Back in the day
ONE OF the most popular recurring themes on AP covers of the mid 1930s was hand colouring, usually with aunder discussion is the philosophical question ‘Why do we take photographs?' It was posed to a group of pictorialists by the evocatively named Major PC Bull, who sounds like the kind of man who says ‘poppycock' a lot. He explained that photography is ‘merely a way of keeping ourselves out of mischief in our spare time'. Furthermore, the correspondent reported, ‘Major Bull's answer to his own question is that he takes photographs because he jolly well wants to.' (He didn't actually say ‘jolly well' but you can hear it in the tone). Photographs are not art, he insists. ‘We have no business to make them unlike photographs, and if we do feel a little thrill of pleasure when someone says of our work, “There, now, who would think it was a photograph” we must know that is of the devil.' It was not recorded whether anyone in the room was brave enough to disagree with him.
