Catalogue description ALFRED BRADDOCK NEGATIVES

The negatives that constitute the first collection were discovered in a skip in South London and offered for sale through a London dealer. The purchase was made by HAD with the assistance of money from the donations fund of the Friends of Hackney Archives and the Purchase Grant Fund of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The negatives were purchased in their original envelopes, which were in poor condition. All text and number information on these envelopes was recorded before the collection was transferred to conservation standard enclosures and boxes. There had been some re-numbering of the original collection and the last number on each negative has been kept. The surviving negatives do not represent the entire work of the Braddocks, suggesting that other negatives have not survived. No negatives survive for any area outside Hackney. The negatives are all stored at G6823, and numbers in this list correspond to the Braddock numbers.

Where photographs have been matched to negatives, the location or number of the print is given alongside the negative. (t=top of page; b=bottom) Where an item is marked 'Copy negative' this indicates that Braddock made a negative from another photographer's work or from a print. All the originals so copied are in HAD's visual collection.

Original Braddock prints were collected by Hackney Library and mounted in three albums (Y54 I-III). Album VIII is a collection of Braddock prints donated to HAD. Other prints were copied from other collections or from originals in private hands. The collection has been used to check the negatives. Items marked * had no corresponding prints in the collections and new prints have been made for inclusion.

The negatives in the second collection were purchased by Robert Ashby from a photograph dealer on a stall at Cheltenham race course. The packaging corresponded to the first collection, and the numbers, with one exception also correspond to gaps in the original sequence. As it was clear that they formed part of the same collection, they have been integrated into the original sequence (gaps having been left to reflect the Braddock numbering).

The original packaging for both accessions has been kept and boxed up as D/F/BRD 1

Braddock, Alfred, fl 1884-1907, photographer and stationer

Access is limited to those negatives not printed up or already existing in the visual collections.

Acc No 1997/33 (except as below)

Acc No 2002/21: Nos 4, 6,10,11a,13,14a, 17, 19-20,22, 25, 27a-29, 31-32, 34-35, 37a-39, 42, 45-47, 52-53, 55, 59, 64, 67, 79, 81, 84, 86 and 88. (11a, 14a, 27a, 37a were duplicated No 11, 14, 27 and 37 in original numbering)

Date of deposit: 1997/33: December 1997 2002/21: September 2002

Deposited by: Simmons Gallery (1997/3; Robert Ashby (2002/21)

Alfred Braddock was an assiduous photographer of Hackney scenes for over thirty years. He first appears in local directories in 1884 as a stationer at 6 High Road, Lower Clapton, a trade that would have provided a keen amateur photographer like Braddock with an outlet for his wares. By 1890 the stationery business had been abandoned and he was trading as a photographer from 153 Clarence Road, moving shortly afterwards to 3 Adelaide Villas, Alexandra Road, Hornsey.

However Braddock and his son continued to take Hackney views, while printing off earlier photographs, which must have had period 'nostalgia' value as late Victorian development replaced older houses with new streets and terraces. Braddock's remit was very limited; with the exception of one or two Stoke Newington views he appears to have confined his Hackney work to Mare Street, Clapton, the Hackney part of the Lea and Stamford Hill. Father and son also photographed Hornsey and Crouch End, but there is no surviving prints of any other area of London.

Alfred Braddock worked in the period preceding the establishment of the postcard and produced multiple copies of prints, sometimes mounted on cards, for sale locally. The quality of his work is good and his sense of composition sharp; much better than his immediate predecessor George James (at work c1867-1874, producing small carte de visite prints). Indeed one photograph, of a group of builders outside a partially completed house in Clapton Passage in 1884, has gained a local fame of its own as one of the best images of Victorian London builders on the job.

No work dated later than 1907 survives and it has been assumed that the family ceased to trade around that time.