Collection: Margaret Harker Photographic Collection

Description

The collection contains 776 mainly glass half-plate negatives, 113 large format exhibition photographs, 298 smaller format negatives and 555 smaller format photographs. The collection covers English Cathedrals, The Royal Festival Hall, Sir John Soanes Museum and a number of cathedrals in Europe. The photographs were taken by Margaret Florence Harker (1920 - 2013), professional photographer and Britain’s first female professor of photography.

The English large format photographs and the glass plate negatives have been catalogued, and handlists are available for the remaining series in the collection.

Archival History

Margaret Florence Harker was born 17 January 1920 in Southport and died 16 February 2013. She was Britain’s first female professor of photography and the first woman president of the Royal Photographic Society (1958-60). In 1972 she married Richard Farrand also a photographer. She studied photography at Regent Street Polytechnic starting in 1940.

With her particular interest in architecture she was offered numerous commissions between 1941 and 1959. Among them she photographed the Royal Festival Hall and Sir John Soane’s Museum. She also took photographs for Pitkin Press for their series of published books about English Cathedrals. All this work features large in the collection.

1943 saw her become a full time lecturer at Regent Street Polytechnic and a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. In 1959 she was appointed head of the School of Photography and when it achieved university status in 1972 she was one of its first six professors.

She published a number of books The Linked Ring: The Secession Movement in Photography, 1892-1910 (published in 1979) and Henry Peach Robinson, Master of Photographic Art, 1830-1901 (published in 1988).

Her work was exhibited at many overseas and national exhibitions.

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Rights

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