 38

See, in particular, Alan Jenkins, The Twenties (New York: Universe Books, 1974).

39

See Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, The Long Weekend: A Social History of Great Britain 1918-1939 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1941), 56; McKibbin, Classes and Cultures.

40

The Times (September 1923): 6.

41

In its discussion of stereotyping in the press, the Political and Economic Planning commission on "Mayfair" as a common journalistic trope, See Political and Economic Planning,

focused

Report

on

the British Press (London: Political and Economic Planning Publications, 1938),

267. See also Matt Houlbrook, "Commodifying the Self Within," Journal of Modern History 85 (June 2013): 321-63. 42

Many prominent aristocrats lent their names to Fleet Street papers: Viscount Castlerosse, Lady Diana Cooper, Lord Montagu, the Countess of Warwick, Lady Eleanor Smith, Lady Lancaster, the Marquess of Donegall, Lady Moira Combe, and Nancy Mitford, daughter of Lord Redesdale. Of the journalistic culture of the 1920s and 1930s, author and journalist Beverley Nichols mockingly wrote that there was "an astonishing array of obscure Countesses, Viscountesses and, if the worst came to the worst, wives of Baronets, all pontificating with monotonous regularity on the problems of the hour." Nichols, All I Could Never Be (London: Jonathan Cape, Ltd. 1949), 29-30. See also Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy, 153. One of the key terms of the celebrity culture of the period —"it," used to describe that intangible quality that inspires worship and fascination—was coined by Elinor Glyn, sister of the fashion designer Lady Duff-Gordon. Meredith Etherington-Smith and Jeremy Pilcher, The "It" Girls: Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, The Couturière "Lucile," and Elinor Glyn, Romantic Novelist (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jaconovich, 1986); see also Joseph Roach, It (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007).

43

The term

44

The Bright Young People were an amorphous group of artists, socialites, and aristocratic scions. They attracted a celebrity cult around themselves, engaging in spectacular parties and

was used with regard to the photography of Cecil Beaton in The Sphere (December 6, 1930): 456. This is discussed in David Mellor, Cecil Beaton (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1986), 10.

hoaxes satirizing the transformations in West End sociability after the First World War. See D. J, Taylor, Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 2009. 45

See Terrence Pepper, Monday's Children: Portrait Photography in the 1920s and 1930s (Colliergate, York, UK: Impressions Gallery, 1977). Portraits were typically offered gratis to women of a certain standing, which served as further encouragement to be photographed. Studio photographers recouped their losses by securing unlimited rights of sale and reproduction of the resulting images to the photographic newspapers.

46

American film had huge resonance in Britain, which provided (per capita) the largest market for American films in the world. For more on this, see John Sedgwick, Popular Fiimgoing in 1930s Britain: A Choice of Pleasures (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000).

47

For more on Hollywood stardom, see Christine Gledhill, ed., Stardom: Industry of Desire (London: Routledge, 1991); Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society

(London: BFI, 1986); Samantha Barbas, Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars, and the Cult of Celebrity (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). 48

What historians Hugh Vickers and Terence Pepper dubbed the "actressocracy" included some of the most famous actresses of the day who married into the nobility. See Hugh Vickers and Terence Pepper, High Society: Photographs 1897-1914 (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1998); Kristen Pullen, Actresses and Whores: On Stage and in Society

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 49

Cooper, already Cast in two film roles by the British filmmaker J. Stuart Blackman, would compete with Greta Garbo for the lead in Anna Karenina. See Philip Ziegler, Diana Cooper; A Biography (New York Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 236; Cooper, The Rainbow Comes and Goes.

50

See Sunday Graphic

51

(December 6, 1936):

16-17.

Fairbanks married Lady Ashley in 1936 and Converse married Lord Furness in 1926. See Booton Herndon, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks: The Most Popular Couple the World Has Ever Known (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1977); Gloria Vanderbilt and Thelma

Lady Furness, Double Exposure: /4 Twin Autobiography (New York: David McKay Company, 1958). The intermarriage of Hollywood stars and the aristocracy was satirized in Noel Coward's 1951 play, Relative Values. 52 53

Haldane, Time Exposure, ix. Swaebe wrote of his particular photographic occupation, "It all started in the 'twenties,' when the aristocracy, or rather the 'Bright Young Things' in its ranks, began to dine out regularly instead of holding ornate dinner parties at their own town houses." Swaebe, Photographer Royal, 124.

54 55

Ibid., 141. For

more on

the

Caféde

Paris,

see Charles

Graves, Champagne and Chandeliers: The Story

of the Cafe de Paris (London: Odhams Press, 1958). 56

Swaebe claimed that the term derived from the Café de Paris, though the etymology is likely more complex than he might have understood. Some claim that the term came from Lucius Beebe in his column "This New York" in the New York Herald Tribune.

57

Swaebe, Photographer Royal, 189.

58

Tatler (February 8, 1933): 217.

59

The increasing emphasis on the social rituals of young adults is discussed in Davidoff, The Best Circles. Ross McKibbin argues that the debutante system was a crucial means of

maintaining continuity with prewar upper-class life. McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, 22. 60

Lambert, 1939, 5.

61

For a profile of one of these agents, (November 25, 1935): 9.

62

For

a

see

"The Secret Door into Society," Daily Mirror

comparison with the American context and the importance of Britain

as a

model,

see

Karal Ann Marling, Debutante: Rites and Regalia of American Debdom (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004). 63

For firsthand accounts of this, see Sally Bedell Smith, Reflected Glory: The Life of Pamela Churchill (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 35-45; Kidd, Beaverbrook Girl, 70-2. For analysis, see Lambert, 7939; Fiona MacCarthy, The Last Curtsey: The End of the Debutantes (London: Faber and Faber, 2006). The publicity culture around the debutante is the subject of Gordon West's satirical novel Dancing Debutante (London: John Hamilton

Limited, 1939). 64

The Lady (June 12,1930): 961.

65

Daily Express (May 15, 1930); 20.

66

The Bystander (February 22

67

Kobal, The Art of the Great Hollywood Portrait Photographers; Willis-Tropea, ''Hollywood Glamour."

68

One of the later operators of Lenare studio, Derek Green, admitted that much of the studio's "signature" style after the mid-1920s derived from Hollywood glamour shots. Nicholas

435.

1933):

De Ville and Anthony Haden-Guest, Lenare: The Art of Society Photography, 1924-1977 (New York: Viking, 1981), 22. Beaton, for one, formalized the analogy between Hollywood and Society glamour in his Book of Beauty of 1930. His photographic album placed Hollywood stars and Society women on the same visual plane, utilizing portraiture to erase the distinction between the two. For more on this, see Garner and Mellor, Cecil Beaton. 69

70

British Journal of Photography (March 3, 1939): 137. The article was by the photographer Hilda M. Newby. Little has written about Harlip studios, which

was run

by husband and wife expats who had

fled the Nazis, operating from Bond Street starting in 1937. The National Portrait Gallery in London owns a handful of original prints. 71

Punch (January 1, 1937): 22-3.

72

Such sentiments were common in the press of the day. See Adrian Bingham, Gender, Modernity and the Popular Press in Inter-war Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

73

Sunday Graphic (February 20, 1938): 15.

74

Quoted in Duchess of Argyll, Forget Not, 46.

75

She appears in the tabloids

76

Quoted from the Sunday Chronicle in Duchess of Argyll, Forget Not, 47. This sentiment was echoed by Brian Masters, who wrote that Whigham was "perhaps the most photographed woman

as

early as 1929. See The Looker-On (June 29, 1929): 3.

of the inter-war years." Brian Masters, The Dukes: The Origins, Ennoblement and

History of 26 Families (London: Blond & Briggs, 1975), n.p. 77

The Cole Porter claim is asserted in Haldane, Time Exposure, 100. The cocktail is discussed in Daily Mirror (July 14, 1936): 9.

78

Duchess of Argyll, Forget Not, 20.

79

She discusses her frequenting of portrait studios in De Ville and Haden-Guest, Lenare, 23-5.

80

A. V. Swaebe claimed that Whigham invited him to events, to make sure he would photograph her. Swaebe, Photographer Royal, 214. She was also very close with Brodrick

Haldane, who similarly followed her

to events.

81

Graves, Champagne and Chandeliers, 106.

82

She briefly inspired the affections of Lord Beaverbrook's son, Max Aitken, and received a proposal for marriage from the son of Aga Khan III, Aly Khan (his proposal was vetoed

categorically by Whigham's father). 83

Daily Sketch (March 3, 1932): 1 -2.

84

Author and gossip writer Gordon West parodied the media spectacle of these events in his novel Dancing Debutante. See, in particular, page 184. A. V Swaebe characterized the stagey, canned theatre of it all in

a

chapter

to his memoirs

tellingly entitled "Mock Weddings." Swaebe,

Photographer Royal, 108. For newspaper coverage, see "London's Most Amazing Wedding Mob Scenes," Daily Mirror (January 28, 1937): 14-15; The Tatler (January 25, 1933): 128. 85

Whigham's wedding

was so overrun

with gawkers that the traffic in Knightsbridge

was

immovable for three hours. See Charles Castle, The Duchess Who Dared: The Life of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll (London: Sidgwickand Jackson, 1994), 26. 86

Daily Mirror (February 22, 1933): 1.

87

The Tatler (March 1, 1933): 342.

88

Quoted in Duchess of Argyll, Forget Not, 74.

89

Her wedding dress is

90

Whigham wrote, "Much of the attention was due to [my] friendship with the three popular gossip columnists of the day: the Marquis of Donegal [s/c] (known as 'Don'); the ubiquitous

now

kept in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Viscount Valentine Castlerosse, and the originator of the William Hickey column, Tom Driberg. They were invited to all the parties we went to, and they mentioned us daily in their columns, probably because they could not avoid us." Duchess of Argyll, Forget Not, 49. 91

claimed—an accusation she denied—that she had a press agent who coached how best to appear before the cameras. Her husband, the Duke of Argyll, would later quip, "You have created nothing in your iife you have only created yourself." Haldane, Time Exposure, 115.

Many her

even

on

.

..

92

Quoted in Tom Hopkinson, ed., Picture Post, 1938-1950 (London: Penguin, 1970), 13-14.

93

Daily Mirror (December 13, 1935): 9.

94

See Marling, Debutante.

95

Fears of the "Americanization" of the English aristocracy focused on the prominent women who had married into the British aristocracy. For a historical analysis,

American

see

Maureen E. Montgomery, Gilded Prostitution: Status, Money and Transatlantic Marriages, 1870-1914 (New York: Routledge, 1989). 96

Balfour—in his diatribe against the excesses of Mayfair—devoted a good deal of time discussing the shallowness of Whigham and her circle, referring repeatedly to a "half-

to

American" debutante. Balfour, Society Racket, 160. 97

She wrote, "New York always will be 'home' to me... My loveof America possibly explains why I find American men so attractive, and also why so many of my closest women friends are American." Duchess of Argyll, Forget Not, 14.

98

World's Press News (June 20, 1935): 2. West

99

See also Viscount Castlerosse, Valentine's Day (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1936), 148.

100

The Bystander (February 22, 1933): 337.

101

What

was

was

also the author of Dancing Debutante.

worse—for her critics, at least—the infidelity was alleged to have involved the

movie star Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. See Castle, The Duchess Who Dared. 102

Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour, 158.

103

"Persistent Photography," Sunday Dispatch (January 13, 1929): 4.

104

Beverley Nichols, Crazy Pavements (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd 1927), 196.

105

Balfour, Society Racket, 231-2.

106

Ibid., 82.

Chapter

5

1

J. D. Symon, The Press and Its Story (London: Seeley, Service & Co., Ltd., 1914), 240.

2

Tom Driberg, Swaff: The Life and Times ofHannen Swaffer (London: MacDonald, 1974), 46.

3

See, in particular, Mark Hampton, Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850-1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004); D. L. LeMahieu, A Culture for Democracy: Mass Communication and the Cultivated Mind in Britain between the Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).

Hannen Swaffer,

4

For an example of Swaffer's confrontational style of expose reporting, Really Behind the Scenes (London: George Newnes, Ltd., 1929).

5

See Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1977); Allan Sekula, Photography against the Grain: Essays and Photo-works, 1923-1983 (Halifax: Press

see

College of Art and Design, 1984); Larry Gross, John Stuart Katz, and Jay The Moral Rights of Subjects in Photographs, Film, and Television Ethics: eds, Ruby, Image (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Bill Jay, "Photographer as Aggressor," in David Featherstone, ed., Observations: Essays on Documentary Photography (Carmel, CA: Friends Photography, 1984).

of the Nova Scotia

6

Tom Gunning, "Embarrassing Evidence: The Detective Camera and the Documentary Impulse," in Jane M. Gaines and Michael Renov, eds, Collecting Visible Evidence

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). 7

Robert E. Mensel, '"Kodakers Lying in Wait': Amateur Photography and the Right of Privacy in New York, 1885-1915," American Quarterly XLIII (March 1991), 24-45. See also Samantha Barbas, Laws of Image: Privacy and Publicity in America (Stanford, CA: Stanford University

Press, 2015). 8

William F. Pratt, Privacy in Britain (London: Associated University Press, 1979), 21.

9

The first modern legal case to articulate privacy protections was Prince Albert v. Strange (1849), which involved a copyright dispute over portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert,

although the ruling was not an affirmation of privacy rights as such, but an acknowledgment of privacy rights as a form of property. See Ernst and Ernst L, Morris and Alan U. Schwartz, Privacy: The Right to Be Left Alone (New York: MacMillan, 1962). 10

See Walter Arthur Copinger, The Law of Copyright in Works of Literature and Art: Including That of the Drama, Music, Engraving, Sculpture, Painting, Photography, and Designs

(London: Stevens and Haynes, 1904). The relevance of this to the press is discussed in Henry Snowden Ward, Photography for the Press (London: Dawbarn and Ward, 1901) , 58. 11

For

discussion of this practice in the Victorian years, see Bevis Hillier, Victorian Studio Photographs: Biographical Portraits of Eminent Victorians (Boston: David R. Godine, a

1976), 30. 12

Also Boucas

13

The judge in Pollard declared, "The customer who sits [for free] for a negative thus puts the power of reproducing the object in the hands of the photographer," and reminded the plaintiff

v.

Cooke (1903). See Copinger, The Law of Copyright, 372-5.

that the law "is meant to prevent legal wrongs, and not mere sentimental grievances." Quoted In Copinger, The Law of Copyright, 375. 14

See House of Commons Papers, Law of Copyright Committee (1909), 154.

15

The repercussions of the law are discussed in the 1915 edition of Walter Arthur Copinger and J. M. East on, The Law of Copyright in Works of Literature, Art and Architecture, Photography, Music and the Drama: Including Chapters on Mechanical Contrivances and Cinematographs (London: Stevens and Haynes, 1915), 89,113-14. See also E. Skone James, Law of

Copyright in Works of Literature, Art, Architecture, Photography, Music and the Drama (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1927), 99. 16

For a discussion of the practice in the interwar years, see Terrence Pepper, Monday's Children: Portrait Photography in the 1920s and 1930s (Colliergate, York, UK: Impressions Gallery, 1977). For a firsthand discussion, see Dorothy Wilding, In Pursuit of Perfection

(London: Robert Hale, Ltd., 1958); E. O. Hoppe, Hundred Thousand Exposures: The Success of a Photographer (London: The Focal Press, 1945). 17

A special meeting of the IBP in 1939 represented the culmination of a decades-long debate about free sittings. See Institute of Incorporated British Photographers, Year Book, 1939,

108. An analysis of this meeting 1939): 398.

was

also included in British Journal of Photography (June 23,

18

Charles Pilley, Law for Journalists (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1924), 45.

19

Copinger, The Law of Copyright, 117. See also Skone James, Law of Copyright, 100.

20

Bernard Alfieri, Free-Lance Photography (London: Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1939), 210-11.

21

At least for the first half of the twentieth century, there were four orders of actionable libel offenses: words charging plaintiff with a crime; words imputing the plaintiff a contagious disorder tending to exclude him from society; words which reflect upon the plaintiff in his profession or trade; words imputing to a woman or a girl adultery or unchastity. See

Pilley, Law for Journalists, 12; Wilfred A. Button, Principles of the Law of Libel and Slander (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1935); Clement Gatley, Law and Practice of Libel and Slander in a Civil Action: With Precedents of Pleadings, Etc., and Canadian, Australasian, and American Cases on the Subject (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1924); Edward Wool I, A Guide to the Law of Libel and Slander (London and Glasgow: Blackie & Son Limited, 1939); W. Valentine Ball, The Law of Libel and Slander (London: Stevens and Sons Limited, 1936); Morris L. Ernst and Alexander Lindey, Hold Your Tongue!: Adventures in Libel and Slander (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1936); H. P. Lansdale Ruthven, The Law of Libel for Journalists (London: Blandford Press, Ltd., 1934); Eric Barendt, ed., Libel Law and the Media: The Chilling Effect (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). 22

See, in particular, Huw Beverley-Smith, The Commercial Appropriation of Personality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Legal scholar Eric Barendt has shown how London is the libel capital of the world," a title that the city has held for most of modern history because of the strictness of British libel laws. Barendt, Libel Law and the Media, 16. "

23

This lack of attention to photography is universal to legal texts on libel. See, for example, Ball, The Law of Libel and Slander, 3; Hugh Fraser, Principles and Practice of the Law of Libel and Slander

24

Butterworth &Co., 1925).

(London:

Tussauds, Ltd. (1894) established a legal precedent for imagistic a libel claim focused on a wax replica, but the relevance of this to photographic images was unclear. This is discussed in Ball, The Law of Libel and Slander, 7.

The

case

Monson

v.

libel, ruling in favor of 25

The most notable Corelli had

case

in this regard, and the case that established the legal precedent,

was

Wall (1906). Corelli ultimately lost her case, which confirmed the fact that individuals universal right to be protected from unwanted distribution of photographs. Details

v.

no

of the case

are given in John Mews, The Annual Digest of All the Reported Decisions of the Superior Courts (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1908), col. 85. The case reverberated for decades in the literature about invasion of privacy and photographic libel, and continues to influence the discussion. See Beverley-Smith, Commercial Appropriation, 265-6. For a press photographer's perspective on the case, see Bernard Grant, To the Four Corners: The Memoirs of a News Photographer (London: Hutchinson &Co. Ltd., 1933), 232. See also Funston v. Pearson (1915), which involved a dentist's use of an actress's portrait in his advertising. The deposition in the case is held at the National Archives, King's Bench, March 10,1915, J54 1601. See also "Libel by a Photograph," British Journal of Photography (March 19, 1915): 189; "Funston v. Pearson," Times (March 12,1915).

26

Gatley, Law and Practice of Libel and Slander, 94.

27

"Alleged Libel by Photograph," Times (June 1914): 3; "Chorus Girls' Libel Action: A Farthing Damages," Times (October 24, 1914): 3.

28

The captions read, "A Daring dance/Doesn't interrupt the gay conversation/This doesn't shock anybody/But this clears the floor/A sensuous ending leaves everybody cold." Daily Sketch (December 10, 1913): 10.

29

"Alleged Libel," Times, 3.

30

Cases such

as

confirmed

individual's legal protection from portraits displayed in proximity to headlines, stories with defamatory connotations. The deposition of the first case was

captions,

Wallis

v.

London Mail, Ltd. (1917), and De Frece

v.

News of the World (1919)

an or

held in the National Archives, King's Bench, July 19, 1917, J54 1674. See also, "Libel by Photograph," British Journal of Photography (May 18, 1917): 258; '"Dope Parties': Libel on

Miss Fay Compton," The Times (February

1919):

2. The majority of photographic libel

claims derived from snapshots that were published with incorrect captioning, misidentifying the person represented. See Cassidyv. The "Daily Mirror" Newspapers, Ltd. (1929); Beattie v.

The Sphere and Tatler, Ltd. (1924); Hilton-Green

v.

Illustrated London News and Sketch,

Ltd. (1936); De Janze v. Western Mail, Ltd. (1927); Honeysett v. News Chronicle, Limited and the Daily News Limited (1935). The case The "Daily Mirror" Newspapers, Ltd. v. Exclusive News Agency (1937) confirmed the right of newspaper to sue photographers for misidentified prints. For more on this case, see John Mews, Alexander Wood Renton, and Sydney Edward

Williams, Mews' Digest of English Case Law (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1925). The issue of photographic libel was of enough concern to the profession that the Press Photographers' Association (PPA) promised to provide legal advice to press photographers in libel disputes, and even offered libel insurance. See PPA Record of Photography (July 1922): 52. 31

Some of the libel claims involving press photographs resembled the kinds of claims that were at that moment being defined as the "right to personality" in American jurisprudence, which afforded protection from indiscriminate use of

a

photographic likeness without permission of

the person depicted. See Roscoe Pound, "Equitable Relief against Defamation and Injuries to Personality," Harvard Law Review (1915): 640-82; "Wizard Edison Owner of His Own

Face," Hoboken New Jersey Observer (July 1925). In Britain, where the law had always been much less willing to assert blanket rights, the courts did not defend individuals in the same way. See "The Law of the Portrait," British Journal of Photography (February 1, 1907): 80-1. This difference between American and British law in this regard is also discussed in BeverleySmith, Commercial Appropriation. 32

British Journal of Photography (March 19, 1915): 178.

33

For more, see Percy H. Winfield, "Privacy," Law Quarterly Review 47 (January 1931): 23. Winfield's polemic was inspired by the libel case Tolley v. J.S. Fry & Sons (1930), which involved a photograph of a famous golfer being used as part of an advertisement for chocolate,

34

See Pratt, Privacy in Britain, 59. Laws dating from the Victorian era banned photography in variety of public spaces. Photographing in some public parks was forbidden on Sundays, cameras on tripods in public spaces were often forbidden any day of the week, as was the photographing of large groups of people on public streets. Photographing of any military installations had been restricted even before the First World War, but any such photographs were made explicitly illegal under the Defence of the Realm Act in 1914. See Henry Snowden Ward, Photography for the Press (London: Dawbarn and Ward, 1901) 64; "Illegal Photographing," British Journal of Photography (July 23, 1915): 473; "Anti-Snapshot Law," British Journal of Photography (July 19, 1907): 534. a

,

35

Pratt, Privacy in Britain, 60.

36

John Everard, Photographs for the Papers: How to Take and Place Them (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1914), 26.

37

For

an

early example of this kind of critique,

see

"The Ubiquitous Press Photographer," British

Journal of Photography (June 9, 1905): 458. 38

The rota system is dated to the 1920s in Roger Hargreaves and Bill Deedes, Daily Encounters: Photographs from Fleet Streeet (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2007), 58.

I was unable to find any information on the original motives behind the implementation of the rota system in the Metropolitan Police Archives. The British Journal of Photography, however, reported in 1919, "Police permits for photographers are now being issued to

professional Press photographers. Each permit is

a

folder bearing the holder's photograph,

and certifying that the bearer is an accredited and responsible photographer, and is recommended for all facilities" (British Journal of Photography [August 15, 1919]: 475). The National Archives house materials documenting the application process, and press passes used during these official events, which include photographs of and information about the press photographer. The cards are marked, "identification card for Press representatives—

Metropolitan and City Police," "The bearer of this card is an accredited and responsible photographer/journalist." The National Archives, Metropolitan Police Files, MEPO 2/547;

see

also MEPO 2/5474. 39

Alfieri, Free-Lance Photography, 22.

40

Bell R. Bell wrote, "In a district where an operator is well known, entree is gained to practically every function of a public or private nature by merely arriving upon the scene." Bell R. Bell, The Complete Press Photographer (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1927), 37. A. V. Swaebe proudly asserted, "I never liked the rota system, and said so loud and clear. In one way and another I always managed to get permission to be present at any function covered by the rota boys, and nobody seemed to mind." A. V. Swaebe, Photographer Royal (London: Leslie Frewin, 1967), 43.

41

House of Commons Papers, Criminal Justice Act, Amendment Bill, 1924-25.

42

See Pilley, Law for Journalists, 23; "When You May Libel," The Journalist (January 1924): 11; Ruthven, The Law of Libel for Journalists, 173.

43

Press photographers who got their start in the years around 1900 wrote with fond reminiscence of the importance of courtroom photography in their early training. See Edward J. Dean, Lucky Dean: Reminiscences of a Press Photographer (London: Robert

Hale, Ltd., 1944), 9; Grant, To the Four Corners, 29; William R. Turner, Eyes of the Press (London: Hutchinson &Co. Ltd., 1935), 208. 44

Grant, To the Four Corners, 30.

45

For a discussion of the size of the plates and the types of cameras, see Turner, Eyes of the Press, 207; Grant, To the Four Corners, 29-30. These practices are analyzed in depth in Gunning, "Embarrassing Evidence," and described in Nicholas Hiley, "The Candid Camera of the Edwardian Tabloids," History Today 43 (August 1993).

46

James Jarche, "Press Photography with the Miniature Camera," The Photographic Journal (December 1936): 584-5.

47

Ibid. Bernard Grant claimed to have been the first photographer to be arrested for this

practice in 1909. Grant, To the Four Corners, 30. 48

Everard, Photographs for the Papers, 43.

49

In 1912,

one

MP offered the suggestion that

new

laws should be created to make the

publication of such photographs illegal, which found sympathy among his colleagues. Photographs (Criminal Courts) HC Deb March 21, 1912, vol 35 c2067 2067. Hansard Papers Online, http://hansard.millbanksystems.eom/commons/1912/mar/21/photographs-criminalcourts#S5CV0035P0_19120321 _HOC_218. 50

Hansard Papers Online, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1925/nov/20/clause40-prohibition-on-taking#S5CV0188P0_19251120_HOC_115

51

The lopsidedness of the effect of the clause and Benn; see Hansard.

52

Ibid.

on

photographs

was

broached by MPs Morriss

53

Mr. McLaren, quoted in "Criminal Justice Bill," The Times (November 1925): 6.

54

Mr. Lansbury in Hansard.

55

The clause also had its critics, who faulted it for being a form of censorship. These views were forwarded by Lieutenant-Commander Kenworthy, Captain Benn, and Colonel Wedgwood, Hansard.

56

Sir Ellis Humes-Williams, Hansard.

57

Mr. Broad, Hansard.

58

Joynson-Hicks, Hansard.

59

Benn, Hansard.

60

Wedgwood, Hansard.

61

House of Commons, Criminal Justice Act.

62

It is worth comparing the passage of this law to a law passed the following year, The Judicial Proceedings (Regulation of Reports) Bill, which forbid the reporting of divorce cases in the press. House of Commons, Judicial Proceedings (Regulation of Reports) Bill, 1926. Adrian Bingham has suggested that this bill and the Criminal Justice Act were part of a similar fear of the popular press in the 1920s. See Family Newspapers?: Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press, 1918-1978 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 137. See also Gail Savage, "Erotic Stories and Public Decency: Newspaper Reporting of Divorce Proceedings in England," The Historical Journal 41 (June 1998): 511-28. While the comparison is intriguing, Clause 39 of the Criminal Justice Act was less about public morals than about private rights. The offenses it was designed to prevent were not necessarily about the management of salacious material, but with conceptualizing a space that might be considered sacred from the invasions of the press.

63

See "No Court Snapshots after June 1," The Newspaper World (January 9, 1926): 19; British Journal of Photography (December 4, 1925): 725. "Proposed Legislation against Court Photography," British Journal of Photography (March 27, 1925): 193; "Photographs in

Court," British Journal of Photography (July 3, 1925): 393; "Cameras and Law Courts," British Journal of Photography (May 22, 1925): 302. 64

For years after the passing of the law, photographers bemoaned the censoriousness of the clause and its unfair singling out of press photographers as a source of public evil. See J. C.

Kinkaid, Press Photography (London: Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1936), 214; Turner, Eyes of the Press, 208-209. One press photographer writing in 1961 suggested that the law no longer had any de facto significance, and its de jure impact was irrelevant. See Robert Bartlett Rhode, Press Photography: Reporting with a Camera (New York: Macmillan, 1961). 65

"Dailies Are After More Pictures," Photography (February 1938): 18. See also Political and Economic Planning, Report on the British Press (London: Poliiical and Economic Planning

Publications, 1938), 142; "Over-Enterprising Press Photographers," British Journal of Photography (October 27, 1922): 658. 66

Grant, To the Four Corners, 240.

67

This term is discussed in depth in Mensel, "Kodakers Lying in Wait."

68

Philip Gibbs, Adventures in Journalism (London: William Heinemann, 1923), 16.

69

Daily Graphic (July 30, 1919): 8-9.

70

British Journal of Photography (August 15, 1919): 475.

71

An article in

a 1935 issue of World's Press News described photographers as "journalistic mosquitoes." World's Press News (January 17, 1935): 3. For more on the popular conceptions of press photographers in the period in the American context, see Bonnie Brennan, "From Headline Shooter to Picture Snatcher: The Construction of Photojournalists in American Film, 1928-39," Journalism 5 (2004): 423-38.

72

Photography (July 1938): 22.

73

Coursin Black, "Candid Photography Is Making Us Human Goldfish," Photography (May 1938): 10.

74

For

more on

the social history of flash photography, see Jodi Hauptman, "Flash: The Speed

Graphic," Yale Journal of Criticism 11:1 (1998): 129. This is also the subject of a forthcoming book, Kate Flint, Flash!: Photography, Writing, and Surprising Illumination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 75 76

PPA Record (July 1927): 11. Brodrick Haldane, Time Exposure: A Retrospective Exhibition of Photographs by Brodrick 1982), 3.

Haldane (Edinburgh: Scottish Arts Council, 77

See also Bell, The Complete Press Photographer, 170-1.

78

British Journal of Photography (February 12, 1937): 76, 106.

79

One instancej which became the subject of

a

Parliamentary inquiry, involved

two

Daily

Mirror photographers who in 1937 broke out a skylight in order to descend into a building to take photographs of two people involved in a famous divorce case. Royal Commission on

the Press, House of Commons (1947-49), Society of Editors; Guild of British Newspaper

Eidtors: A. Marshall Diston; J. P. W. Mallalieu. 80

"Right

81

St. John Ervine, "The Invasion of Privacy,"

to

Snap," British Journal of Photography (March 20, 1931): 177.

Spectator

138 (May 1927): 937.

82

Ibid., 938.

83

The longer history of the funeral as a site of display is discussed in Ralph Houlbrooke, ed., Death, Ritual, and Bereavement (London: Routledge, 1989).

84

Criticism of the photographing of funerals grew out of the debate about photographers at law courts, and would inherit much of the same language of privacy. The issue was broached in the House of Commons in 1924, the same year as the Criminal Justice Act. See Hansard Papers Online, http://hansard.millbankssystems.eom/commons/1924/may/15/press photographers#S5CV0173PO_19249515_HOC_77. For a discussion of the relationship between the two practices, see James Despencer Robertson, "Intrusive Press Pictures," Times (September 1923): 6. For critical responses to these "invasive" images, see David Ockham, Stentor, or the Press of To-day or To-morrow (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner&Co., Ltd., 1927), 26; Jane Soames, The English Press: Newspapers and News (London: Stanley Nott, 1936), 102. -

85

St. John Ervine, "Privacy and the Press: The Baying of the News-Hounds," The Times (June 22, 1933): 10. The piece sparked a series of correspondences about the intrusions of the press photographer. See "Privacy and the Press: Estimates of Public Taste," Times (June 27, 1933): 10; "Privacy and the Press: Intrusions of the Camera," Times (June 28, 1933): 10.

86

"Intrusions into Private Grief," Times (July 25,1933): 15. For a press photographer's response, see "Intrusions into Private Grief," Times (July 26, 1933): 13. The discussion resumed again on January 15, February 20, February 22, February 23, 1934.

87

The shrillness of tone was seen most evidently in J. P. Collins, "The Cult of the Hyena,1' Century 123 (May 1938): 535-49. See also St. John Ervine, "Privacy and the

Nineteenth

Lindberghs," Fortnightly 139 (February 1936): 185. 88

See, in particular, Hamilton Fyfe, "Pestering by the Press," Fortnightly Review 141 (April 1937): 304-11; "The Truth about American Journalists," World's Press News (May 28, 1931): 14. See also Gail Buckland and Harold Evans, Shots in the Dark: True Crime Pictures (New York: Bulfinch, 2001), 16.

89

The play "Late Night Final," which revealed some of the grubby aspects of New York reporting, and had a successful British run in 1931, caused much discussion in journalistic

circles. See '"Late Night Final'

a

Truthful Picture of Tabloid Journalism," World's Press

News (July 23, 1931): 7. The British film Sensation (1937) borrowed from its American predecessors, and focused on a group of journalists and photographers attempting to get the scoop on a recent murder case. For a discussion of the impact of this film, see Ryan

Linkof, "Gross Intrusions: Sensation, Early Queer Film, and the Trouble with Crime Reporting in 1930s Britain," Media History 20.2 (2014): 107-25. 90

91

"Press Indiscretions Discussed in Commons," World's Press News (May 7, 1931): 5; "Rising Agitation for More Press Restriction," World's Press News (October 29, 1935): 1. Mr. Ross Taylor broached the question with regard to a recent tragedy involving Dutch airliner and the badgering of the victims. Hansard Papers Online, http://

a

hansard. millbanksystems.com/commons/1936/dec/17/dutch-air-liner-accident-

newspaper#S5CV0318PO_19361217_HOC_122 The issue of instituting official restriction was raised again on January 19, 1937; on February 4, Simon assured his colleagues that he was tending to the matter. .

was reluctant to go any further, because of the remarkable restraint exhibited by the British press in the scandal that consumed the world's press just a few weeks prior—the abdication of King Edward VIII.

92

Simon

93

The debate lasted until February 25. See Hansard Papers Online, http://hansard.

millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/feb/25/press-inquiries#S5CV0320P0_19370225_ HOC_124 For responses, see "Press Intrusion into Private Life," Times (August 1937): 12; "Another Press Intrusion," Times (March 3, 1937): 15; "Intrusions into Privacy, Freedom of the Press," Times (January 28, 1937): 10; "Press Inquiries," January 28 and February 4, 1937, .

Hansard Papers Online. "Press Intrusion: More Protests in Parliament," Times (February 1937): 14; Kenneth Adam, "Press and Public," Listener 17 (April 1937): 641-3. 94

"Intrusions by the Press," Times (January 1938): 13.

95

The statements

were

included in "Press Inquiries," February 11 1937, Hansard Papers Online. on Privacy News Agencies Action," Times (February 12, 1937): 14;

See also "Press Intrusions "Press Intrusions 96

on

Privacy, Journalistic Disapproval," Times (February 15, 1937): 14.

See "N.U.J. Code of Professional Conduct," The Journalist (May 1936): 113. "The Perils of 'Popular' Journalism," The Journalist (December 1936): 248-9. At a meeting of the Manchester Branch in late 1936, the president of the Union spoke out against "ghoulish

news

and pictures," warning, "If this cult of sensationalism is allowed to proceed until vast numbers of the public are affronted, you are presenting a first-class case for people who demand restriction of Press freedom." The Journalist (January 1937): 5. 97

98

By the end of January 1937, the NUJ passed a resolution stating that such practices were expressly discouraged by the Union. The Journalist (February-March 1937): 27, 36, 37; also The Journalist (April 1937): 49. National Union of Journalists, "Rules of the National Union of Journalists" (London: National Union of Journalists, 1938), 19.

99

In 1948, the union was still troubling over this issue. See National Union of Journalists, "Report of the Forty-First Annual Delegate Meeting, 1948" (Manchester: National Union of

Journalists, 1948). Complaints about intrusive photographers and reporters were a staple of trade literature of the late 1930s and 1940s. "M.P.Urges Statutory Penalties for Press Intrusion," The Newspaper World (January 8, 1938): 4; Political and Economic Planning, Report on the British Press (London: Political and Economic Planning Publications, 1938), 37, 134, 209, 266, 288; Robert Sinclair, The British Press: The Journalist and His Conscience (London: Home & Van Thai, 1949), 69-72, 223. The debate never reached a conclusive end. and it would emerge a decade later in Parliament in the Royal Commission on the Press of 1947-48. House of Commons, Royal Commission on the Press, 1947-49.

100

National Union of Journalists, "Report of the Forty-First Annual Delegate Meeting," 37.

101

Swaebe, Photographer Royal, 176.

102

See, in particular, J. R. Hunt, Pictorial Journalism (London: Sir Isaac Piiman & Sons, Ltd.), 1937, 28.

Jarché,People I Have Shot (London: Methuen & Co.

103

See James

104

Stanley Devon, Glorious: The Life-Story of Stanley Devon, twice "British Press Photographer of the Year" (London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd., 1957).

105

on a trespass claim, deriving from the fact that one party was broadcasting races that were taking place on another party's land. Discussed in "The Right to Privacy," Spectator (January 28, 1938): 129.

Ltd., 1934).

The debate focused

106

Ibid.

107

One of the most notable interventions into the affairs of the press was the directive from the prime minister's office forbidding the press to interview or photograph any of the personages listed on the annual Honours List before its general publication on January 1, 1938. In direct defiance of the dictum, the Daily Mirror sent reporters and photographers Fields, who was one of the recipients. The Daily Mirror's

to the home of the actress Grade

boldness in this regard

was

to adhere to established

evidence of the inefficacy of rhetorical mandates and promises over 'Daily Mirror' and Honours Sensation,"

principles. "Storm World's Press News (January 13, 1938): 5.

Chapter 6 1

H. Montgomery Hyde, Privacy and the Press: The Daily Mirror Press Photographer Libel Action (London: Butterworth, 1947), 9.

2

For

more on

the right to privacy in Britain, see previous chapter, and William F. Pratt, Privacy

in Britain (London: Associated University Press, 1979), 1-2. 3

The standard text exploring the link between class and notions of the "private sphere" is Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). The most important and influential study of the cultural significance of matters of taste and decorum is Pierre

Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). See also Erik Neveu and Rodney Benson, Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1980). 4

For more on upper-class voyeurism of the working class, see Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

5

A description of the events was included in the trial transcription, reprinted in full in Hyde, Privacy and the Press. See also "Assault on Press Photographer," Times (January 1946): 2.

6

"Assault

7

Daily Mirror (January 12, 1946): 1.

8

"Ungentlemanly," Justice of the Peace and Local Government Review (January 26, 1946): 1.

9

For

on

more on

Press Photographer," Times, 2.

the cultural weight of the term "gentleman,"

see

Philip Mason, The English

Gentleman: The Rise and Fall of an Ideal (New York: Morrow, 1982); Christine Berberich, The Image of the English Gentleman in Twentieth-Century Literature: Englishness and

Nostalgia (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007).

10

Hyde, Privacy and the Press, 32.

11

Ibid., 35.

12

Ibid., 186.

13

Ibid., 15.

14

Ibid., 204;

15

Ibid., 83.

16

Ibid., 29.

17

Ibid., 137, 142, 143.

see also

18

Ibid., 144.

19

Ibid., 55-7,

20

Ibid., 90, 91, 92.

21

Ibid., 94, 93, 95.

22

Ibid., 95.

23

Ibid., 101.

205-206, 212.

24

Ibid., 203.

25

In his practical guidebook Free-Lance Photography, Bernard Alfieri wrote, "With certain reservations, there is nothing to prevent anyone from photographing any object or scene, so long as the object itself is not under copyright... If any person obtains lawful access to any property, the action of taking a photograph is not a trespass." Bernard Alfieri, Free-Lance Photography (London: Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1939), 208.

26

Institute of British Photographers, Yearbook, 76. In 1927, the British Journal of Photography reported on the case of Cigarini and Prompton Press Bureau v. Mitchell, in which press photographers had the hosts of a wedding reception sign a document that allowed them access to the private quarters of the home and required the hosts to pay. British Journal of Photography (March 11,1927): 139.

27

They hired

28

a

representative from Portman Press. Hyde, Privacy and the Press, 115,139.

Ibid.,106.

29 Ibid.,6 . 30 Ibid.27089,. 31 Ibid.,85.

32 Ibid.,86. 33

One of the prosecution claims was that the Justice of the Peace article had erroneously and maliciously implied that Lea had sneaked his camera into the reception with the express purpose of defying the proscription on photography. Ibid., 36.

34 35

Ibid., 42-4.

36

Ibid., 57-8. Ibid., 63. Holmes suggested, "I suggest camera" (64). See also page 82.

37

Ibid., 151.

38

Ibid., 60, 62, 208.

39

Ibid., 125.

40

Ibid., 139, 149.

to you that you wanted your coat on to conceal your

41

Ibid., 33.

42

Ibid.,10.

43

Ibid.,20.

44

Ibid.,1029,.

45

Ibid.,72.

46 Ibid., 36. Given the fact that the only two periodicals specifically allowed to report on the reception were the aristocratic women's magazine Queen, and the obscure business journal Herts Advertiser, Lea had probably made a smart decision not being forthcoming with the name Daily Mirror. 47

Ibid., 56.

48

Ibid., 96.

49

This point was made several times; ibid., 175-6; 209-11.

50

Ibid., 206.

51

This bias is expressed in Political and Economic Planning, Report on the British Press (London: Political and Economic Planning Publications, 1938). See in particular page 134.

52

53

See Hyde, Privacy and the Press, 56.

Ibid.,218.

54 Ibid.,27.

55 Ibid.,26. 56 Ibid.,26. 57 Ibid.,29. 58 Ibid.,8.

59 Ibid.,1. 60 Ibid.,9.

61

He also referenced

a

series of correspondences about "press intrusion" that appeared in the are discussed in the previous chapter. Ibid., 11.

Times in 1937-38, which 62

Ibid., 12.

63

C. J. Slade, "Privacy and the Press," Spectator (December 12,1952): 804.

64

In 1961, one photographer

was still firmly of the opinion, "The area of society's activities from photographer is barred, either by statute or the legal precedent of court decision, is small." Robert Bartlett Rhode, Press Photography: Reporting with a Camera (New York: Macmillan, 1961), 206; An American lawyer wrote in 1958, "The right of privacy is not recognized [in] English law." W. A. C., "The Right of Privacy in News Photographs," Virginia Law Review 44.8 (December 1958): 1303-17.

which the

65

news

The proliferation of privacy protections at the turn of the twenty-first century are discussed in Joshua Rozenberg, Privacy and the Press (London: Oxford University Press, 2005), v.

See also Gavin Phillipson, "Transforming Breach of Confidence?: Toward

a

Common

Law Right of Privacy under the Human Rights Act," Modem Law Review 66.5 (September Protection for Public 2003): 726, 758; Howard I. Berkman, "The Right of Publicity

Figures and Celebrities," Brooklyn Law Review (1976): 527-57; Lynda Nead, The Haunted Gallery: Painting, Photography and Film around 1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 257. For a study of the effects of the 2011 phone hacking scandal, see Simon Dawes, "Press Freedom, Privacy and The Public Sphere," Journalism Studies 15.1 (February 2013): 17-32.

Conclusion 1

For

more on

Diana,

See Tina

Brown, The Diana Chronicles (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 2007);

Jude Davies, Diana, A Cultural History (New York: Palgrave, 2001); Glenn Harvey and Mark Saunders, Diana and the Paparazzi (London: Blake Publishing, 2007); Carol Squiers, "Class

Struggle: The Invention of Paparazzi Photography and the Death of Diana, Princess of Wales," In Squiers, ed., Overexposed: Essays on Contemporary Photography (New York: The New Press, 1999). 2 3

Peter Howe, Paparazzi and Our Obsession with This term

comes

Celebrity (New York: Artisan, 2005),

from Christian Caujolle and Mary Panzer, Things

in Context since 1955 (New York: Aperture, 2007)

as

30.

They Are: Photojournalism

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INDEX

abdication

crisis

94 6

Boothroy v. Hulton and Co. 133 Brady, Matthew 186 n. 10 Brandeis, Louis 12 Braudy, Leo 8 102 Brennen, Bonnie 8

-

actionable libel offenses 207 n.21

actressocracy 203 n.48 Adorno, Theodor 7 Alexandra, Queen 193 n.16 Alfieri, Bernard 62 191 n.97 214 n.25 Amalgamated Press 37 Amateur Photographer 177 n.97 ,

,

Brian Masters 204

,

n. 76

Bright Young People 202 n. 44 Britain's aristocracy, representation of 101

Amendment Bill 1925 134

debutante season 111 -20

American film 202 n.46

final and utter decay of 125 8 , 201 n. 16 -

Americanization of the British press 16 , 205 n.95 American methods of scandal reporting 39 40 Anderson, Benedict 7 8 -

-

Appert, Eugene 186 n. 10 Asquith, HerPert Henry 106

leisure activities 104 popular image of 103 tabloid coverage of 102 transformations in 106 7 -

British culture

Asquith, Margot 107 Astaire, Fred 68

popular culture 10 role of tabloids in 2 4 -

British Journal of Photography 15 , 56 , 59 , 62 , 70 , 114 , 133 , 177 n. 97 , 209 n. 38 ,

Baker, Thome 28 Baldwin, Stanley 196 n. 61 Balfour, Patrick 101 128 205 n.96 Barendt, Eric 207 n. 22 Bartholomew, Guy 28 9 38 40 ,

214

-

n. 26

British press photographers 5 Broom, Christina 187 n. 23

,

Bundock, Clement J. 189 n. 51 Bystander 24 5 31 68 9 102 104 109 113

-

,

Bassano 49 , 130

-

-

,

bearing witness 47 61 186 n.5 Beaton, Cecil 75 95 114 195 n.50 199 ,

,

,

,

,

Beaumont, Williams Comyns 24 n. 49

Becker, Karin 4 172 n. 37 Beegan, Gerry 22 Begbie, Harold 107 Bell, R. Bell 64 209 n. 40 Benjamin, Walter 6 171 n. 38 Berger, John 102 Berliner lllustrierte Zeitung 19 Bingham, Adrian 3 Blumenfeld, R. D. 6 38 184 n. 105 Boorstin, Daniel 8 ,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

n. 33

,

Cafede Paris 109 , 111

n.116 , 204 n.68 Beaverbrook 93 , 195

134 , 180

,

121

,

Cafe Society 109 cameras on the fronthnes, British government regulations 182 n. 84 candid photography 2 , 48 , 50 8 , 60 2 , 191 2 n. 103 -

-

-

candid images of celebrities 67 8 Continental model 64 7 -

-

humiliating photographs 67 74 -

merits of 70 miniature

camera

62 3 -

technologies of 62 4 Cannadine, David 11 -

,

INDEX

graphic illustrations in 26 as Illustrated Daily Mirror 26 impact of 30 2 journalistic objectives 39 merger with Daily Sketch 41 photographic content 29 photographic reproductions in 28 9 populist and demotic reportage 44 process of producing photographic images 28 Sunday edition 38

Cartes de visite 9

Cartier-Bresson, Henri 9 Cecil, Captain Robert 150 2 154 6 ungentlemanly behavior celebrity culture 8 10 48 103 108 -

see also

-

,

-

-

,

in

,

,

Britain 11

social class and 10 12

-

-

celebrity photography 29 52 60 ,

,

of Duchess of Richmond 52 of Margot Asquith 55

celebrity photojournalism 9 celebrity snapshots 2 9

transformations in modes and

,

methods 38 41

Central Press Photos 48

-

uniqueness of 26 use of halftone images 28 9

Chalaby, Jean 7 Chamberlain, Victor 66

-

chaperone agents 111 Churchill, Winston 63 Cigarini and Prompton Press Bureau v.

Mitchell

circulation

(1927) 214

"Daily Mirror" Newspapers, Ltd., The v. Exclusive News Agency (1937) 208 n. 30 Daily News 34 Daily Sketch 1 5 8 14 30 33 36 38 40 1

n.26

-

,

48 9 , 61

183 n.100

wars

-

class voyeurism 11 Cohen-Portheim, Paul 37 , 200 n.7

,

,

,

,

102 , 121

,

,

.

Copyright Act in 1911 131 Corelli v. Wall (1906) 207 n.25 Country Life 31 court journalist 194 n.22 courtroom photography 134 5 188

Davidoff, Leonore 104 200 n. 4 Dean, Edward "Lucky" 49 97 189 Dean, Lucky 90 ,

,

debutante culture

,

Britain 103 , 111 20 , -

glamorous portraits of debutantes 116 Margaret Whigham 120 5 Decline of Aristocracy, The 106

n. 43

-

Criminal Justice Act 1925 134 , 138 9 , 147 , -

Defamation Act 1652 160

n. 62

Cudlipp, Hugh 38 9 184

120 , 184

n.

-

,

n.

Defense of the Realm Act (DORA) 32 3 , 58 , 208 n. 34

121

Daily Express 3 15 26 36 8 113 photographic reporting 36 7 Daily Graphic 22 49 Daily Herald 14 36 38 Daily Mail 3 26 165 Daily Mirror 1 2 5 8 14 15 19 28 30

-

De Frece

-

,

,

,

,

detective and pocket cameras 50 , 188 Devon, Stanley 88 90 , 146 , 187 n. 21 ,

,

-

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

34 , 38 , 48 9 , 52 , 63 67 8 , 78 9 , 91 , -

-

198

-

,

102 3 , 105 , 112 , 121

125 , 129 , 134 ,

-

,

149 54 , 157 8 , 160 1 -

-

164 6 , 182 -

,

n. 93

Diana, Princess of Wales 77 163 digital photography 164 Duncan, Colin 153 4 Dymond, George 67 ,

n. 72

107

,

-

competition between Daily Sketch and 301 composition and display techniques 29 culture of photojournalism 42

—

first issues of 25

n. 30

"depoliticization" of journalism 6

,

-

News of the World (1919) 208

democratization 6

,

,

v.

DeGrazia, Victoria 16

-

n.

n. 62

-

Crazy Pavements 127

213

in

,

124 , 165 6

n. 33 ,

-

-

1

—

move to Fleet Street 31

Das Magazin 42 Daunton, Martin 11

-

,

,

198 8 94

Continental model, candid photography 64 7 Cooper, Diana 108

210

,

competition between Daily Mirror and 30 layout and structure of 31

composographs 93 Connell, Ian 11

209

,

133 4 , 150 , 156 , -

,

Education Act 1870 7 , 178

n. 9

Edwardian photographers 62

n. 33

INDEX

halftone images 2 , 25 , 28 , 179 Hall, Stuart 44

Ellerman, Lady 144 Eiierman, Lord 144 Elliot, R. D. 93 Elliot & Fry 49 130 v.

18

Hamilton, Peter 9 handheld reflex

,

Ellis

n.

Marshall 131

50

camera

Hansard Papers 15 Hardt, Hanno 8

Empire Press Union 146 English civil society 13 Ervine, St. John 143 4 Everard, John 52 134 -

,

Hardy, Bert 187 n. 21 Hargreaves, Roger 9 Harlip studios 204 n. 70 Harmsworth, Alfred 20 1 Harmsworth, Lorna 116 17 Hearst, W. R. 34 Heartfield, John 42 Henderson, Lisa 175 n. 66 hidden camera photography in Britain 47 8 Hollywood film culture 10 11 Hollywood stardom, representation of 108 Holmes,: Sir Valentine 153 4 156 7 Hopkinson, Lorant 185 n.139 Hopkinson, Tom 185 n. 139 193 n. 12 Hoppe, E, O. 65 6 191 n. 89 Horowitz, Jonathan 166 House of Commons Papers 15 Howe, Peter 9 163 4 Hulton, Edward 30 33 44 Human Rights Act 1988 160 human-interest journalism 8 9 48 humiliating photographs 67 74 Huskinson, Edward 24 Hutton, Kurt 65 Huxley, Aldous 101 Hyde, H. Montgomery 149 -

female audiences 22 3

-

-

Fenton, Roger 186 n. 10 Fine Arts Copyright Act of 1862 130 Fiske, John 8 flashbulb photography 68 Fleet Street press photographers 48 9 51 2 -

59 60 , 79 , 104 , 129 , 131 -

focal-plane camera 188 Fortnightly 15 France 183

n. 31

n. 90

,

,

211

n. 83 ,

-

,

-

,

funeral, press photography at 79 143 144 211

,

-

free press 13 freelance press photographer 49 , 62 Freund, Gisele 4 n. 84

,

-

,

,

,

Pearson (1915) 207 26 , 93 Hamilton Fyfe,

Funston

-

-

-

,

v.

n. 25

,

-

,

-

Garai, Bert 52 95 189 n. 62 gender and sex norms in Britain 3 George, David Lloyd 108 German photojournalism 65 Gervais, Thierry 5 Gibbs, Philip 79 Giles, David 10 glamour girls 102 glamour photography 116 20 Glass of Fashion, The 107 ,

,

-

Goerz Anschutz box camera 50 Golden Penny 22 gossip websites 164

-

wartime coverage 32 3 Illustrated London News 22 -

Illustrated Mail 22

Image Ethics 176 n. 78 imagined community 7 8 Institute of British Photographers (IBP) 155 206

,

n. 17

Institute of Journalists 146 intrusive tabloid photography 164 5 ungentlemanly behavior -

see

moments of private grief 143 5 press photographer's invasion of

Tom 9 , 129

gutter press 3 Gwynne, H. A. 196

-

-

Grant, Bernard 29 Graphic 24 Graves, Charles 121 Green, Derek 204 n. 68

Gunning,

illustrated journalism 21 5 "The Lighter Side of War" 32 3

-

privacy 143 8 public debate and criticism

n. 64

-

Habermas, Jurgen 7 Haldane, Brodrick49, 107 109 ,

on

privacy

139 43 , 147 -

right to privacy

in

Britain 130 , 148

also

role of Parliament 133 9 -

-

Ives, Frederic and Levy 179

Jarche, James 29 49 60 4 181 -

,

n. 21

,

189

,

,

n. 49 ,

187

-

-

-

,

n. 62

Justice of the Peace and Local Government Review 151

,

153 , 157 , 159 , 214

J. Walter Thompson 184

n. 33

n. 117

Mackenzie, Compton 91 McKibbin, Ross 102 203 n. 59 Malindine, Edward 91 Man, Felix H. 19 41 -2, 65 171 Mandler, Peter 200 n. 12 ,

,

manor

n. 21

house tourism 200 ft. 13

,

v.

Mirror of Life 131

Mensel, Robert 12 130 Mills, John 198 n.95

-

,

,

miniature camera 62 3 , 66 , 190 -

12 , 47 , 50

cameras

,

marriage market 111 Marshall, David 11 103 Martin, Kingsley 96 Mary, Queen 194 n. 20 Master Printer and Newspaper Owner 28 Mayfair 202 n. 42 Melman, Billie 16 Melville

Kenealy, Alexander 28 30 1 Kilbey, Walter 52 Kinkaid, J.C. 64 Kodak

,

n. 62

People I Have Shot 60 Society wedding 60 1 Jones, Kennedy 29 Joseph, Michael 36 Journalist, The 59 60 journalistic truth 5 Joyce, Patrick 8 Joynson-Hicks, William 135 137 8 Judicial Proceedings (Regulation of Reports) Bill 210

Lorant, Stefan 42 44 5 65 Lordolatry 101 Low, Maurice 21 psychological explanation of tabloidism 21 ,

n. 18

191

n.

n. 65

,

91

Miniature Speed Graphic 62

Koister, Georges 33

Modern Photography 44 modern system of photography 62 4

Lady, The 113 Lafayette, J. 49 58 "Late Night Final" (play) 211 12 n. 89 Lawrence, T. E. 71 Lea, Thomas 149 Lea v. Justice of the Peace, Ltd. 149 61 background of case 150 1 defense argumentation 154 Duncan's opening remarks 153 4

-

Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo 42

,

monarchy

-

Monson

v.

royal family photography of Tussauds, Ltd. (1984) 207 n. 24

see

Moss, Kate 166 Mulvey, Laura 12

-

Munchner lllustrierte Presse 42

-

Murdoch, Rupert 3

-

Nahhn trip 84 93 National Executive Council 146

issue of consent 155

-

Justice Hilbery's ruling 158 60 Lea's defense 156 7 -

National Media Museum 14 187

-

,

n.

18

National Portrait Gallery 204 n. 70 National Union of Journalists (NUJ) 59 , 146 ,

LeMahieu, Dan 6 Le Matin 33

189

Le Miroir 33

n. 51

,

212

n. 97 ,

212

n. 99

Lenare Studios 118

New Journalism 20 1

Leon, Charles Ponce de 8 LeRoy, Mervyn 108

News of the World 2 , 169

L'Excelsior 33

Newspaper World 36 7 59 177

-

News Corporation 3 n. 8

-

,

libeling photograph 132 208 ,

n. 30 ,

208

n. 31

189

,

n. 59

libel laws 132 3

"newswortny" photographs 73

Lilliput 42 , 65 London Blitz 14

New York Daily News 34 New York tabloids 34

London Illustrated Press Bureau 48

Nichols, Beverley 127

London Photographic Supply Company 19 London Society 102 see also Society life

Northcliffe 28 , 30

-

Ten Commandments 29

n. 97 ,

Ockham, David 1 37 O'Connor, T. P. 20 official military photographers 182

portrait photography 65 Poulett, Lady Bridget 113 14

,

-

n. 84

PPA Record 189

n. 52

Pratt, Wiliiam 130 Pall Mall Gazette 20

paparazzi photographs 9 10 12 76 163 5

press intrusion 2 , 13 , 15 , 91 , 146 , 147 , 149 , 159 60

Parisian newspapers 33 Penny Pictorial Magazine 22 , 51

Press of To-day and To-morrow 1 Press Photographers' Association 59

Pepper, Terence 203 n. 48 photocracy 108 11 photographic equipment 62 4

press photography/press photographers 12 , 47 50 , 58 9 , 74 , 78 , 91 99 , 104 ,

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see

187 n.15

also

autobiographies of 50 permanent and freelance 48 9 Prince Albert v. Strange (1849) 206 n. 9 prince's police security 195 n. 38 privacy, concept of 12 13 memoirs and

cameras

angled viewfinders 64 flash technologies 64 rota system 82 134 195 n. 40 208 9 n. 38 telephoto lens 64 190 n. 74 195 n. 39 photographic essay 4 photographic intrusion 128 133 143 8 149 -

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153 , 158 60 -

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privacy law 130

see

also intrusive tabloid

photography publication of unauthorized photographs and 131 2

Photographic Journal 63 photographic journalism 30 32 41 ,

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association with violent crime and unusual

Professional Photographers Association (PPA) 59

public images 12 13 public sphere, creation of 7 Pulitzer, Joseph 20 1

oddities 34 5 -

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in Britain 23 , 44 5 -

exporting 33 5 newspapers versus magazines 171 -

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n.

18

Punch 56 , 116

New York tabloids 34 Parisian 33 4

Quaglinos 109 111 Queen (magazine) 215

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photographic Photographic photographic photographic

,

nature of tabloids 2

n. 46

News 48 newspapers 32

reporting 6 7 21 36 7 39 -

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98 , 166

Reading Tabloids (Johansson) 2 Report on the British Press 41 rota system 82 134 195 n. 40 208 9 Rothermere, Lord 33 royal family, photography of 75 7 -

,

Beaumont's 25 in Britain 45

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meaning and significance of 4 5 photographic reproductions 37 Photography 64 67 70 photojournalism 2 4 5 15 41 6 166 celebrity 8 10 photojoumalistic magazines 42 45 photo-op image 10 58 64 photoreportage 4 5

abdication crisis 94 6

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Duke and Duchess of Windsor 75 6 , 96 -

Edward and Wallis 84 6 Edward VII, King 78 9 -

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Edward VIII, King 75 , 80 3 , 97 8 George V King 79 80

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Picture Post 5 , 14 , 19 , 44 , 65

George VI 97 Mary, Queen 79 80 Nahlin trip 84 93

Political and Economic Planning Committee 196 n. 66

monarch and his family 96 9 official portraits 78

Mayfair 202 n. 42 v. Photographic Co. 131 206 Ponsonby, Arthur 106 Ponsonby, Leolia 104 Portarlington, Lord 127

Simpson 90 3 95 98 Victoria, Queen 77 8

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Pollard

n. 38

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new

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n.

13

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Windsors arm-in-arm with Hitler 96

royal watching 192 n. 22 Rudd, Annie 47 66 ,

Rudd, Arthur Sarell 34 Rules of the National Union of Journalists 146 Russell & Sons 130

Sunday Mirror 33 Sunday Pictorial 33 40 49 Swaebe, A. V 49 68 91 109 10 146 191 ,

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n.

Salomon, Erich 64 Schickel, Richard 11 Schiller, Dan 5 Schwartz, Vanessa 8 16 Sekula, Allan 9

103 , 203

209

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n. 53 ,

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203

n. 56 ,

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,

204

n. 80 ,

n. 40

Swaffer, Hannen 26 30 67 78 129 191 ,

n.

102 , 193

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n. 16

Sweeney, Charles 121 Synchronized flash technologies 64

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Sell's World's Press 56

190

Sensation (film) 212 n.89 Shorter, Clement 22 , 32 , 59

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n. 73

autobiography of 22

tabloidizatiorr of broadsheet press 36 8 tabloid, concept emergence 179 n. 13

experience witn woman s illustrated paper 22 3

tabloid journalism 20 1 tabloid photographers 1

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founding of the Tatler 23 5 illustrated journalism 22 Simon, Sir John 145 212 n. 91 212

Tatler 23 4 , 31 , 59 , 70 , 102 4 , 109 10 , 114

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15 , 121

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134 , 180

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n. 33

Taylor, A, J. P. 39 Taylor, W. H. 190 n. 65 telephoto lens 64 190 n. 74 195 n. 39 Tolley v. J.S. Fry & Sons (1930) 208 n. 33 trespassing 151 152 160 213 n, 105 Tucker, Jennifer 7 Tunney, Gene 70 1 Turner, William 49 188 n. 28 Twaites, Peter 7

n. 92

Sketch 22 3 , 102 , 109 , 134 -

Smith, Lady Pamela 113 snapshot images of celebrities 52 5 institutionalizing 58 60 of Margot Asquith 55 oddity of 56 versus studio portrait 58 snapshot photography 47 8 131 snapshot press images 51 Snyder, Ruth 34 social class, and celebrities 10 12 Society life 101 2 165

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ungentlemanly behavior 149 Thomas Lea trial 149 61

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hostesses 106

n. 48

impact of publicity 104

Vickers, Hugh 203 Vining, Lionel 63

leisure activities 104

visual culture of tabloids 5 8 -

photocracy 108 11 transformations in 106 7

n. 95

Vitray, Laura 198 von Stutterheim, Kurt 37 45

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Society Racket, The 101 Society wedding 13 60 1 118 121 139 150 Soper, W. 95 Sparks, Colin 3 Spectator 15 144 147 201 n. 18 Spender, Humphrey 66 Sphere 22 3

Vu 19

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Star 20

Stead, W. T. 20 Steele, Richard 23 Stone, Sir John Benjamin 79 street photography 66 Sun 165 , 185

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n. 127

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Sunday Dispatch 127 197 n. 75 Sunday Graphic 33 40 107 116 120 123 Sunday Herald 33 ,

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Wadenoyen, Hugo van 47 65 6 185 n. 1 Wallis v. London Mail, Ltd. (1917) 208 n. 30 Ward, Henry Snowden 50 war photography 32 3 189 n. 49 Warren, Samuel 12 Wedgwood, Colonel 138 Weegee 4 Weekly Illustrated 5 42 3 65 88 185 n. 131 West End photographers 29 108 West, Gordon 127 204 n. 84 Whigharm, Margaret 120 5 127 204 n. 85

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205

n. 90

Wiener, Martin 11 Wigram, Clive 79

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wild animal photography 52 Wilding, Dorothy 114

World's Graphic Press Agency 48 9 World's Press News 15 , 59 , 177 n. 97

Williamson, Philip 77 Wilson, J. B, 197 n.66 Winchell, Walter 126

Wright, Jeffrey 71 201 n. 20 Wroughton, E. 56 Wyndham-Quin, Marjorie Ellen 150

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