Description:This photograph was taken by a London-based photographer called Bill Brandt, forming part of an album in the Bournville Village Trust archive that remained unknown to the photographic world until the mid-1990s. It comprises sets of photographs relating to three types of working-class housing and the families who occupied them. Each provided a ‘narrative sequence’ charting all aspects of working class life, from travelling to work to the evening meal. It is likely that Brandt was commissioned to undertake photographic work for the Trust between 1939 and 1943. He may have been commissioned to provide photography for the planning manifesto <a href="http://www.surburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1488">When We Build Again</a>, published in 1941, as techniques almost identical to Brandt’s are used to striking photographic effect.<small><sup>1</sup></small>
By closing curtains and taking extremely close shots of families, slum interiors appeared oppressively dark and claustrophobic. Sharp use of light and shadow transformed fairly standardised terraces into seemingly endless, regimented blocks. These contrast visibly with the spacious modern homes of the new council estates and the Bournville garden suburb archetype. Similar ‘documentary fictions’ were being commissioned for magazine articles published in Picture Post, which included a feature on Birmingham in its January 1939 edition. Brandt saw himself as a photographic artist above all, and his shots are clearly posed. This photograph taken at a Weoley Castle house shows a boy peering in through an open window as his parents eat their meal. Looking outside at the <a href="http://www.surburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1401">garden view</a> it is obvious that he could not have looked in without an object being placed for him to stand on!
Despite issues of authenticity, the photographs highlight aspects of working-class lifestyles in Birmingham documented in other sources. The residents of new municipal estates are portrayed as smartly dressed compared to their counterparts elsewhere, written and anecdotal evidence suggesting there were expectations to ‘keep up appearances’ with neighbours in their new surroundings. Research conducted on the Kingstanding Estate in east Birmingham revealed some working-class housewives cut back on food to afford such luxuries, with nutritional consequences for their children that might belie the artificial sense of domestic harmony the above photographs depict.<small><sup>2</sup></small> Conversely, new estates offered healthy surroundings and clean air, as shown by the proximity of nearby countryside in this photograph. Interviews with people who moved to estates like Kingstanding as children noticed immediate benefits to their health, relishing the opportunity to play in more rural surroundings.<small><sup>3</sup></small>
<font color="#666633"><small><sup>1</sup> Peter James and Richard Sadler, Homes Fit for Heroes. Photographs by Bill Brandt 1939-1943 (Birmingham: Dewi Lewis Publishing in Association with the University of Birmingham, 2004), pp.5-17
<sup>2</sup> Nutrition and size of family. Report on a new housing estate-1939. Prepared for the Birmingham Social Survey Committee by M.S. Soutar, E.H. Wilkins and P. Sargant Florence, (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1939), pp.38-40
<sup>3</sup> Interview with Mick Hinton, City Sound Archive, 1999 [BM&AG: R1281-1282]; interview with Fred and Doreen Heath, City Sound Archive, 1999 [BM&AG: R1283-1284]</small></font>