Kurt Hutton
Daniel Sweeny at "The Silver Lady's Kitchen" (from "They had no Work"), 1938
Vintage Gelatin Silver Print
25.6 x 18.7 cms
10 1/16 x 7 5/16 ins
Series: 3. The Silver Lady's Kitchen. Poverty and Unemployment
11773
Further images
Exhibitions
'Unchartered Streets' at Ben Uri Gallery & Museum, London in collaboration with the Centre for British Photography (17 January - 8 March 2024)Literature
"They had no Work", Picture Post, 14 January 1939, vol 2. no. 2, pp.50-52 (illustrated)Kurt Hutton, Speaking Likeness, Focal Press, 1947 (illustrated)
Creative Camera Internatonal Year Book, 1976 (This print illustrated p.198, and entitled "Midnight, Admiralty Arch, 1938")
The 14th January 1939 issue of Picture Post magazine included a feature on unemployment entitled 'They Had No Work'. For this article Kurt Hutton took a number of photographs at...
The 14th January 1939 issue of Picture Post magazine included a feature on unemployment entitled "They Had No Work". For this article Kurt Hutton took a number of photographs at the Silver Lady's Kitchen in Trafalgar Square, London, where proprietor Betty Baxter (nicknamed 'The Silver Lady' for her donations of a silver sixpence to her many patrons) offered a free meal to the area's homeless.
This is one of a group of strikingly dramatic character studies of the people there, beautifully lit as though by candle or lamp-light. It was part of a featufre in Picture Post that gave a human face to poverty and unemployment.
In Picture Post this work is reproduced reverse as the far left image of a spread of four close-ups of me, presumabky as it worked better on the page to have him looking inwards. It is captioned with the subjects name and with some biographical information:
"Daniel Sweeny. He comes from Glasgow. Has been here six years; was working on the railway as a porter till last March. He has been staying in a big lodging house in Victoria; but now hopes that, through the Silver Lady, he may get a job. Besides providing 75,000 free meals a year, the Silver Lady can sometimes find work."
This is one of a group of strikingly dramatic character studies of the people there, beautifully lit as though by candle or lamp-light. It was part of a featufre in Picture Post that gave a human face to poverty and unemployment.
In Picture Post this work is reproduced reverse as the far left image of a spread of four close-ups of me, presumabky as it worked better on the page to have him looking inwards. It is captioned with the subjects name and with some biographical information:
"Daniel Sweeny. He comes from Glasgow. Has been here six years; was working on the railway as a porter till last March. He has been staying in a big lodging house in Victoria; but now hopes that, through the Silver Lady, he may get a job. Besides providing 75,000 free meals a year, the Silver Lady can sometimes find work."