Pictures I wish I had taken ...... One of the fair, Kurt Hubschmann, 1938

There are always those pictures that you wish you had taken and this is one of them.  

It was taken by Kurt Hubschmann on “a fine summer afternoon in 1938”.

Kurt Hubschmann was born in Strasbourg in 1893 and turned to photography after the Great War, opening a portrait studio in 1923 but became interested in photo journalism and joined the Dephot photo and press agency.

In 1934 he moved to Britain, changed his name to Hutton and became a leading photographer for Picture Post.

I first came across his work in a slim book published by the Focal Press in 1947.*

 It is a wonderful collection of his work and contains detailed technical notes on each of the 88 photographs in the book.

So I know that he took this picture with a Leica and that it was “a fine summer afternoon in 1938”.

I also know something of the background to the shot itself which was part of a commission to record a day at the fair.

“Fair pictures” he wrote "can be very disappointing.  Probably because so much of the atmosphere of a fair is a deliberately calculated effect meant to get to work on human senses and not on the hard unwinking stare of the lens.  

The glitter is bogus and all that is real about a fair are a number of hard working people who are shrewd and very skilful about their jobs.  There is no reason why one should not try to photograph that glitter, but it hardly ever comes off and the fun of the fair escapes – unless it is caught as it is reflected in people’s faces.

It certainly is not in this picture, but the girl’s air of complete aloofness from her surroundings attracted me.  I do not know who she was.  

Probably one of the fair children, bored by the daily round.  I sneaked up, and took a couple of snaps and the next moment she was gone.”

Picture; One of the fair, Kurt Hubschmann, 1938

*Speaking Likeness, K.Hutton, The Focal Press, 1947