Richard's Art Noticeboard: Ian Beesley: Life: A Retrospective - Salt's Mill, Saltaire (

Ian Beesley, Babe, one of the last Yorkshire Miners, Clayton West, 2010

This is a wonderful exhibition.

Ian Beesley’s Life at Salt’s Mill, Saltaire, is an absorbing exhibition: moving, joyful and inspiring. Although many of the stories succinctly told through Beesley’s photographs are of sadness and loss, the overwhelming impression is one of humanity, fellow feeling and love: a celebration of the heroism of everyday life.

Beesley, Bradford born, documents the traumatic ending of the industries, and associated culture, that had for so long defined Bradford and much of Yorkshire: principally mining and textiles.

Having recently moved to West Yorkshire, myself, to an area that I know is steeped in mining history, I have been surprised, even shocked, at the degree to which most traces of that heritage have effectively been erased. For me, then, this exhibition was also an education. Here, for example, was ‘Babe’, in 2010, a faceworker at Hayroyds Pit, Clayton West – not 5 miles from where I now live – ‘one of the last coal miners’. Beesley recalls that "He asked me to take a formal portrait with my plate camera after he had finished his shift and was still covered in pit dirt… Babe said, ‘We are the last of the miners and soon we will all be gone, I want my grandkids, their kids and their grandkids to know I was a miner and this is what I looked like.’" (1)

Many of Beesley’s beautiful pictures are further enhanced by elegantly written captions recalling the occasion of the photograph or relaying his subjects’ comments. For example, a miner in Clayton West, mused on how, high above him, people walked around and put kettles on, oblivious to his existence deep below, labouring to provide the means to power those kettles and put on the lights.

Elsewhere, too, Beesley’s pictures are complemented by Ian McMillan’s precise and sensitive poetry. (2)

Ian Beesley, Bob Rowell, foreman at Esholt Sewage Works, 1977

One picture, in particular, perhaps, sums up the emotional pain of this transitional period. Beesley, as a school leaver in 1972, took a job at the Esholt Sewage Works: “I couldn't believe how Dickensian the place was: a council-owned plant that took in waste from the local wool trade and used it to make fertiliser.” Foreman Bob Rowell, “a hard boss… a real character” encouraged Beesley to go to college to study photography; which he did. 18 months later, Beesley heard that the works was to close and that 600 would lose their jobs. Returning to visit, with his camera, he found Bob in a cabin: “I thought he was having a snooze. I stepped through the doorway and took a photo. As he heard the shutter click, he looked up. I could see instantly he had been crying, so I asked what the matter was. 'I just received my redundancy letter,' he said. 'It's the end. If I was a horse, they'd shoot me.' The industry was in decline, but it was still a big blow". (3)

In parallel to his documentation of industry, technologically rooted in the C19, Beesley has also made a series of studies of ‘Victorians’. People born in the Victorian age who lived into the late C20. Their stories, briefly told alongside their portraits are deeply moving; funny, impressive and tragic.

Ian Beesley, Dolly, The Moor Hospital, Lancaster, 1996

Perhaps the most heart wrenching is the portrait of Dolly who Beesley photographed in 1996 a year before she died. Then in her late 80s or 90s Dolly had been incarcerated in the Moor, a psychiatric hospital, when she was 15 or 16 for having an illegitimate child: she remained there until her death.

Ian Beesley, Hilda Teale, 91 years old

Other stories tell of extraordinary war-time experiences, or women escaping homelife to experience the relative freedom and independence of work. These are rich biographies told in dignified portraits and a few sentences. One of Beesley’s subjects, Eliza Clarke, 103 years old, told him, he "wasn’t a proper photographer as [he] didn’t have a shop and do weddings “You’re just playing at it” she said.” (4)

Ian Beesley, Eliza Clarke, 103 years old

There is so much to enjoy here: history, humour, poetry and pathos, not to mention wonderful pictures. This is social documentary photography at its finest.