The weekly photographic press has long played a significant role in highlighting the work of image creators of all kinds.
The Amateur Photographer (1884) and Photographic News (1858) joined forces in 1908 under the editorship of F.J. Mortimer.
Mortimer, a celebrated Pictorialist photographer and member of the Linked Ring, continued the papers’ tradition of a ‘Weekly Competition,’ awarding prizes to successful entrants.
Another regular feature was ‘Workers We May Hear About’ in which the paper devoted both column inches and high-quality reproductions to a nominated photographer.
In the 1911 series, number ‘XXXIII’ was 23 year-old Frances Pitt (pictured below) from Oldbury, near Bridgnorth in Shropshire.
To illustrate the point, a down-page halftone photograph titled Cock-A-Doodle-Do was credited to ‘Miss Frances Pitt’ and captioned ‘Awarded a Prize in the Weekly Competition.’
Over the page, readers were treated to a higher-quality reproduction of Fox-Cubs, a photograph that Frances had exhibited the previous month at the 1911 Royal Photographic Society Exhibition in London.
The image was deemed to be of such quality that it was chosen to feature alongside 30 others out of more than 1200 entries in the RPS exhibition catalogue.
In Frances Pitt’s case, ‘Workers We May Hear About’ turned out to be something of an understatement as we will discover in next week’s Pressphotoman blogpost.
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