GRACE ROBERTSON OBE

Tempo di lettura: 5 minuti

Born on 13th July 1930 in Manchester, she was one of the most important photographers in history. Her father, Fyfe Robertson, was a journalist who in 1949 began working for the Picture Post, a liberal, anti-fascist and populist photojournalism magazine, founded in 1938 and considered a pioneering magazine in the field because for the first time it documented pre-war, war and post-war life in Britain through photography, becoming a window on the world for the population. At the time, photojournalism was a job only available to men, as were many others, but Grace was not hindered by her family when she expressed her desire to undertake this work experience.This was by no means a foregone conclusion at a time when middle-class girls had few ambitions before marriage, namely to work as teachers, nurses, secretaries.
It was by observing scenes of everyday life that the desire to immortalize them was born in Grace. Initially, and for a short time, she used the pseudonym Dick Muir to publish her shots with the Picture Post: she wanted neither to be judged for being the daughter of Fyfe Robertson, nor for being a woman.
The first assignment she received was to capture the lives of sheep shearers in Snowdonia, Wales.
After being commissioned, in 1952, to follow and document the Bluebell Girls dance troupe’s trip to Italy, she decided to devote the rest of her life to women as photographers.
His most famous series is Mother’s Day off, through which he documented the day trip to Margate of a group of working middle-class women who usually spent time together. The Picture Post initially did not accept her choice of photographing only working-class women, so did not cover the costs of this work.
Prior to this outing, Grace had got to know the group of women, as she was used to do, so that she could then photograph them as an integrated part of the group and not as an external disturbing element that would alter the spontaneity of their behavior.
Women in their fifties and seventies, who had survived two wars and the Depression, were gifted with extraordinary vitality. It was for Grace one of the most enjoyable and engaging jobs, because it was about unique and unrepeatable moments, which only women of that era and with that experience could give, precisely the load of experiences they carried with them. A heritage to be made immortal, so that anyone could enjoy it and recognize themselves.
Later, through the Childbirth series, she fixed, for the first time in history, images of a woman giving birth.
Although she was used to familiarising herself with people and contexts, Grace sometimes took pictures of everyday life as she walked, without stopping: if people noticed, they would stop what they were doing.
In 1957 Picture Post closed, and Grace devoted herself to freelance photography and teaching.
In the early 1990s she photographed 43 people in their nineties for the BBC series The Nineties: she was delighted because to her they represented people from her childhood who had influenced her generation.
In 1999 she was made an OBE (Officer of the Order of British Empire) for her contribution to photography, and received the Wingate Scholarship, with which she funded her Working Mothers in Contemporary Society project.
She died on 11 January 2021 at the age of 90. During the last years of her life she lectured on women in photography, and dedicated her efforts to defending women’s rights and work.
The non-judgmental observation, the ability to immortalize the cheerfulness, the joy, the sorrow, the normality of everyday actions, cannot fail to transport anyone looking at his photographs into the depicted context, cannot fail to move feelings of empathy. This was her purpose: to be able to generate involvement and empathy through contact with what normally escapes us when we think of a group of individuals, namely the emotions that each of us carries. Observing from the outside the images of normal moments in life, such as a conversation, the grimaces of a little girl among others, the laughter of two adult women joking with each other, the gestures of hands, allows us to reconnect to humanity, to the spontaneity of gestures, to life in its true and deep meaning. Because we are made of acts, of emotions, of gestures, even before we are made of roles to be enacted. But we have been taught the opposite, that we are our roles.
Grace Robertson has been a woman of great inspiration for me, as I can always spend hours sitting in a café or on a bench, trying to catch and fix the details of our being in the world. We often don’t even bring this capacity for observation into play with those in front of us, with the people with whom we spend our time, with ourselves, stopping precisely to play the role appropriate to the particular circumstance in which we find ourselves. This is why we feel discomfort if we perceive that someone is observing us or if we stare at someone: we find ourselves thinking that there is more to it than mere observation and this happens because we move within a system of roles.
Too many people rush to collect smartphone videos to post on social media if they find themselves in situations where someone expresses their mood in public, without even pausing to think about whether it is happiness, pain, or discomfort. We share videos and photos that will remain forever on the web, without even asking for the consent of those we are capturing. We are more concerned with receiving appreciation than with imprinting something in our minds. We have lost the ability to stop and even fix in our minds what is happening around us, and consequently the ability to ask ourselves where we are in relation to it all.
Recently, following the sudden passing of a friend, I found myself looking at old photographs depicting moments of normal sharing, laughter and political activism, spent with other people who are still part of my life today. And I found myself thinking that thanks to the memory made immortal through photography, I was able to renew the love I feel for all these people who have built the life I live together with me, and I was able to relive those precise moments made indelible with a snapshot: because every single snapshot had a reason to be taken.