The genre of seaside photography has a long history in Britain dating back to Victorian times.
Armed with a camera, its practitioners operated on promenades and piers, snapping holidaymakers and trippers as they enjoyed a seaside stroll.
Customers were then issued with a card inviting them to call later at a booth to collect their set of prints.
Our family’s collection of photographs contains several examples of the genre snapped at various holiday resorts in the first half of the 20th century.
For photographers with access to a seaside location, the commercial opportunities were significant.
In the summer of 1882, A. D. (Alexander Denholm) Lewis opened his Photo Atelier in the coastal resort of Tynemouth.
Born in Scotland, he had operated as a photographer running the North of England Photo Institute at various addresses in nearby Newcastle on Tyne for around 20 years.
A new railway station had just opened in Tynemouth bringing day trippers from across the region as well as families wanting to enjoy the delights of the new craze for seaside holidays.
A.D. Lewis’ newspaper adverts drew particular attention to what he called his Chaste New Tynemouth Promenade Carte describing it as a “great favourite.”
The Shields Daily News (19th June 1882). From British Newspaper Archive.
The claim that it had “been adopted by all the principal Photographers of the South, the Continent and America” may seem exaggerated.
However, an example that recently joined the Pressphotoman collection suggests that Mr. Lewis saw himself as an inventor and even an innovator.
Measuring 12.5 cms x 6.5cms, the Tynemouth Promenade Carte is longer than a standard carte.
Rather than photographing clients as they strolled in the open air, ‘A.D.L’ appears to have used a studio at 56 Front Street which was only a stone’s throw from Tynemouth sea front.
This enabled him to offer customers a more formal setting for their portrait and eliminated many of the technical challenges that faced outdoor photographers.
Though seaside photographers were still operating well into the second half of the 20th century, Mr. Lewis’ like many of his competitors appears to have suffered a downturn in his fortunes.
Aged 67, the 1901 Census records that he was a ‘retired photographer’ and was an ‘inmate’ of the Union Workhouse in Westgate Road, Newcastle.
Auty & Ruddock was a partnership between two of North East England’s finest late-Victorian photographers.
Matthew Auty (1850-1895) was a tobacconist, who turned his hobby into an award-winning photography business specialising in landscapes.
Richard Emerson Ruddock (1863-1931) featured in my recent Pressphotoman series on portrait photographers, who trained with royal warrant holders W. & D. Downey.
Auty & Ruddock’s partnership using premises at 20 Front Street, Tynemouth, a short train journey from Newcastle-on-Tyne, was short-lived.
It lasted from the late-1880s to March 1892 when the dissolution of their partnership was announced in the regional press.
Six months later, Ruddock set up his own portrait studio in Newcastle, leaving Auty to run the Tynemouth business as a solo enterprise.
In recent months, I’ve been on the look-out for photographic products bearing ‘Auty & Ruddock’ branding such as cabinet cards and cartes-de-visite.
With a large dose of serendipity, a beautifully embossed book of postcard-sized photographs, printed in Germany and titled ‘Tynemouth’ appeared on a well-known auction site.
The reference to ‘A. & R. have the largest and best lighted Studio in the north on the ground floor’ promoted its facilities for portraiture in which Mr. Ruddock specialised.
However, the ‘Tynemouth’ book of ‘views’ points to it being the work of his partner, Mr. Auty.
His landscape photography had attracted ‘prize medals’ at competitions across the UK and in Europe.
As a pocket-sized book that folds up neatly, its design is particularly effective in displaying the ‘views’ as a sequence or tour.
The featured ‘Tynemouth’ locations are ones that remain popular today and would be familiar to anyone visiting on a day-trip or staying in the area on holiday.
It begins with ‘Long Sands,’ a majestic sweep of beach overlooked (from left to right) by the Tynemouth Aquarium and Winter Garden (1878), Beaconsfield House (1882) and the Grade 1 listed St. George’s Church (1884).
The curved pier complete with a lighthouse at its tip was regularly damaged by storms during the 1890s and was later replaced by a straightened version, which survives today.
‘Tynemouth From The Pier,’ complete with the remains of an older land-based lighthouse (right of frame), offers the reverse perspective.
The tour continues northwards via ‘Table Rocks’ to ‘Whitley Sands,’ better known today as Whitley Bay, where the tourist invasion of the 20th century was still in its infancy.
Other ‘views’ in the photobook feature South Shields Pier, South Shields Sands and Marsden Rock.
Looking at this book of ‘views, the significance of the Auty & Ruddock partnership is how both photographers were later well-placed to exploit what followed: the golden age of postcards.
Though Matthew Auty died in 1895, the firm that bore his name continued to operate well into the 20th century.
Its ‘Auty series’ of postcards could be posted to family and friends with a ‘wish you were here’ message on the reverse.
Ruddock Ltd of Newcastle on Tyne transitioned from portraiture and, by 1904, it claimed to be the largest postcard publisher in the North of England.
As their ‘Tynemouth’ collaboration illustrates, the legacy of both Matthew Auty and Richard E. Ruddock is celebrated in the high-quality photographic products they left behind.
Pressphotoman 
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