BRYAN GILBERT LRPS (Published Sep 1999)
"At this stage there will be no visible image." This short sentence in a hobbies magazine was the trigger that set Bryan on the road to photography. He had been shown by a friend a little while earlier how to make contact prints using POP (for those too young to remember these letters stand for Printing Out Paper, a material for making prints that created a visible image during exposure and then only required fixing). He was 10 years old and was now attempting to make a contact print from a negative using silver chloride paper expecting the image to appear during exposure and after several sheets had been used, without any resulting image, he gave up the task. He then read the sentence above, experimented, and was successful.
Some time later when in hospital he was given a huge pile of wartime "Amateur Photographer" magazines to read. They included many interesting articles and also composition critiques by a person with the pen-name "Ricardo", a name that many of the older generation of photographers will remember. He became and to a large extent still is a self-educated photographer. Whilst he could see the merit of photography as an art form, he was more interested in using photography for its usefulness. Whereupon he started to photograph his fellow patients and found a ready market for those pictures to their parents!
During his employment with a well-known engineering company he used his camera to record the various stages of construction work. His manager saw the images and used them as a basis for briefing a local industrial photographer to repeat the same views with large format apparatus. The photographer was John Boulton an owner of a Bristol touring car who had every type of new camera gear that was available, from 10" x 8" to 35 mm, this was at the time when such equipment was in very short supply and could only be obtained on licence. He asked Bryan's manager if he could assist him in his work for the company which was agreed. It was a great experience to use wonderful camera equipment that he had only seen illustrated in catalogues. The images produced by the 10" x 8" camera in particular were of breathtaking quality. During the course of this same employment he was able to see at work that doyen of industrial photography, Walter Nurnberg, who carried out photography for the company on behalf of an advertising agency.
14 years passed by before he was introduced to the club scene. He became a member of the Pavilion Photo Group in Thornaby. The group had been set up by the local authority's arts and recreation department. When there arose the requirement to photograph the many and varied activities that the department was responsible for, the Photo Group was asked whether it was prepared to do it; only two members were interested. There was a snag however, more than 100 mounted pictures were required for display within six weeks some of them to be 6 x 4 in size - that measurement was in feet not inches! It was a challenge for Bryan and his colleague and every spare minute was spent on the project which was completed on time. Bryan accepted the duties of secretary and chairman of the group for a small number of years. Some time later the Pavilion Photo Group encountered a change in policy from the centre management so the members left, joined the Kader Youth and Community Centre and became the Kader Photo Group. During that incarnation it became also a member of the NCPF. In 1995 most of the membership felt that it was time for change so it combined with the majority of the members of Teesside Photographic Society to form the Gallery Photo Group.
The Pavilion Photo Group was a member of the North Yorkshire and South Durham Photographic Association (NYSDPA). This body had been set up in 1951 to cater for the interests of clubs in the area, because at that time, many of the NCPF's judges and lecturers were based in the Tyne /Wear area and found travel to the south of the Federation difficult. The NYSDPA produced its own list of judges and lecturers, it held competitions, exhibitions, seminars and ran a school for judges many of whom later joined the Federation circuit. Bryan was always interested in keeping up to date with the latest techniques and when Cibachrome was first marketed in the early 1970s he was making prints using the various processing methods available. One of the methods involved the spraying of chemicals from aerosol cans directly onto the print surface, the results were not that spectacular but considering that the chemicals issued forth at a low temperature it is a wonder that any image was obtained. Because of his interest in using Cibachrome material he was asked by a local photographic store and Ilford to give a public demonstration. Well over 100 people attended the talk where he had asked each club attending to bring a slide for printing to avoid the doubt that he may have used the Blue Peter method of earlier preparation. It was a challenge, as he was sitting on a platform enclosed by a screen in a room where the audience could read the publicity material, with difficulty, which had been handed out by the Ilford representative whilst he was exposing and processing the prints! He was secretary of the NYSDPA for five years and then he had a spell as Chairman. One of the most far reaching events that was started during his tenure, which thankfully is still going strong, is the one week exhibition held in the main shopping mall in Middlesbrough which is seen by literally thousands of people each year. This is manned by stewards from various member clubs who meet and talk to the public and find it a very rewarding experience. When it was held in the main art gallery it was viewed by around 400 people in a four week period.
Bryan had been using a Leica camera system for some years and when the Leitz organisation set up a training school in its UK headquarters in Luton (these courses had only been previously available in Germany) he attended one of the three-day courses. Such was the enthusiasm generated by the course leader and the attendees that it was felt that it would be ideal to continue the friendships made and thus the Leica Fellowship was born 23 years ago. Bryan became the General Secretary and the biannual weekend Conference Organiser and 10 years later became President. The meetings were well attended by members from all parts of the country and the family spirit was always in evidence and newcomers were made to feel very welcome. He was for several years a visiting speaker at the Leica School in Luton and later in Milton Keynes.
After his involvement with the NYSDPA he was asked to become the Southern Area Representative for the Federation, a post which he held for two years. Following a short break he was invited to fill the vacancy of Federation General Secretary which he vacated upon becoming the Federation's Vice President and eventually President in 1994.
His main photographic subjects are portraits, landscapes and aerial. Although he also carries out some weddings, architectural and industrial work. All these subjects necessitate equipment larger than 35 mm even if it just to obtain the best professional laboratory services. Bryan's interest in portraiture was initiated by viewing the work of another great Teesside professional photographer Bernard Fearnley, FIIP FRPS, who had three sets of fellowship panels accepted by the Royal. He was a most unassuming man and could have earned a great deal of money had he set up shop in a more genteel location than Middlesbrough. During the war he was a sergeant running an army photographic unit and he had as one of his corporals none other than Baron who became the famous royal photographer. Bryan was very pleased that Bernard agreed to show his work at a very well attended event that concluded his period as NYSDPA Chairman.
Bryan has now become involved with digital imaging and to avoid floundering attended a 39 session Adobe Photoshop course designed for the newspaper and magazine industry at a local college. After completion of that course he realised that digital imaging was only one facet of the larger publishing business and consequently embarked on a professional level desk top publishing course using the Quark Xpress, Macromedia Freehand and Adobe Photoshop programs, which he found to be very interesting and extended the uses of photography.
The local digital imaging group which he was asked to set up just over two years ago must be one of the fastest growing bodies in the north-east with members living in places as far apart as Sunderland, Staindrop and Ripon. The people comprising the group are immensely enthusiastic and the learning curve for some of them is steep. A very experienced member summed it up by saying that it is like turning the clock back 50 years to when he first entered the world of photography. Bryan says "I have met and am continuing to meet, some very interesting and helpful people in the world of photography who have made my life all the richer for knowing them".
Pat Porrett LRPS