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The National Portrait Gallery Celebrates Ordinary People

By Kristen Bailey

19/03/2004

Image: Shows a photograph of a postcard of three people in period costume sat in an old-fashioned car. The car is photographed head on. On the left, at the steering wheel, is a young boy wearing a boater. In the centre is a woman wearing a black-rimmed hat with a white top. On the right is a stern looking woman wearing a black hat. The backdrop is a building and trees.

Photo: Motor Car, 1909 Weston-Super-Mare. Courtesy of the Tom Phillips Collection

Kristen Bailey stands by her aspidistra and smiles at the National Portrait Gallery’s show of postcard portraits of ordinary Britons.

We Are The People: Postcards from the Collection of Tom Phillips is on at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), London, until June 20. Linked to the exhibition is a display of postcards at the Horniman Museum.

The exhibition presents over 1000 postcards selected from the extensive collection of artist, Tom Phillips, who describes himself as 'an inveterate collector – an anorak'.

Phillips, who is a trustee of the NPG, says that he and his fellow trustees have a duty "to make this place less elitist…most of the portraits in the Gallery are of toffs and high achievers".

In contrast We Are The People aims to put together, he says, "an alternative National Portrait Gallery featuring the rest of the nation - those that did the work, bore the children, fought the wars - the previously unknown and unsung".

Image: Shows a photograph of a postcard of a lady wearing a white dress. Her hands are clasped in front of her and holding some papers and a bunch of flowers. She is standing staring straight at the camera. There are three aspidistras in pots in the picture. One is on the floor, just to the right of her feet. The other is on her left on a stool at calf height. The third is on her right on a waist-high pot stand.

Photo: Aspidistra, Photographer Unknown. Courtesy of the Tom Phillips Collection

In 1902, the British Post Office first permitted writing on the reverse of postcards and this kickstarted a craze for photographic postcard portraits, which were widely available and cheap to produce. Here they are displayed in themes, such as Soldiers, Make Believe, Studio Seas, Aspidistra and Workers.

Aspidistra features people all standing next to an aspidistra (or several). The aspidistra was considered to lend its owner an air of middle class respectability (before it was immortalised in song by the very working class Gracie Fields). One family has even posed with their aspidistra in the middle of a field.

Studio Seas shows us seaside holidaymakers who have chosen not to be photographed by the real sea, but have instead been snapped leaning on fake rocks in front of a painted and more suitably dramatic seascape.

Image: Shows a photograph of a postcard with a woman standing in front of a doorway wearing a Roman soldier's uniform. She is holding a shield with the union jack on it in her right hand and a tridant in her left. She is wearing a helmet with a plume of feathers.

Photo: Britannia, Unknown Photographer. Courtesy of the Tom Phillips Collection

Many of the images will raise a smile – the one of the bandsman, with his baby daughter poking her head out of his upturned tuba for example, and Master Polish with his suit covered in shoe polish tin lids.

Others are poignant – such as all the photos in the Soldier section. Most of these men are very young, nearly all are undecorated. Did they ever come home?

The images in Workers: The Office are strikingly reminiscent of Ricky Gervais’ acclaimed BBC comedy series - the boss at his impressive desk, someone pretending to make a call and rows of clerks all trying to look efficient, pens poised.

So things haven’t changed as much as we might think. In 100 years it could be you up here.

"Nostalgia is irrelevant…these are stored memories for the future", says Phillips. "These people are having their picture taken because they’re proud of their new fashionable haircut or their new bike – much as I might with my brand new mobile phone. They have no sense of looking quaint. They are modern."

National Portrait Gallery
St Martin's Place, London, WC2H 0HE, England

T: 020 7312 2463
Open: Monday - Wednesday & Saturday - Sunday 10am - 6pm Gallery closure commences at 5.50pm Evening Openings Thursday & Friday 10am - 9pm Gallery closure commences at 8.50pm
Closed: Good Friday, 24-26 December, 1 January

Horniman Museum & Gardens
Horniman Museum & Gardens, 100 London Road, Forest Hill, London, SE23 3PQ, England

Open: Open daily: 1030-1730

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