f54 The Camera Man

From the early 1960s, Brian Shuel was the go-to photographer for folk music in the UK, from traditional customs to the young Bob Dylan. Derek Schofield hears how it all happened.

lives. But to be a photographer – as opposed to just taking photographs – requires skill, flair and an artist’s eye. Pho- tographs of folk and roots music feature on social media, but fortunately there is still a demand for quality photographs when and where it matters, and fRoots has always taken this visual aspect of the mag- azine seriously.

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Back in the day, it was rare to see a camera at a folk event. No smartphones then. Not even digital. You had to gauge the exposure, calculate the focus, press the shutter and then process the film and print the results. In spite of the difficulties, the results from a photographer with skill and flair could be stunning, bringing a quality to the images that is often lost in today’s plethora of photographs. Brian Shuel was one such photographer – indeed, he was the folk photographer in the 1960s.

Brian combined being in the right place at the right time with an artist’s eye. Now in his early 80s, and retired from professional photography, his photographs are still in demand, for example by compilers of retro- spective CD packages of 1960s folk perform- ers. But Brian is far from inactive, keeping a fatherly eye on the Collections picture library that he and his wife Sal founded and which continues under their son Simon. Sit- ting in Brian and Sal’s front room, which serves as their joint office, one cannot escape the importance of the visual image in their lives: almost every wall in the house is filled with paintings and photographs.

In spite of living in London for 60 years,

Brian’s Irish accent is still strong. Born near Dublin and educated in Northern Ireland, he came to London to study at the Central School of Art. He met Sal on his first day there. After training as a graphic designer, Brian spent a year of his national service in Singapore, where he bought a camera. Pho- tographs from his first roll of film were sent back to Sal whose father, James Boswell, instantly recognised Brian’s ability and future potential. Some of those photo graphs can be seen on the Collections website.

Back in London, and soon married to Sal, Brian found friendship and work with his father-in-law. James Boswell had been born in New Zealand, but in the 1920s came to London where he worked as an artist and

Brian Shuel today

illustrator. As an active member of the Com- munist Party, he lent his artistic skills to left- wing causes. After the war, he worked with Basil Spence on Festival of Britain murals, designed the Labour Party’s successful elec- tion campaign in 1964 and edited Sainsbury’s in-house magazine. His paintings are now in the British Museum, the Tate and Imperial War Museum – and on Brian and Sal’s walls.

Through the Communist Party, James had known the folk singer and writer AL Lloyd since the 1930s and, through him, in the 1950s, became a director of Topic Records and donated his services designing their record sleeves. Most of the designs included illustrations rather than photo - graphs and some of his distinctive drawings can be seen in Topic’s 2009 publication, Three Score And Ten, and there are more on www.jboswell.org.uk

Brian had joined James on Sainsbury’s magazine, and although he was a jazz rather than folk music enthusiast, James decided that he and his son-in-law should tour the country, visiting folk clubs to find out more about the music. No doubt James realised that Brian’s photographic skills would be useful for Topic’s future releases, especially as the folk scene was growing in popularity. After an initial trip to a folk con- cert in Richmond, Surrey, to see the Ian Campbell Folk Group and others, the two men headed off as far as Aberdeen. There they failed to find the ballad singer Jeannie Robertson (Brian caught up with her soon after at MacColl’s Singers’ Club), but in Dun- fermline they met Ray and Archie Fisher. In Liverpool, Brian photographed The Spinners rehearsing and singing in their club, while in Stockton-on-Tees, they met Johnny Han-

oday, everyone is a photogra- pher. Or rather, everyone takes photographs, filling Facebook and Instagram with the high- lights, and lowlights, of their

dle. The trip was a great eye-opener. “I was very taken by it all, and very much into it at the time,” Brian now recalls, “and within a year or so I was as much a part of the folk scene as the singers!”

Indeed, within a year, Brian had taken some memorable photographs at a couple of the Centre 42 concerts, the recording ses- sion of Topic’s The Iron Muse album, the folk events at the 1963 Edinburgh Festival and clubs and concerts in London. Centre 42 was playwright Arnold Wesker’s plan to spread culture beyond the elite, and folk concerts in Wellingborough and Loughbor- ough featured the cream of traditional singers at the time, as well as the newly- discovered Anne Briggs. The Iron Muse was a collection of industrial songs, featuring Louis Killen, AL Lloyd, Ray Fisher, Matt McGinn, Anne Briggs and Bob Davenport. In Edinburgh in 1963, Brian photographed Luke Kelly and Barney McKenna before they formed The Dubliners, and the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.

During that trip, Bill Leader recorded enough performers for two albums – Brian remembers the singers lining up to be recorded. “Bill and I worked in a similar way; we were very sympathetic to the per- formers, and didn’t mess them around,” Brian recalls. From then on, the singers and musicians photographed read like a who’s who of the 1960s folk scene – The Water- sons, Young Tradition, Alex Campbell, Shirley Collins – as well as traditional singers such as The McPeakes, Fred Jordan and Harry Cox, whose Norfolk accent Brian found impenetrable.

As the folk scene grew, so did the demand for records, but with Topic’s small output, another company was soon filling the gap. This was Transatlantic, headed by Nat Joseph. He wanted some of Brian’s pho- tographs for a record sleeve, and Brian went to see him. “I told him the design of his sleeves wasn’t very good. He said, ‘Oh, I suppose you think you can do better.’ So I said, ‘Well, yes! I am a qualified designer!’ I ended up doing all his design for eight years or so – about a hundred sleeves for both Transatlantic and Xtra.”

As Brian now remembers, “Nobody minded me taking photographs in clubs and concerts then. I didn’t use flash and I got used to working in the dark. No-one thought I could take pictures in the dark, and they were amazed that the photos came out! I pushed the film further than it was designed for, and it made the images very grainy, but

Photo: Derek Schofield