Welcome to The Golden Fleece

This site is a reconstruction of my old site Photography@Weeping Ash. It contains all the material from that site and a lot of new additions as well.

You’ll find information on photographers Edwin Smith, Raymond Moore and Tony Ray-Jones, historical information on Olive Cook (Edwin Smith’s wife), The Cambridge Darkroom and Creative Camera magazine, including the Creative Camera Archive project, plus some of my own photography, a collection of other photographic Ephemera, as well  as a Blog which I add to from time to time with things that interest me. You can search the content here:

Scroll down to read a summary of each section.

Roy Hammans

Photographers

This area of the site provides some information about Edwin Smith, Raymond Moore and Tony Ray-Jones, all now no longer with us but all of considerable importance in the development of photography in the UK.

 

Edwin Smith at The Coach House, Saffron Walden.

Edwin Smith (1912-1971) is a well-established part of British photographic history. In his case, it would be a huge omission not to include information on his wife Olive Cook (1912-2002), a writer and artist. She was a tireless promoter of his work and perhaps his muse to a large extent. A separate area of the site is devoted to her.

Raymond Moore by Peter Marshall, at The Photographers Place, Derbyshire.

I have included Raymond Moore (1920-1987) here because there was no information available about him on the web when I first looked back in 2001. There still isn’t much, so these pages aim to serve as a source of information on this remarkable British photographer.

 

Tony Ray-Jones, by Bill Jay.

Tony Ray-Jones (1941-1972) is well recognised as a leading exponent of ‘social documentary’ photography in Britain during the 1960s and 70s and someone who I have greatly admired since those days. His inclusion was prompted by a fascinating article about one of his photographs that I read in 2004, which is included in this section.

Other references to key players can be found in the ‘‘Ephemera‘ section. Information about some photographers, writers and others who have had an impact on photography or photographic practice. These include Bill Jay, Hugo Van Wadenoyen, Sir George Pollock and Alexey Brodovitch, amongst others.

Olive Cook – a brief biography

Olive Smith (née Cook) was not a photographer; she was
Edwin Smith’s wife and immensely important in his life and work.
Olive Cook by Edwin Smith (1946-47)

It is apt, and perhaps inevitable, that Olive Cook’s first book was Cambridgeshire: Aspects of a County, for she was born, brought up and educated in Cambridge.  In Cambridgeshire she wrote, ‘It is not easy to give an impression of a place to which one has never been a stranger’; and ‘Every native of the town and all the men and women who have spent three years of their lives among those images of splendour and repose must forever cherish memories of Cambridge.‘  Olive’s parents and grandparents were Cambridge people too.=

Continue reading “Olive Cook – a brief biography”

The First Five Years

The Cambridge Darkroom was formally constituted as a company limited by guarantee on 11th January 1984. The objects for which the company was established were stated as:

‘to further and advance the education of the public in the art of photography and to promote public knowledge, appreciation and understanding thereof.’

Continue reading “The First Five Years”

From Camera Owner to Creative Camera

The entire Creative Camera archive may be searched. by visiting
http://the-golden-fleece.co.uk/wp/creative-camera-indexing/

The distinctive masthead of Creative Camera magazine

Creative Camera started life as Camera Owner, a ‘hobbyist’ publication, in June 1964.

This was to become issue number one of a journal that was to evolve to become a critical part of the growth of British independent photography in the 1970s and 1980s. Continue reading “From Camera Owner to Creative Camera”