Can you identify anyone in these old photographs?
The pictures are from a huge archive produced by a Huddersfield photographer which are being studied and digitised in a £10,000 project.
Holmfirth Film Festival has received a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund for Folk Memories, a project which will use the archives of photographer Brian Lawton to celebrate folk music in Holmfirth and Huddersfield from the 1960s to the 1980s.
The former Fartown postman left around 5,000 photos, negatives and slides covering popular music, theatre and television.
The Festival is cataloguing the photographs and asking the public to identifying artists as Mr Lawton, who died in 2005, did not always make a note of names and dates.
It will be putting on exhibitions and talks at next year’s Holmfirth Festival of Folk and the Film Festival highlighting the Folk music collection as part of the HLF ‘Folk Memories: sharing music heritage though word and image’ project.
Project Director Heather Norris Nicolson said: “We want people will come forward with memories of the events, people and places in this wide ranging collection.
“Brian Lawton specialised in taking informal pictures of musicians backstage, on stage and as they met their fans.
“The result is a rich mix of indoor and outdoor scenes that recall how live music was such an important part of people’s lives and leisure time.
Making Brian’s legacy known to a wider public over the coming year will enrich our understanding of the region’s rich and varied musical heritage.”
An interactive website featuring the photographs is planned to be up and running by the end of the year.
Festival Director Stephen Dorril added: “The photographs of Folk artists at the Singing Jenny club at the Builders Exchange (aka Builders’ Club) and at the Holmfirth Folk Festival include many of the people who helped revive the genre in the 60s and 70s, such as Martin Carthy, the Incredible String Band, Pete and Peggy Seeger, Ewan McColl and many others.
“This first stage is part of a much larger project.
“Brian managed to take close up photographs of the leading groups of the day - The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Animals and Dusty Springfield backstage at Huddersfield’s ABC cinema in the early sixties - and well-known film and television stars playing in the local theatres. It is a treasure trove which we plan to make available to the public.”
If you would like to help email h.nicholson@hud.ac.uk or phone 0775 9477757.
