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TopFoto opens new photography gallery

By Brent Phelps July 10, 2009

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This is in fact our first exhibition - and we're very excited about it. Appropriately we are taking as our subject the photographer and photojournalist around whose work the Topfoto stock library was based, John Topham, a notable character here in Kent but, as his photographs and this exhibition show, a considerable figure in British photography. John Topham lived and worked just outside Edenbridge and his large and fascinating collection of work was taken over by Alan Smith as Tophams Photo Library, and is now incorporated into the Topfoto collections. These photographs, many of them from Kent, inform us about our world and remind us who we were.TopFoto, a stock photography library specializing in historical images, has announced that it has opened The TopFoto Gallery, a new space hosting photographic and visual image exhibitions of international, national and local interest. At launch the gallery is featurung a long-unseen exhibition of the work of the late John Topham, originally shown at the Impressions Gallery of Photography in York (1982). Based in Edenbridge, Kent (45 minutes direct train from London Bridge) the TopFoto Gallery includes The Eden Valley Gallery for local exhibitions, as well as rare historic displays from the archives of House of Jaques, sports and games manufacturer since 1795 and still in the original family’s ownership and whose building houses the gallery.

The Gallery is the initiative of TopFoto, a family-owned image library which began with John Topham’s collection, drawn from a lifetime of photographing the everyday life of Britain. It was during the Second World War that Top came into his own. By that time he was an established freelancer living in Sidcup, where much of the early air action took place. “It was a matter of going – or trying to go – where the trouble was,” he recalled. “The nationals would ring up and say, ‘we hear there’s terrible damage at such and such a place. We can’t get there: can you?’”

Topham, who also by this time had a contract with Life magazine, captured the mood and experiences of the civilian population. One extraordinary image - of children gazing up at the Battle of Britain from a trench dug to protect them in the hopfields of Kent - has been called “one of the most enduring images of the Second World War”. It was used in a propaganda campaign that helped to convince millions of Americans to join the war against Nazi Germany.

Web:  http://www.topfotogallery.com

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