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Project Space Leeds: Photographic memories
An exhibition offering a snapshot of Yorkshire's war years is unveiled next week – and the organisers want the people of Leeds to help complete the picture.
Arts editor Rod McPhee found out more...
As well as being one of three curators of Project Space Leeds – a giant contemporary arts showcase on the banks of the River Aire – Diane Howse is an artist in her own right.
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And in that capacity she has spent weeks viewing frames from the Yorkshire Film Archive in a bid to offer a special retrospective of the county from 1939 to 1945.
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The result is a new exhibition which goes on display at PSL next week,
I Can Still See You, Image and Memory: Life at Home in World War II.
Howse embarked on the historical epic after being approached by the Yorkshire Film Archive. She was given an open brief to celebrate this crucial period of history through using their celluloid archives.
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And despite having an array of potential starting points it was ultimately the everyday experiences of domestic life which most captured her imagination.
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"A lot of the footage I came across showed ordinary people trying to continue living ordinary existences," said Howse. "And every now and again little signs that we were at war would creep in, but they would seem quite normal.
"So, for example, there's the images of the little girls in their lovely flowery dresses with gas masks on which was something many people at this time would have had to have had some experience of.
"They seem to capture this notion of trying to carry on regardless, even though battles were going on just across the English Channel."
There are some wonderful images to be savoured ranging from street parties through to the spectacle of a German bomber being wheeled through ordinary suburban streets.
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But the exhibition also aims not to hide but to highlight many of the imperfections of the archives.
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Howse looked at small gauge films frame by frame on editing equipment and discovered any number of nuances, such as where the original filmmakers 'spliced' between different frames (the means of editing by cutting out sections of film and rejoining the remaining parts).
Some images had also degraded or faded over time while others, curiously, remain as vibrant as the day they were captured on film.
All of these elements will be laid bare as several frames from footage are made static on prints which were laboriously collated after Howse spent day after day going through the back catalogue of the YFA, based in York.
In doing so she had many of her preconceptions changed by what she found.
She said: "I think the biggest surprise was just how much footage there was taken by people on home recording equipment, you just wouldn't imagine there was that much equipment around then.
"But, even though it's not like today when people have image recording technology on their mobile phones, there must have been a remarkable amount of it around, even if comparatively few families had access to it.
"The other amazing thing was the fact that so much of it was in colour because we associate periods, even from really quite recent history, with black and white and here it all was in vivid shades which had actually been preserved remarkably well on the whole.
"And, remember, these were just home movies – a total contrast to what we imagine to be the main way of viewing images from that era which was either through something like Pathe news or professional films."
Some of the best of the footage she found is reproduced on a series of around 18 giant prints which will form half the exhibition at PSL. Most of the other half will be a series of projections.
But a substantial area of the gallery will also be dedicated to a special room where members of the public can donate items which offer some kind of window into the world on wartime Leeds and Yorkshire.
"We basically want to borrow anything that tells some kind of story," said Howse. "That may be a photo, an object, a document, an ornament, anything they may have saved from the time – and of course, that may include movie footage too.
"We want anything which will connect with the past in a way you can see and touch so it's very real, something that's going to really complement the archive material.
"And I think that's one of the things which makes this such a special project because it is a very interesting mix of imagery and reality, of old and new and archive material in a very contemporary setting."
The exhibition opens to the public on March 17 and the curators at PSL hope people will start donating before the launch and continue to build up a wartime collection throughout the run. To donate anything get in touch with the gallery directly.
* Until June 12, Project Space Leeds, 2 Riverside Way, Whitehall Road, Leeds, free entry, open Wednesday to Saturday noon to 5pm, Tel: 07930 236383. www.projectspaceleeds.org.uk info@projectspaceleeds.org.uk
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