Kurt Hutton, Photographer
Continuing his series of profiles of photographers who pictured the East End in the twentieth century, Contributing Writer Mark Richards explores the photography of Kurt Hutton
Men drinking in The Prospect of Whitby, 1942
1934 was a defining year for British photography. Hitler’s restrictions on press freedom led to an exodus of photographers from Germany and Austria, who moved to London. These included emerging talents such as Edith Tudor-Hart, Bill Brandt and Wolf Suschitzky, as well as established photographers such as Kurt Hübschmann (1893–1960) who was born in Strasbourg and emigrated to England in 1934. On arrival, he changed his name to Kurt Hutton and is remembered by this name as a legendary photojournalist whose work influenced the younger photographers who established themselves in the thirties, such as Bert Hardy.
In Germany, Kurt already had a well-established career as a photographer. At first, his parents decided he should be a solicitor and he was sent to study Law at Oxford in 1911, but he soon found that this dry subject did not appeal to his creative spirit. In 1914, the outbreak of the First World War put all thoughts of a legal career on hold and he volunteered as an officer in the German cavalry. During this time, he learned some basic techniques of photography and his talent became evident immediately. After the war, he practised as an amateur photographer until he decided to make a career of it, after taking lessons in portrait photography in 1923.
Kurt pursued an humane approach to taking pictures, always seeking to preserve the dignity of his subjects. This is the common quality in all his photography – complemented by an irreverent sense of humour. In 1923, Kurt used his newly-acquired skills to establish a photo studio in Berlin with his wife, which they ran together until 1929 when he began to produce work for Simon Guttmann’s Deutsche Photodienst agency. This led to him being talent-spotted by Stefan Lorant, Editor-in-Chief at the Münchner Illustrierte Presse (Munich Illustrated Press), who commissioned work. This association with Lorant proved to be a seminal point in Kurt’s photographic career.
Stefan Lorant was the major editor in Germany at that time. A Hungarian with one Jewish parent, Lorant was a larger-than-life character, strongly opinionated and with a vision that would shape photojournalism for a generation to come. As editor of one of the two leading illustrated magazines in Germany, Lorant had come to know Hitler in the late twenties when Hitler was editing a Nazi magazine in Munich. Lorant even briefly dated Geli Raubul who was Hitler’s half-niece, but his commitment to the freedom of the press and refusal to bow to Nazi influence led to his arrest on 14th March 1933.
The end of press freedom in Germany led to a golden age of photojournalism in England. Lorant was released in 1934, arriving in England in April with only a smattering of English and a plan to reinvent British photojournalism. He established major publications such as Weekly Illustrated, Lilliput and Picture Post, all of which would feature Kurt’s photography.
Kurt’s Jewish origins put him and his wife at great risk in Germany and, after travelling to London to photograph Wimbledon in 1934, he made the decision to follow Stefan Lorant and move to England. He was accompanied by another Munich photographer, Hans Baumann who, on arrival. changed his name to Felix Man and joined Kurt as one of Lorant’s photographers.
Kurt photographed all tiers of English society including the residents of the East End. He had a natural talent for portraiture and his photographs of Churchill, Hemingway, Hitchcock and Ingrid Bergman are instantly recognisable. Characteristically, he employed a natural style to capture the spirit of his subjects. His output was prolific and, at times, made up nearly half of the photographs in some editions of Picture Post. Notable series included his photographs of George Orwell’s Wigan in 1939 which provide a unique visual record of life in that town just before the war.
An acknowledgement of the quality of Kurt’s photography is that his work was used as the standard against which other photographers were measured when learning their trade. Grace Robertson, an immensely talented photo-journalist in the fifties, recalled her work being thrown on the ground by her teacher who shouted “Kurt Hutton would never have taken pictures like these!”
The essence of Lorant’s vision for Picture Post was reflected Kurt Hutton’s approach to photography. It can be summed up in an editorial response to criticism over the inclusion of too many ‘ordinary people’ in the images appearing in the magazine. The response, which was probably written by Stefan Lorant read, “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”
This statement explains why so many series of photographs about everyday life were included in Weekly Illustrated, Lilliput and Picture Post during the thirties and forties, when other publications focussed on celebrities, politicians and royalty.
For a time, Picture Post with Kurt Hutton and Felix Man as its leading photographers could do no wrong, but Stefan Lorant had not taken into account the impact of the impending war on his German refugee staff. In advance of the invasion of Poland, there was a fear that Britain would do a deal with Hitler and this would involve ‘insurgents’ such as Lorant and Hutton being sent back to Germany to certain death. Although this never came to pass, some emigrated to America, including Stefan Lorant who sailed for New York on board the Brittanic in July 1940, after having his freedom in Britain severely restricted.
Between September 1939 and April 1940, panic set in amongst some of the refugee photographers who were opposed to Hitler or had been forced to flee Germany due to their race, religion or political beliefs. A suspicion of all things German took hold of the public and, under special measures, ‘enemy aliens’ were interned. Amongst these were Kurt Hutton and Felix Man, whose cameras were confiscated when they were sent to the Isle of Man in 1939. It robbed Picture Post of its most experienced photographers. After it lost its editor and when all of its refugee photographers and journalists were interned, the magazine was down to only five members of staff.
Kurt Hutton remained in custody on the Isle of Man until 1941. His absence, along with the absence of the other leading lights in photojournalism at the time, offered a golden opportunity for new British photographers such as Bert Hardy, who stepped up to fill the gap, becoming the new lead photographer for Picture Post. Yet, even while interned on the Isle of Man, Kurt managed to get his hands on a camera and photographed holidaymakers there. He possessed an energy that was not be easily suppressed and, on his release in late 1941, he made his way back to London to start again.
The strength of Kurt’s work is immediately apparent when examining his archive. The wild abandon seen in one of his most well-known photographs of young women on a rollercoaster in 1938, as well as the risqué nature of the shot, typifies the unforced nature of his work. Unlike Bill Brandt, Kurt was drawn to employing what were known at the time as ‘miniature’ cameras – those using the relatively new 35mm format such as the Leica III. These were highly portable, versatile cameras and allowed for contact prints, which assisted editorial decisions. However, the cameras were mocked by ‘serious’ photographers who thought they were no better than toys, although the quality of Hutton’s work, and that of others who adopted the Leica, proves them wrong.
Kurt’s photography is not ‘street photography’ like that of Wolf Suschitzky or Henri Cartier-Bresson, yet neither is it in the poetic style of Bill Brandt and it is unlikely that Kurt considered his photographs to be Art. As social documentary, his work is a powerful record of everyday life during a period of profound social disruption. His photographs were produced in the knowledge that they would be coupled with text, but their quality was such they required no further explanation.
Kurt Hutton retired to Aldeburgh and produced a final photo series on Benjamin Britten who became a friend. It is a revealing series into the private life of this composer and a fitting finale to an extraordinary career of a pioneering photographer who is now mostly forgotten.
‘A large family’ London, 1945
Street artist David Burton working in Swiss Cottage, February 1945
Commissionaire talking to his dachshund in Piccadilly, 1938
Roasted chestnut seller in Piccadilly Circus, 1938
Young women on a rollercoaster, Southend Fair, 1938
Unemployed man with dog from The Wigan of George Orwell, 1939
Life in a back alley, from The Wigan of George Orwell, 1939
Father with children, from The Wigan of George Orwell, 1939
Holidaymakers relaxing on a bench in Douglas, Isle of Man, 1939
Winston Churchill, 1939
Ingrid Bergman and Alfred Hitchcock, 1948
Entrance to Old Buildings and Old Square, leading into Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 1951
Brokers at the London Stock Exchange in Throgmorton Street, November 1951
Benjamin Britten in his studio at The Red House, Aldeburgh 1958
Audience at a Britten performance, Aldeburgh Festival 1949
Picture Post photographers Kurt Hutton (left) and Bert Hardy in 1950
Photographs copyright © Estate of Kurt Hutton
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Edith Tudor-Hart, Photographer
Petherick’s London Characters
These London Characters were drawn by Horace William Petherick, a painter and illustrator who once contributed pictures regularly to the Illustrated London News. He also collaborated on some children’s books with Laura Valentine, who wrote under the pseudonym Aunt Louisa, and the prints you see here are the product of such a collaboration.
When I first came across these pictures in the collection at the Bishopsgate Institute, they caught my eye at once with the veracity of their observation. I am fascinated by all the prints that were made through the ages of the street people of London, and I have seen so many now that I have learnt to recognise when these images become generic. Yet, although in form and composition, H.W.Petherick’s London Characters draw upon the traditional visual style of the Cries of London, there is clear evidence of observation from life in his vibrant designs.
The subtleties of posture and demeanour in each trade, and the fluent quality of vigorous movement, are true to those of working people. He captures the stance that reveals the relationship of each individual to the world, whether haughty like the Beadle, weary like the Dustman, playful like the Acrobat, deferential like the Cabman or resigned like the old wounded soldier working as a Commissionaire. In these images, they declare themselves as who they are, both the products and the exemplifiers of their occupations.
It was the Lamplighter that first drew my attention, gazing with such concentrated poise up to the light, which is cleverly placed outside the frame of the composition – indicated only by the cast of its glow. In the foggy street, the Lamplighter pauses for the briefest moment for the flame to catch, while a carriage rolls away to vanish into the mist. An instant later, he will move on to the next lamp, but the fleeting moment is caught. All these Characters are preoccupied with their business – walking with intent, pouring milk steadily, carrying a loaf carefully, cutting meat with practised skill, scrutinising an address on an envelope, pasting up a poster just so, or concentrating to keep three balls up in the air at once.
They inhabit a recognisable city and they take ownership of the streets by their presence – they are London Characters.
The Butcher Boy
The Milkman
The Baker
The Cat’s-Meat Man
The Waterman
The Street Boy
The Dustman
The Chimney Sweeper
The Cabman
The Orange Girl
The Turncock
The Navvy
The Lamplighter
The Telegraph Boy
The Beadle
The Muffin Man
The Basket Woman
The Postman
The Fireman
The Railway Porter
The Policeman
The Newspaper Boy
The Bill Sticker
The Costermonger
The Organ Grinder
The Commissionaire
The Acrobat
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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William Nicholson’s London Types
Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana of 1817
Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Churches
St George’s, Bloomsbury 1716 – 1731
In 1711, Nicholas Hawksmoor was fifty years old and, although he had already worked with Christopher Wren on St Paul’s Cathedral and for John Vanbrugh on Castle Howard, the buildings that were to make his name as an architect in London were yet to come. In that year, an Act of Parliament created the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches to serve the growing population on the fringes of the growing city. Only twelve of these churches were ever built, but Nicholas Hawksmoor designed six of them and – miraculously – they have all survived, displaying his unique architectural talent to subsequent generations and permitting his reputation to rise as time has passed.
Living in the parish of Christ Church and within easy reach of the other five Hawksmoor churches, I realised that sooner or later I should make a pilgrimage to visit them all. And so, taking advantage of some fleeting spells of sunlight and clear skies in recent days, I set out to the west, the south and to the east from Spitalfields to photograph these curious edifices.
In 1710, the roof of the ancient church of St Alfege in Greenwich collapsed and the parishioners petitioned the Commission to rebuild it and Hawksmoor took this on as the first of his London churches. Exceeding any repair, he remodelled the building entirely, although his design was “improved” and the pilasters added to the exterior by fellow architect Thomas Archer, compromising the clean geometric lines that characterise Hawksmoor’s other churches. His vision was further undermined when the Commission refused to fund replacing the medieval tower with an octagonal lantern as he wished, so he retained the motif, employing it at St George-in-the-East a few years later. Latterly, the tower of St Alfege was refaced and reworked by Hawksmoor’s collaborator John James in 1730. Yet in spite of the different hands at work, the structure presents a satisfyingly harmonious continuity of design today, even if the signature of Hawksmoor is less visible than in his other churches.
Before Hawksmoor’s involvement with St Alfege was complete in 1716, he had already begun designs for St George-in-the-East, St Anne’s Limehouse and Christ Church Spitalfields. In each case, he was constructing new churches without any limitation of pre-existing structures or the meddling hands of other architects. These three churches share many characteristics, of arched doorways counterpointed by arched and circular windows, and towers that ascend telescopically, in graduated steps, resolving into a spire at Christ Church, a lantern at St George-in-the-East and a square tower at St Anne’s. This is an energetic forceful mode of architecture, expressed in bold geometric shapes that could easily become overbearing if the different elements of the design were not balanced within the structure, but the success of these churches is that they are always proportionate to themselves. While the outcome of Hawksmoor’s architecture is that they are awe-inspiring buildings to approach, cutting anyone down to size, conversely they grant an increased sense of power to those stepping from the door. These are churches designed to make you feel small when you go in and big when you come out.
In 1716, Hawksmoor began work on what were to be the last two of his solo designs for churches, St Mary Woolnoth and St George’s, Bloomsbury. Moving beyond the vocabulary of his three East End churches, he took both of these designs in equally ambitious but entirely different and original directions. St Mary Woolnoth in the City of London was constructed upon a restricted site and is the smallest of Hawksmoor’s churches, yet the limitation of space resulted in an intense sombre design, as if the energy of his larger buildings were compressed and it is a dynamic structure held in tense equilibrium, like a coiled spring or a bellows camera held shut.
St George’s Bloomsbury was the last of Hawksmoor’s churches and his most eccentric, completed in 1731 when he was seventy as the culmination of twenty extraordinarily creative years. Working again upon a constricted site, he contrived a building with a portico based upon the Temple of Bacchus in Baalbek and a stepped tower based upon the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus which he adorned with a statue of George I upon the top, flanked by the lion and unicorn to celebrate the recent defeat of the Jacobites. Undertaken with such confidence and panache, Hawksmoor’s design is almost convincing and the enclosed location spares exposure, permitting the viewer to see only ever a portion of the building from any of the available angles.
The brooding presence of Hawksmoor’s churches has inspired all manner of mythologies woven around the man and his edifices. Yet the true paradox of Hawksmoor’s work stems from the fact that while he worked in the Classical style, he could never afford the opportunity to undertake the Grand Tour and see the works of the Renaissance masters and ruins of antiquity for himself. Thus, he fashioned his own English interpretation which was an expression of a Gothic imagination working in the language of Classical architecture. It is this curious disconnection that makes his architecture so fascinating and gives it such power. Nicholas Hawksmoor was incapable of the cool emotional restraint implicit in Classicism, he imbued it with a ferocity that was the quintessence of English Baroque.
St Alfege, Greenwich 1712-16
St Mary Woolnoth, Bank 1716-24
St George-in-the-East, Wapping 1714-1729
St Anne’s, Limehouse 1714-1730
Christ Church, Spitalfields 1714-1729
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Singles Night At Novelty Automation
Comic genius and Professor Branestawm de nos jours, Tim Hunkin has patented a punch card match-making system and is launching it next Friday 24th November with a SINGLES NIGHT from 6-9pm at Novelty Automation, his satirical amusement arcade in Holborn. This is your chance to be among the first to try the punch card system for yourself. Whether you are seeking romance or just happy to make new acquaintances, it promises to be a lot of fun.
Tim Hunkin makes a few last minute adjustments to his Instant Eclipse machine
Tim Hunkin’s multiple choice match-making cards
Drawings copyright © Tim Hunkin
NOVELTY AUTOMATION, 1a Princeton St, Holborn, WC1R 4AX
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The Gentle Author’s Wapping Pub Crawl
Four-hundred-year-old stone floor at The Prospect of Whitby
Tempted by the irresistible promise of the riverside, I set out for Wapping to visit those pubs which remain in these formerly notorious streets once riddled with ale houses. Yet although there are pitifully few left these days, I discovered each one has a different and intriguing story to tell.
Town of Ramsgate, 288 Wapping High St. The first alehouse was built on this site in 1460, known as The Hostel and then as The Red Cow from 1533. The pub changed its name again, to the Town of Ramsgate, in 1766 to attract trade from Kentish fishermen who unloaded their catch at Wapping Old Stairs adjoining. Judge Jeffreys was arrested here in disguise, attempting to follow the flight of James II abroad in 1688, as William III’s troops approached London.
The Turk’s Head, 1 Green Bank. Originally in Wapping High St from 1839, rebuilt on this site in 1927 and closed in the seventies, it is now a community cafe.
Captain Kidd, 108 Wapping High St. Established in 1991 in a former warehouse and named after legendary pirate, Wiiliam Kidd, hanged nearby at Execution Dock Stairs in 1701.
Turner’s Old Star, 14 Watts St. In the eighteen-thirties, Joseph Mallord William Turner set up his mistress Sophia Booth in two cottages on this site, one of which she ran as an alehouse named The Old Star. In 1987, the current establishment was renamed Turner’s Old Star in honour of the connection with the great painter. Notoriously secretive about his lovelife, Turner adopted Sophia’s surname to conceal their life together here, acquiring the nickname ‘Puggy Booth’ on account of his portly physique and height of just five feet.
The Old Rose, 128 The Highway. 1839-2007
The last pub standing on the Ratcliffe Highway
The Three Suns, 61 Garnet St. 1851 – 1986
The Prospect of Whitby, 56 Wapping Wall. Founded 1520, and formerly known as The Pelican and The Devil’s Tavern.
What does a cat have to do to get a drink around here?
Sir Hugh Willoughby sailed from The Prospect of Whitby in 1533 upon his ill-fated attempt to discover the North-East Passage to China.
The Grapes, 76 Narrow St. Founded in 1583, the current building was constructed in 1720 – it is claimed Charles Dickens danced upon the counter here as a child.
You may like to read about my other pub crawls
The Gentle Author’s Next Pub Crawl
The Gentle Author’s Spitalfields Pub Crawl
Syd Shelton’s East Enders
Brick Lane 1978
Photographer Syd Shelton‘s enduring fascination with the East End was sparked by a childhood visit from Yorkshire with an uncle and aunt more than fifty years ago. “My cousin was was working in a mission somewhere off Bethnal Green Rd,” Syd recalled, “It was a scary part of London then and I remember my uncle looked out of the window every few minutes to check the wheels were still on his car!”
“The day I left college in 1968, I came down to London and I have worked here ever since, photographing continuously in Hackney and Tower Hamlets,” Syd admitted to me.
In the seventies, Syd became one of the founders of Rock Against Racism, using music as a force for social cohesion, and his photographs of this era include many affectionate images of racial harmony alongside a record of the culture of racism . “It was an exciting time when, after the death of Altab Ali, the Asian community stood up to be counted and the people of the East End became militant against the National Front,” he explained, “In 1981, I got a studio in the Kingsland Rd and I only gave it up recently because the rents became too expensive.”
Syd’s portraits of East Enders span four decades yet he did not set out consciously to document social change. “I never started this as a project, it’s only when I looked back that I realised I had taken swathes of pictures of people in the East End,” he explained, “So now I come back and spend a day on the streets each week to continue.”
“I say I am not a documentary photographer, because I like to talk to people before I take my picture to see what I can coax out of them,” he qualified,“Taking photos is what makes my heart beat.”
Bethnal Green 1980
Linda, Kingsland Rd 1981
Bethnal Green 1980
Bagger, Cambridge Heath Rd 1979
Columbia Rd 1978
Jubilee St, 1979
Petticoat Lane 1981
Brick Lane 1978
Aldgate East 1979
Brick Lane 1980
Hoxton 1979
Tower Hamlets 1981
Brick Lane 1976
Jubilee St 1977
Brick Lane 1978
School Cleaners’ Strike 1978
Petticoat Lane 1978
David Widgery, Limehouse 1981
Sisters, Bow 1984
Sisters, Tower Hamlets 1988
Bow Scrapyard 1984
Ridley Rd Market 1992
Ridley Rd Market 1992
Ridley Rd Market 1995
Whitechapel 2013
Shadwell 2013
Brick Lane 2013
Dalston Lane 2013
Bethnal Green 2013
Photographs copyright © Syd Shelton
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Count Ralph Smorczewski In The East End
Treves House, Whitechapel
I doubt if passers-by give a second thought to Treves House or its neighbour Lister House as they hurry up and down Vallance Rd between Whitechapel and Bethnal Green. Yet these two understated modernist buildings with clean lines and elegant proportions – one a long terrace and the other a tall block – were designed in 1956 by the architect Count Ralph Smorczewski, a man whose astonishing story connects to the very essence of the history of Whitechapel.
Currently, these buildings face an uncertain future. In recent years, the council has failed to maintain them properly, encouraged decay and neglect. Now tenants and leaseholders, including long-term resident ninety-three year old Sophie Spielman, fear they will be evicted and their homes demolished. But perhaps these structures might be better appreciated if the architect’s history and motives were more widely known?
Ralph Smorczewski (1925-2009) grew up on his family’s estates in Tarnogóra and Stryjów, in the province of Lublin, Poland. Under the Nazi occupation, transports of Jewish people arriving from Germany and Austria began in 1942. In the summer, Ralph’s father realised they were dying of starvation and applied to the Nazis for the maximum number of farm workers, as a means to feed and keep alive as many Jews as possible. Yet in the autumn, they were rounded up and packed into trains, bound for the death camps.
Ralph was just seventeen years old when this happened. It was a formative experience that informed his actions for the rest of his life. At eighteen years of age, he contacted the Polish Resistance and was sworn into their ranks. As the Red Army invaded, he and his family moved to Warsaw. When the Red Army arrived in August 1944, Ralph fought heroically with the Resistance in the Warsaw Uprising and worked as a surgeon’s assistant in a military hospital, before being arrested and interrogated by the SS. Despite torture and confinement, he gave no information and even convinced them he was Hungarian, leading to his eventual release.
Fleeing Warsaw, Ralph rejoined the Resistance in the forests near Czestochowa and was appointed second-in-command of a troup. They killed a group of Nazi soldiers who had perpetrated some of the worst atrocities of the Warsaw Uprising, before taking part in a four-day battle against SS near the village of Krzepin.
In 1945, Ralph and his family obtained passes taking them by train to Vienna where they joined a refugee convoy fleeing west. When they reached Italy, Ralph joined the Polish II Corps, part of the Eighth Army. Posted to the 7th Horse Artillery Regiment, he graduated from the Officers’ School in June 1946 and, that autumn, arrived in England with the Corps, possessing little more than his uniform.
Ralph graduated from the Architectural Assocation in 1951 at twenty-six years old and worked at Stillman & Eastwick Field, one of the most notable practices contributing to idealistic post-war reconstruction of schools, hospitals and public housing.
Among the first buildings Ralph designed for Stillman & Eastwick Field were Treves House and Lister House in Whitechapel. This project served as the natural outcome of his experiences in the war. Certainly, it was no accident that he undertook this assignment to provide better homes for Jewish people. One such was Nathan Spielman, who was moved from a slum dwelling in Anthony St to Treves House in 1958, before marrying Sophie in 1962. Thus it is that the story of Sophie, the last of the original Jewish residents, connects to that of Ralph who designed the buildings, and both stories co-exist as part of the story of Whitechapel itself.
Yet Treves House and Lister House do more than reflect an historical moment. In the generosity of their accommodation, they embody the humane values that led to their creation. Rather than face demolition, these buildings deserve to be cherished because we need them to remind us of their origin and serve as an inspiration for generations to come.
Lister House, Whitechapel
Residents of Treves & Lister House: (From left to right) Tasahood Choudury, Ashraf Choudury, Hasan Zaman (behind), Muhammad Noor, Usama Noor, Nabiha Haque, Sophie Spielman, Mr Kamal, Ziaul Syed, Ayman Syed (in front), Syed Hass (behind), Muhammad Khan, Mahrisa Khan (in front), Syed Ali, Ayaan Ali, Satyendra Roy, Elif Ozturk, Ismigul Osturk, Mjibur Rahman & Khayrun Begum (in front).
Count Ralph Smorczewski, Architect of Treves House & Lister House
Photograph of residents © Sarah Ainslie
