It comes from the excellent blog of the Together Trust which consistently publishes pictures and stories from the Trust’s archive and which they kindly let me reproduce.
Now I have written about the work of the Refuge* and recently have become interested in the way they used the media of the day to focus attention on those children who had either been abandoned by their parents or made to work long hours to help maintain the family home.
But as Liz Sykes the archivist of the Trust points out “the children are in ragged clothing and are seen to be sleeping out on the street. However the apparent cleanliness of the boys and posed-like look to the image suggests that this picture was set up by the photographer. It was probably then used to appeal to the Manchester community’s conscience.”
So there’s the dilemma then, a staged picture in the interests of bringing the message home or a cynical manipulation. I doubt many of us can honestly say given the awful conditions the children suffered we would not go along with a similar campaign using similar methods.
And as I write this similar pictures and discussions are being posted by colleagues in Canada about the very same approach used by Barnados.
But that is all I am going to say. If you want to see it as well as the other images and read the accompanying story you will have to go to http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/let-me-take-you-by-hand-and-lead-you.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+TogetherTrustArchive-GettingDownAndDusty+(Together+Trust+Archive+-+getting+down+and+dusty!)
Picture; courtesy of the Together Trust
*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Manchester%20and%20Salford%20Boys%20and%20Girls%20Refuges
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