Photography has many memorable names associated with its long and celebrated history.
However, an unusual sounding one caught my attention during a recent research project.
A life-long resident of Newcastle upon Tyne, Burdus Redford FRPS (1868-1951) was an insurance company official by day, but an active and respected photographer in his spare time.
During his life, a number of organisations benefitted from Redford’s skill and expertise, both as a practitioner, who preferred to use plates rather than films, and as a lecturer employing lantern slides to illustrate his talks.
These included Tynemouth Photographic Society which he joined in 1904, later becoming its President; the Northern Counties Photographic Federation; and the Photographic Convention of the United Kingdom of which he was also President in the late-1920s.
This latter accolade seems to have coincided with a period when he became even more photographically active, perhaps in retirement.
For example, his membership of the Royal Photographic Society in 1927 was followed soon after by the award of a coveted fellowship (FRPS).
By this point in his life, Redford’s network of contacts was extensive and included John Betjeman (1906-1984), the celebrated architectural writer and later Poet Laureate
At Betjeman’s suggestion, he was invited to contribute photographs to Thomas Sharp’s Northumberland and Durham: A Shell Guide published in 1937.
Alongside ‘Four Bridges’ (above), his view of ‘Newcastle’ taken from a high vantage point overlooking the quayside captures a number of prominent landmarks that are still visible nearly a century later.
The photograph’s quality meant it was still included in a Shell Guide devoted solely to Northumberland published in 1954.
Betjeman was much taken by what he described as Redford’s “really exquisite views”, both rural and industrial.
For Northumberland and Durham: A Shell Guide, Redford also supplied reproductions of woodcuts by the legendary North East wood engraver and author Thomas Bewick (1753-1828).
When Burdus Redford died in 1951, aged 82, an obituary published in the Royal Photographic Society Journal described him as “a craftsman … whose work was extremely delicate and showed the meticulous care which so characterised the man himself.”
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