There were many portrait photographers in Coventry during the nineteenth
century but only one produced a range of outdoor views for commercial gain.
It is due to the work of a chemist called Wingrave in the High Street,
who started producing views of Coventry in the 1860s, that we have some
record of Coventry street life in the nineteenth century. No other local
photographer produced any views until the early twentieth century when
photographic materials had become so cheap that postcard sized photographs
could be made to compete with printed versions. Even so they still cost
twice as much at 2d each, but with the craze for sending and collecting
postcards at this time enough were produced to represent a valuable archive
of the city at that time. Whist many photographs were produced by national
organizations of the most common city centre views it is the work of the
local photographers that yields the rarely photographed side streets and
suburbs. It is they who hauled their wooden cameras and tripods and packs
of glass plates to photograph the local festivities, disasters and noteworthy
events. They provided illustrations for local news before technology made
it cheap enough for the newspapers to be fully illustrated - a fact of
life today. Their work is acknowledged in the following pages.
David Fry d.fry@virgin.net