Robert Blomfield

The Loves and Loneliness and of an Amateur Photographer

The archive of one of Britain’s greatest amateur photographers won’t be forgotten, Peter Dench discovers more.

Robert Blomfield was an amateur photographer. He didn’t earn an income from his photography, use a studio or fulfil a client brief on demand. He didn’t seek fame, rarely showing his photographs outside immediate family and close friends, preferring to simply take them, print them and put them away in a box. Photographs are taken to be seen, increasingly today, when every plate of food and holiday sunset is posted on social media. What was it about the act of taking and printing a photo that was enough? “I was just a private sort of person and I didn’t want to share them. It wasn’t that I didn’t think they were good. I think I knew they were good and a few people who did see them said they were. But I’m just not the sort of person that needs other people to tell me what they think. I just did it for myself.”

Robert Blomfield was a professional photographer. He pored over magazines for tips and guidance, meticulously processed and printed his work and forensically studied the practice of his heroes Robert Doisneau and Henri Cartier-Bresson, even adopting the Frenchman’s tactic of covering the polished parts of his camera with matt-black paint and pieces of tape to be more covert. He was consumed by photography and loved his craft. “I think it’s a form of love. You should love the picture. I really loved taking photographs. I love the photographs. I sort of love the people. If it’s a good photograph, it’s a lovely thing,” he explains in the 2018 documentary, An Unseen Eye, by Stuart Edwards.

 

 

Born in Leeds 1938, Robert spent much of his teens in Sheffield. His father George was a keen amateur photographer and Robert would sometimes help him develop and print the film shot on family excursions in a makeshift darkroom. Aged thirteen, Robert borrowed his father’s Leica II 35mm and began to make his own pictures, for his fifteenth birthday, he received a second-hand Contax. Nikon F single-lens reflex cameras followed in 1960, allowing him to be more precise with focus, aperture and shutter speeds. He invested in an f/3.5 28mm Nikkor lens and later a 105mm and continued to photograph until 1999, when a stroke left him partially paralysed. He now lives at home in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, a compact digital camera always within reach.

Edinburgh

Robert moved to Edinburgh in 1956, aged 18, to study medicine. The following decade, photographing on the streets of ‘Auld Reekie,’ Robert took some of his most startling pictures: passengers wait for a bus in a fog draped street, sunlight invades the windows of a bar. The under-construction Forth Road Bridge emerges from the gloom. Children swing from scaffold. climb fences, sledge, scoot, peer from prams and play in drains. The images are close but unobtrusive, stark but kind, there are echoes of photographers Denis Thorpe, Dorothea Lange and early Don McCullin, who was introduced to Robert and his images by a mutual friend, Don was complimentary.

In 1965, he met his life love, history of art student, Jane, also a keen photographer and the biggest advocate of his photography. After she graduated, Jane moved back to London to continue a post-graduate course at the Courtauld Institute Of Art. In 1967, Robert took up a post at London’s St Stephen’s Hospital. They married and had three sons. With his medical and family commitments, were there periods when he wasn’t inspired, when the urge to to swing his legs out onto the street, leaving loved ones behind, failed him? “I never grew bored of photography. I sometimes took less photos when my studies or work demanded my attention but I was always motivated. I was fascinated by people. I think I thought of cameras as this ingenious, man-made mechanism that enabled me to record what I saw in every day life. I suppose it was that mixture of the technical aspects and the human that attracted me.”

In November 2018, 60 images were displayed at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre. Four months later, over 41,000 people from Scotland, England, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Italy, Finland, Spain, the USA and many places in between, had pushed through the doors to see the show. Around 2000 comments compete for space in the visitors book - outstanding, inspirational, fascinating, magical, excellent, thank you and please produce a book of this collection - are all inked regularly.

Colour Shift

Robert was a naturally shy photographer, he photographed alone, never joined any photographic groups or societies. How did he react to the very public responses to his exhibition? “I find that difficult to answer. I like to think the answer is in the photos themselves. I hope people would find them of interest and maybe even be inspired to go out and take some photos themselves. I do find it interesting to look back at Edinburgh from 60 years ago, the architecture, the lack of cars, the children playing in the streets. It just all seems more innocent.”

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, some great reportage photography was produced by medical staff. Did studying medicine and working as a doctor benefit Roberts’ photography? “I don’t think so, no, although I suppose both require an interest in people. For me photography just requires a greater visual awareness than medicine. If anything, my medical studies interfered with my photography because when I had to study, I wasn’t out taking photos.” Perhaps photographers can make great doctors!?

“I used to be lively but I’m not now. Ever since I had a stroke which paralysed my whole left side, I’ve been struggling to stay alive really. And there’s not really much   of me left…, except for a few jokes,” he says in An Unseen Eye. Jane, who passed away in 2011, tried to organise Robert’s archive but it was a difficult task, many boxes simply labelled, ‘miscellaneous.’ Most of his black and white photographs have yet to be revealed. From a roll of 36 frames, it was rare for more than a dozen to be printed, often only two or three. There’s a stockpile of slide film after he shifted to colour in the 1970s, taking more of an interest in nature, recording things that black and white film couldn’t. There are enough Edinburgh photographs to mount five more exhibitions of the same scale and calibre as the City Art Centre. In January 2020, Robert’s family approached Bluecoat Press. Edinburgh, published November 2020, features over 150 photographs from 1957-1966, many taken when Robert was working as a junior hospital doctor at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. I suspect, there are many more publications to come, after 50 years behind the lens, there is much of Robert Blomfield left.

Having learnt extensively from reading Amateur Photographer magazine, has Robert any tips for aspiring photographers reading it today? “Keep it simple. Don’t worry about expensive cameras or lenses. Just look for interest. There should be something in your shot that captures your interest. The rest follows. Maybe go and see a good art exhibition – that might help!” And conceivably growing a beard? Throughout his life, Robert has exhibited one of fibrous magnificence. As a loner and shy, was the beard along with the camera, something to hide behind? “I’ve never really thought of it like that – maybe it was. Maybe it was a sign of my existential angst. Or maybe it was just because I lost my electric razor on a climbing trip once and was too lazy to replace it or shave the beard off!”

Robert passed away on the 14th December 2020 shortly after he achieved his ambition to publish a book.

A version of this artcile originally appeared in the 21st November 2020 issue of Amateur Photographer magazine.