Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper, mounted on card
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/edwin-smith-9824" aria-label="More by Edwin Smith" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Edwin Smith</a>
Two Miners Ashington Colliery
Presented by Dorothy Free 2017
<p><span>Two Miners, Ashington Colliery </span>1936 is a landscape-format black and white portrait photograph of two coal miners sitting side by side; they appear to have just finished work, with their helmets pushed back on the heads. The miner on the left has his lamp hanging from the lapel of his jacket. It is one of a number of works by Smith in Tate’s collection that demonstrate his early interest in portraying either street scenes of London or specific communities such as miners, clowns and fairground entertainers. Later he would move to photographing vernacular architecture as a way of evoking communities within a framing landscape, and examples of this work are also in Tate’s collection (see, for example, <span>Lindfield Old Hall </span>c.1950s [Tate P14880]).</p>
paper print photograph gelatin silver mounted card
Two Miners, Ashington Colliery
support: 253 × 304 mm
image: 253 × 304 mm
Presented by Dorothy Free 2017
<div class="text">
<p>
<i>Two Miners, Ashington Colliery </i>1936 is a landscape-format black and white portrait photograph of two coal miners sitting side by side; they appear to have just finished work, with their helmets pushed back on the heads. The miner on the left has his lamp hanging from the lapel of his jacket. It is one of a number of works by Smith in Tate’s collection that demonstrate his early interest in portraying either street scenes of London or specific communities such as miners, clowns and fairground entertainers. Later he would move to photographing vernacular architecture as a way of evoking communities within a framing landscape, and examples of this work are also in Tate’s collection (see, for example, <i>Lindfield Old Hall </i>c.1950s [Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/smith-lindfield-old-hall-p14880" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P14880</span></a>]).</p>
<p>Trained as an architect, Edwin Smith had always painted (though rarely exhibited in his lifetime) and only took to photography in the early 1930s after he had left the architectural practice of Marshall Sisson and been given a camera by a friend. Even before then he had been struck by reproductions of the work of the French architectural and street photographer Eugène Atget (1857–1927), that had been published in the <i>Architectural Review </i>in 1927 shortly after Atget’s death and which exerted an influence on Smith throughout his life. Between 1935 and 1939 Smith followed Atget’s example, photographing the street scenes and communities of people among the fairgrounds and circuses of London and Surrey, as well as the mining community in Ashington in Northumberland. His photographs of the miners are largely portraits after work and were all taken over a period of two weeks, during which time he had won the men’s confidence. The photographs were made for the conservative MP Sir Arnold Wilson (1884–1940), who had lectured on the poor conditions that the miners worked in. Smith had always asserted the objectivity of the camera eye – in 1936 he described his relationship with the camera as like ‘a divining rod finding its own peculiar water with myself a passive diviner’ (quoted in Cook 1984, p.8). Later, in 1971, he added to this by describing himself as like ‘The man who lives in his eyes continually confronted with scenes and spectacles that compel his attention or admiration and demand an adequate reaction. To pass on without pause is impossible … some real tribute must be paid. Photography, for many of its addicts, is a convenient and simple means of discharging this ever-recurring debt to the visual world.’ (Ibid.) His aim was to create an objective record of what he saw rather than foreground his own photographic skill.</p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Olive Cook, <i>English Cottages and Farmhouses</i>, London 1954.<br/>Olive Cook, <i>Edwin Smith, Photographs 1935–1971</i>, London 1984.</p>
<p>Andrew Wilson<br/>August 2017</p>
</div>

Summary
2018-05-09T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT