Refugees, Newcomers, Citizens: Migration Stories from Picture Post, 1938-56

West Indian immigrants arriving at Victoria Station, London. Picture Post, ‘Thirty Thousand Colour Problems’, 1956 (© Haywood Magee/Picture Post/Getty Images Hulton Archive)

Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck, University of London

This exhibition brings together for the first time over sixty original prints by renowned émigré photographers Gerti Deutsch and Kurt Hutton, together with Bert Hardy and Haywood Magee, revealing Picture Post magazine’s stories of refugees and immigrants to Britain from the 1930s to the 1950s. Images focus on the Kindertransport and Windrush-era migrations, as well as on lesser-known histories of wartime African-American women Red Cross volunteers, and post-war child Holocaust survivors who found refuge in the Lake District.

Founded in 1938 by Hungarian-Jewish refugee Stefan Lorant, Picture Post magazine brought an innovative continental photojournalistic tradition to Britain, selling over a million copies weekly. From the start it had an unashamedly anti-fascist editorial stance, with a unique sensitivity to issues of displacement, migration and ethnicity. Curated by Mike Berlin in collaboration with Amanda Hopkinson, the exhibition juxtaposes different yet parallel stories of migration and settlement, using original photographs generously loaned from the Getty Images Hulton Archive and is accompanied by a lively related events programme.