GIANT photographic images of the people of Coventry past will be projected on a huge scale onto the west wall of Coventry Cathedral this weekend.
Coventry business Photo Miners, responsible for the recent exhibition of works by Coventry photographer Masterji, has now created a projection of photographic portraits of the customers of the Tayler Brothers Studio for the cathedral showing.
Tayler Brothers was based in Hillfields, Coventry, for seventy years.
Based at 20 Primrose Hill Street, Hillfields, it took over 50,000 photographs before the 1920s, including portraits of Coventry people.
The exhibition’s organisers say the Tayler Brothers’ photographs to be projected at the cathedral capture the lives of people who lived through ‘Coventry’s industrial golden age’.
Julian and Ernest Tayler moved to Coventry in 1912, from Brixton, south London.
They discovered a city with high unemployment that was ‘on the move’, with the success of the already established cycle industry and the motor industry taking off.
A growing population meant there were many weddings, births, family portraits and more for the Taylers to capture and document for posterity,
Hillfields itself was a hive of activity, and manufacturers like Singer founded factories on Canterbury Street, and Humber and Lea Francis on Lower Ford Street, say organisers.
They add: “The team worked with the Tayler family to digitise their collection whilst a BBC campaign helped crowd source photographs from people across Coventry.”
Coventry playwright Chris O’Connell, from Theatre Absolute, has also been drafted in to tell the story of the Tayler family as part of the project – using an app created by the Photo Miners.
The app is designed to encourage the public to share their stories of Coventry’s past using social media.
It uses images to illustrate people’s stories, and can be accessed by visiting app.photomining.org.
The Photo Miners is also offering free ‘Tayler Brothers local history workshops’ for schools and community groups using the app.
The project was funded by Arts Council England and Coventry City Council.
For more info contact Mark Cook on [email protected].
