Photographic Exhibition

The RWA is pleased to announce a new exhibition showing in the Cube gallery at the Academy in Queen’s Road, Bristol 7th September – 13th November (closed 18th-22nd September). Entry is free; open between 10.00am to 5pm. There will be an exhibition tour for the public at 2pm on 28th September.

38,000 photographs, 18 cameras, 4 decades, 2 counties, 1 freelance

By 1966 Reece Winstone FRPS had taken 38,000 photographs across ‘Beautiful Britain’ as a freelance photographer, of which some 7,000 were of Bristol and Somerset. In this exhibition and accompanying catalogue his son John has selected 150 photographs of Vanishing Lives in the two counties, in town and country. Since the period 1930 to the mid-1960s life has changed immeasurably, for almost all, culturally and in expectations. It is this shift that these photographs illustrate; even the practice of photography has not been left untouched. As contributor Ian Sumner says – ‘He became a consummate freelance photographer ...his way of working has all but disappeared today ...nobody will ever work like Reece again.’

Reece first showed his 2,000-strong collection of Old Bristol photographs at the Royal West of England Academy in 1959, filling two main galleries. It was a revelation; for the first time Bristolians saw their city before the span of personal memories. They saw what had come before and what had been lost. Reece’s As It Was books gave birth to a new genre of published photography, adopted across the world. The Reece Winstone Archive is delighted to be showing Reece’s earlier, freelance oeuvre at the Royal West of England Academy again. We hope the exhibition will also travel to Somerset.

‘A remarkable selection from a remarkable Archive covering three decades or so of crucial change’ - Dr. Robert Dunning, contributor to the catalogue.